Paleo 101: How and why you should eat like a Caveman

In your book you argue that conventional wisdom started going down the wrong track in the 1940s and 50s. Is that why a lot of the books you?re recommending are quite old?

Yes. Before World War II in Europe, there were two general themes that were running through nutrition and obesity science. One was that the refinement of food ? particularly the refinement of carbohydrates and sugars ? was causing major health problems. Obesity and diabetes were the most obvious results, but there was a general decay of health in populations that ate diets rich in refined grains and sugars. The other was that clinicians studying obesity had come to believe it was foolish to think obesity was caused merely by people consuming more calories than they expended. They thought it was a hormonal, enzymatic disorder, just like any other growth disorder. If you have gigantism, when people grow far too tall, or dwarfism, when they don?t grow to a normal adult height, it?s to do with grown hormones and growth hormone receptors.

These researchers argued that what was true of vertical growth disorders was almost as surely true of horizontal growth disorders ? obesity, in other words. All we have to do is fully understand which hormones and enzymes regulate fat accumulation and fat tissue, and we?ll know what causes obesity. Then in the 1960s, long after this European school had evaporated, it became clear that the hormone regulating fat accumulation was insulin. We secrete insulin primarily in response to the carbohydrate content of our diet. This fit perfectly with the pre-World War II observations that populations that ate refined carbohydrates had obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases, and populations that didn?t eat these foods didn?t. That?s the story I?m telling in my books.

This could help explain something that I?ve never fully understood ? that some people who are quite seriously overweight don?t actually eat very much.

Yes, they don?t necessarily eat any more than lean people do. One of the things I try to do in Why We Get Fat is to argue against the concept of overeating as the cause of obesity, and one of the arguments I use is that no one can even define what overeating is. We know, for instance, that [Olympic swimmer] Michael Phelps eats 12,000 calories a day. But he?s obviously not overeating, because he?s not obese. The whole concept of overeating can?t be defined, unless you know the person is obese. There?s a circular logic to it. I can eat 3,000 calories of food and be perfectly lean, and my twin brother can eat 3,000 calories and be obese. The question is why? What?s happening in his body that?s making him fat, while the same 3,000 calories don?t make me fat?

Click to expand...

What about the counterevidence?

One caveat is observational studies, where you identify a large cohort of people ? say 80,000 people like in the Nurse?s Health Study ? and you ask them what they eat. You give them diet and food frequency questionnaires that are almost impossible to fill out and you follow them for 20 years. If you look and see who is healthier, you?ll find out that people who were mostly vegetarians tend to live longer and have less cancer and diabetes than people who get most of their fat and protein from animal products. The assumption by the researchers is that this is causal ? that the only difference between mostly vegetarians and mostly meat-eaters is how many vegetables and how much meat they eat.

I?ve argued that this assumption is na?ve almost beyond belief. In this case, vegetarians or mostly vegetarian people are more health conscious. That?s why they?ve chosen to eat like this. They?re better educated than the mostly meat-eaters, they?re in a higher socioeconomic bracket, they have better doctors, they have better medical advice, they engage in other health conscious activities like walking, they smoke less. There?s a whole slew of things that goes with vegetarianism and leaning towards a vegetarian diet. You can?t use these observational studies to imply cause and effect. To me, it?s one of the most extreme examples of bad science in the nutrition field.

Click to expand...

arkktheseaotter_sl said:

You personally can't tell me anything about Paleo, or any diet, or anything related to fitness that I dont already know.

Click to expand...

Convo_sl said:

My thing is...if I have to choose who I should believe I'm going to stick with the prestigious universities. I've read multiple studies on whole grains. From Harvard, Yale, etc. that say they are good for you and should be included in your diet. But some dude named Mark comes along and says no! Don't eat that. It's just not enough. Read my book and ill tell you why...

I don't eat a lot carbs now anyway but ill eventually get back to it. just Harvard's food chart makes a ton of sense overall. Atleast to me

Click to expand...

NBA.COM_sl said:

"My wind feels even better," he said postgame after the Lakers 111-98 victory over the 76ers. "I feel like I can run all day long. A lot of that has to do with diet and being committed to it, and watching what I eat."

The advancements in sports science and medicine, particularly understanding the nature of eating and avoiding certain foods, have aided Bryant in changing his diet. Whereas some athletes might go through their usual offseason routine even as they age, Vitti said the 16-year veteran changed his habits beforehand.

"Kobe never got to that point where he came in behind and had to figure it out," Vitti said. "He saw the future before the future came and he's already made the adjustment."

Part of that changed diet and those healthy eating tips come from Dr. Cate Shanahan, a team consultant who has her own practice in Napa Valley. Pasture-fed foods - pasture-grazed beef from a pasture-fed cow, eggs from a free-range chicken (not a cage chicken) - are just some of the main staples of Bryant's diet.Sugars, specifically anything with corn syrup, should be avoided, and the intake of carbohydrates has been scaled down, consumed in moderation.

"What happens is the athlete consumes one of these products high in carbohydrates and sugar, they get a spike of energy and feel really good," Vitti said. "Your body knows that, sends insulin and then they crash. As soon as they crash, they need another sugar fix, and they're yo-yoing up and down. If we get them off that stuff and get them into more of protein and the right kind of fats, then they'll have a higher level of energy without the lows or the dips."

More findings examine the ratio of high-density lipoproteins (HDL's) and low-density lipoproteins (LDL's), better known as "good" cholesterol and "bad" cholesterol, which can be monitored. The common thought was the ratio for of HDL's to be high and LDL's to be low. But according to Vitti, new findings are changing that perception.

"We're finding out now that a higher level of LDL's, which we thought was bad, doesn't necessarily mean it's bad," he continued, "because within that category, there are good LDL's and bad LDL's. Even though you might have an elevated level of LDL's, it might be the right kind of LDL's."

For example, eating fats, when they're the right kind of fats, can be packed with nutrients.
"What I've done really is just train really hard and watch my diet," Bryant said.

"All this fat free stuff and all these things we've been doing has been the biggest proponent of it," Vitti said. "When they strip the fat, they strip all the nutrients with it. We don't necessarily want to stay away from fats, but it has to be the right kind of fat."

Vitti acknowledges they have created, not only for Bryant, but also all their players, food groups that are red, yellow and green.The traditional food pyramid is not what they're preaching to the players. In fact, it's the inverse.

"The current science reverses the pyramid,"Vitti said. "The base of the pyramid is on the top. We're not telling them to just eat fat - it has to be the right kind of fat. Pasture-grazed beef and products from that; you can eat butter, but it has to be pasture-fed. Not pasteurized, pasture-fed. There's a big difference. Milk from a pasture-fed cow, cheese from a pasture-fed cow."

Altogether, the shift in dietary habits is one of the reasons why the five-time champion has performed at such an effective and efficient level this late into his career. No guard in NBA history has averaged over 15 points in his 17th season or later, but Bryant ranks second in the league in scoring at 29.2 points per game, while also shooting at a 46.5 percent clip.

"What I've done really is just train really hard and watch my diet," Bryant said. "I think that's the thing that catches guys most. They don't do self-assessing. They feel like they can go out there and do some of the things that they did when they were younger and eat some of the things that they've been (eating) and not accept the fact that what you put in has an impact."

Click to expand...