Why I don’t eat Paleo.
Paleo. Have you heard of it? You probably have. So here are the reasons why I don’t eat Paleo, but I eat very CLOSE to Paleo. Oh yeah, before I get into it… I think it is important to write this because these differences are pretty significant to me.
I don’t eat it, but I recognize it as successful in creating much healthier individuals than the cultural diet. SAD – the standard American diet.
Paleo – the diet is based on the cave man mentality of a Paleolithic man, eat what you see, and what you can kill. Therefore you wouldn’t bake or farm, but you would pick and eat and kill… because Paleo man was a bit light on the intelligence scale. My reasons not to eat Paleo are these:
1. I believe ADAM was the first man, and he wasn’t an idiot. He was just as intelligent as anyone on the planet today, possibly more so. Therefore he could have figured out without much difficulty how to farm anything. And farming is what he did according to the Bible. So I believe that there was a strong likelihood that man has been eating many foods that require additional effort from the very beginning. I know, not so scientific, and many who read this will disagree based on this alone.
2. The Fruit. OK, so don’t get me wrong, I like sweets, and I will cheat beyond just eating fruit once and awhile, but I don’t believe that paleo provides enough education on natural sugars, still being sugars. It is still easy for someone eating paleo to end up with type II diabetes eating paleo, because sugar, is sugar. So consuming fruits at high levels that are rich in free fructose, and total glycemic load, will drive your blood sugar up.
I prefer to live by a diet code that says watch the fruit, eat berries and granny smith apples with regularity, and make the banana a rare treat… or the orange, or grapes… and though we love honey and maple syrup, watch it. Eat with clean in mind, which is why many agave nectars should be avoided, due to processing methods that leave it less than clean.
The number of good bacteria you need in your gut are represented by these pallets, around the tallest building in the world, in Dubai.
3. Grains. Since I obviously believe in Biblical truth, I don’t completely avoid grains. But I eat them with caution and control. I recently went through the Hopewell Baptist Bethlehem Walk, and watched my daughter work to grind wheat down to a flour. What an endless task. I imagine in the days before they figured out the stone mill, it must have taken at least three hours to get enough flour for a small loaf of bread.
In addition, these grains were pure, not tainted with genetic modification and toxic chemicals. So for these reasons, I will not eat more than a serving a day of grain, nor will I eat any GMO grains. Grain begins to change into sugar the moment it hits your tongue, and the fact that it is rich in lectins means that you are at inflammatory risk with all grains, hence the book title, “Wheat Bellies”. Keep consuming that high inflammation stuff at high levels and see what happens. Eat it as 5% of your diet, and you will enjoy the benefits of grain, without the hardship. Oh yeah, it was a Biblical storehouse food (kept around for a time of famine), not the staple.
4. Cultured Dairy. Perhaps the biggest scientific reason to not eat “Paleo”, is healthy dairy. Now I must explain this first. Many Paleo dieters eat healthy dairy all ready, which to me is a problem with philosophy. If the diet believes that the “dumb” man had it right, and that the dumb man didn’t farm, then no dairy makes sense. But the rules have changed with some paleo diets. Why eat it?
First off, a grass fed cow has less casein than a grain fed cow (the inflammatory protein), and if it is a specific breed of cow (Guernsey is one) then it has even less casein. But more specifically, it has very little A1 beta casein (a genetic variant that may have appeared a couple thousand years ag0) and it has more A2 beta casein (known as the original casein). A2 has potential digestive benefits as well as low inflammatory response.
Next, our culture has a ridiculously low level of pro-biotics in the gut compared to what we should have. 1 quadrillion is the likely number of how many bacteria you should have in your gut. Look at the image, that is 1 quadrillion pallets stacked up next to the tallest building in the world in Dubai. So you must realize that if you are not eating foods that are rich in bacterial cultures, that you are missing out on a part of health that improves digestion, it provides for better immunity at the gut level, and it provides for communication of the immune system to the Gastric Associated Lymphoid Tissue, which governs systemic immune function.
I believe with no reservation, that the benefit of consuming richly cultured dairy from grass fed cows (this alters the Omega 3/6 ratio so significantly, that you can get more Omega 3 from this than eating a serving of fish) completely outweighs any negative. It is hard to find it, and hard to get it the way you should have it, but it is worth the effort. Sometimes we get caught up in the negatives, that we have a hard time seeing the positives.
For ten years I said NO dairy… and now I am totally oppsite… IF… IF it is grass fed, and cultured (and mostly raw).
So that is the takeaway, I hope it helps you navigate the path. You will notice we sell paleo cookbooks. They are great, buy them, buy them all, but be wise how you eat, and alter where you can improve your overall health. Be well and Blessed! – Dr. E