A lot of people try to argue against paleo nutrition by arguing that the whole world couldn’t eat paleo. First of all, this isn’t even a coherent argument—it’s a fallacy of composition: “paleo isn’t be feasible for everybody, therefore it’s not good for the individual.” But the claim is also false: potatoes, now paleo certified, could easily feed the world. If grains can feed the world, then potatoes can do it better:

Potatoes are more nutritious, faster growing, need less land and water and can thrive in worse growing conditions than any other major crop. They provide up to four times as much complex carbohydrate per hectare as grain, better quality protein and several vitamins – a medium-size potato boiled in its skin has half an adult’s daily dose of vitamin C, for example. They also contain B vitamins, plus many of the trace elements poor people, and grain, lack. (New Scientist)

So if everybody decided to cut grains and switch to potatoes as a staple, then farmers would plant potatoes instead of grains. Over time, potatoes would likely become cheaper due to economies of scale and innovation. (Disease and perishability are the main challenges to potatoes.)

These types of arguments ignore the role of prices and innovation. Increased demand for a good increases its price, encouraging increased production and innovation, as well as substitutes. So even a low-carb, high-meat paleo diet might be possible worldwide. A large increase in demand for meat would lead to a rise in price that would set about efforts to reduce costs through economies of scale and innovations. Furthermore, meat substitutes would also expand to meet the demand (insects are a cheap alternative).

The most common objection to the logic of evolutionary health is that paleolithic humans had short lifespans, presumably because they were in poor health.  This fallacy has been demolished many times over, but I have another argument to add to the pile. The popular notion that paleolithic humans lived long enough to reproduce then died is flatly contradicted by the existence of evolved grandparenting behavior.

Grandparenting behavior seems to be a cultural universal. Parents want their grown children to produce offspring, and they seem to care a lot about it. Grandparents enjoy lavishing their love on their grandchildren. The grandmother on the mothers’s side tends to invest a lot in helping out with the baby (for good evolutionary reasons).

This implies that these behaviors have evolved, which in turn means that grandparents must have had a sizable impact on their grandchildrens’s genetic success. So it must have been fairly common for people to live long enough to become grandparents. Conclusion: paleolithic humans routinely lived long enough to see their grandchildren grow up. They lived long enough to reproduce and see their children reproduce.

So how old would that have been? A conservative estimate would be that the grandparent had their child at 16 and this child had the grandchild at 16 as well. The grandparent would be 32 at the birth of the grandchild. Since grandparenting behavior extends past infancy, let’s take a conservative estimate of 4 years. So we can expect that it was common for our paleolithic ancestors to live at least to 36.

Taking a more realistic estimate, we could assume that the average age of childbirth is 22 and that grandparents were around until their grandchildren were on average 6 years old. That brings the figure up to 50. And an average age of 50 is nothing to scoff at. I’m not sure how late the evolved grandparenting behaviors last, so 6 is still a conservative figure. In fact, with generations of 16 years, one could be a great-grandparent at 48.

Just another argument that puts the lie to the notion of a short-lived paleolithic ancestry.

Long live paleo man!

I couldn’t find much on this topic in the paleosphere, so here’s an initial attempt at a paleo approach to parenting. I’m not a parent, but I think the basic ideas are simple enough.

The leading candidate for a primal infant care manual is Jean Liedloff’s 1975 book, The Continuum Concept. Based on her observations while living with hunter-gatherers, she recommends following the evolutionary logic. From the website:

• constant physical contact with his mother (or another familiar caregiver as needed) from birth;
• sleeping in his parents’ bed, in constant physical contact, until he leaves of his own volition (often about two years);
• breastfeeding “on cue” — nursing in response to his own body’s signals;
• being constantly carried in arms or otherwise in contact with someone, usually his mother, and allowed to observe (or nurse, or sleep) while the person carrying him goes about his or her business — until the infant begins creeping, then crawling on his own impulse, usually at six to eight months;
• having caregivers immediately respond to his signals (squirming, crying, etc.), without judgment, displeasure, or invalidation of his needs, yet showing no undue concern nor making him the constant center of attention;
• sensing (and fulfilling) his elders’ expectations that he is innately social and cooperative and has strong self-preservation instincts, and that he is welcome and worthy.

This is in contrast to mainstream practices such as: formula-feeding, leaving the infant alone to sleep, leaving the infant to cry.

Another valuable resource is the work of Judith Rich Harris. In her paradigm-shifting book, The Nurture Assumption, she convincingly argues that parents have no effect on how their childrens’ personalities will turn out. (The evidence shows that half of the variation in personality is due to genetics, the other half to the influence of the peer group.) She concludes that the Western obsession with nurturing children is a big fat waste of time. Since personality is immune to parental nurture, parents can breathe a collective sigh of relief—no longer are they to blame for their childrens’ failures. Nor do they have to worry that they aren’t spending enough “quality time” with their children, giving them enough affection, driving them to sports practices and music lessons, etc. Children turn out fine so long as they have a peer group.

This agrees perfectly with the anthropological evidence. In hunter-gatherer cultures, infants stay in their mothers’ arms until they are weaned. The mother doesn’t bother to speak to her infant as it wouldn’t be able to understand (and it will learn to speak from other children). Then, the toddler is handed over to an older sibling, usually a sister, who is given full responsibility over the child and is expected to dominate it. The parents play a very hands-off role. Harris writes:

The idea that parents should have to entertain their children is bizarre to people in [traditional] societies. They would fall down laughing if you tried to tell them about “quality time”.

There is a good reason why this trait evolved in children. Parents and children only share half of their genes, so from the selfish gene’s perspective, there are conflicts of interest. We would expect parents and children to try to manipulate each other for their own benefit, and that each would develop defenses against such manipulation. The child may try to get more than its fair share of food by crying, whining, being cute, etc. (It only shares half its genes with its siblings, after all.) The parents may want their daughter to stick around and take care of her younger siblings, while it may not be in her own best interest to do so. Hence children resist the efforts of their parents to shape their personalities.

Harris’s advice to parents is simple: 1) follow the evolutionary logic (i.e., don’t bother with obsessive nurturing), and 2) raise them in a good neighborhood, where there is a good peer group. Children are socialized by their peer group, so this is the most effective thing you can do for them.

Finally, when it comes to health, paleolithic nutrition is the most important element. For an infant, this means breast milk and then paleo foods. Please—don’t feed your baby soy formula. Sun is also important: it’s a tragedy that so many people shield their babies from getting any direct sunlight on their skin.

One of the main, take home messages in Gary Taubes’s book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, is that overeating and inactivity—gluttony and sloth—are not the causes of obesity as commonly supposed. Rather, they are the effects of hormone-driven fat accumulation. In his inaugural blog post, Taubes lays out why overeating is not a causal explanation of obesity—it merely restates the definition of obesity. Fat people must have overeaten—maintained an excess of caloric intake over expenditure. The real question is: Why do some people overeat (and why don’t others)?

The fact is, gluttony and sloth are symptoms, not causes, of obesity. Just as children “overeat” because they’re growing (taller), people also overeat when they’re growing (fatter). This explanation makes a lot of sense: if your body is storing away calories in the fat cells, then the other tissues will have fewer calories available to use. Hence, you will hungrier and less active, in exactly the same way as a lean person who is underfed.

As Taubes explains in detail in the book, a diet high in refined carbs causes chronic high insulin levels, which causes insulin resistance in the lean tissues, causing a compensatory increase in insulin. Insulin is the storage hormone, so with the lean tissues being less responsive, the fat tissue takes up the slack. The fattening continues until the fat tissue becomes insulin resistant, but then one is at risk of becoming diabetic. The basic story is that bad nutrition causes hormone-driven fattening, which makes less fuel available to the lean tissues, causing hunger and lethargy.

It’s hilarious that obesity “experts” think that the gluttony/sloth hypothesis stands securely behind the law of energy conservation. Energy conservation only says that fattening and caloric excess must occur together—it says nothing about causality. They’ve just assumed that caloric excess causes obesity. Taubes has caught them making an embarrassing, elementary error. It’s the fattening that causes the caloric excess. When your body wants to get fat, it adjusts your hunger and energy levels in order to create the caloric excess required.

The bottom line is that gluttony and sloth are effects, and not causes, of obesity. Now stop blaming the victims for a lack of willpower and tell them the real cause of their obesity. (If they don’t lose the weight after that, then you can blame them.)

One of the many invaluable lessons in Taubes’s Good Calories, Bad Calories is that overeating is a myth. This makes a lot of sense. Suppose you “overeat”. Then, you won’t be as hungry at the next meal, so you’ll “undereat”, and the two meals will average out as “normal”. In fact, we all “overeat” during the day, and “undereat” while we sleep.

One of the main points that Taubes stresses is that hunger is a physiological, and not a psychological phenomenon. He discusses Edward Adolph’s rat feeding experiments from the ’40s which clearly showed that food consumption is regulated by caloric need, and not by volume, mass, or even taste! For example, when the rats’ food was diluted they kept eating until they got enough calories, even though they ate a much greater volume and mass of food. And when calories were directly injected into the rats’ stomachs, their intake dropped accordingly.

The implication is that trying to eat less by using tricks like drinking water or eating more fiber to create a sensation of fullness are futile. You’ll be hungry until you actually put real calories in there. (I should add that trying to eat less is a horrible way to lose fat: the cost is all the negative effects of semi-starvation and you generally regain all the fat when you return to normal eating.)

Hunger, and hence food consumption are hormone driven: we eat to get enough calories. Period. Just as children eat a lot because they’re growing, fat people “overeat” because they’re growing (fatter). In neither case are they growing because they’re overeating. Their bodies need more food in order to grow, so their appetites are correspondingly larger. When thin people “overeat”, they don’t get fat, they just aren’t as hungry for the following meal, at which they “undereat”. The bottom line is that you don’t control your hunger—your caloric need does—so you’ll end up eating the “right” amount over the long term.

(Incidentally, Taubes points out that, if our hunger weren’t regulated by caloric need,  it would require a feat of incredible accuracy to maintain a constant weight over a period of several years. A few extra calories per day would add up to major fattening in the long term. Of course, that’s not what happens.)

The fact is, overeating is really quite rare—because it hurts. If you don’t feel sick, then you haven’t overeaten. For most people this happens maybe once or twice a year. If you ate a lot, but feel alright, that’s just calories in the bank which will delay your hunger. Eating big, nourishing meals is nothing to feel guilty about—you’re giving your body the calories it needs to function, and if it doesn’t need them right away, it won’t trigger your hunger as quickly.

Proponents of evolutionary health are in a frustrating position. On one hand, our position follows directly from evolutionary theory (one of the most well established scientific facts around). On the other hand, our position stands in direct contradiction to the mainstream state-sponsored position on nutrition and health (although that’s slowly changing for the better). Obviously, a theory contradicting evolution is in all likelihood wrong. I don’t think anybody doubts that all other living organisms are healthy when living under the conditions to which they have adapted via evolution (that’s why zoos try to recreate their natural habitat). Humans, members of the same family of DNA-based organisms, should also be healthy under the conditions of the evolutionary environment.

The scientific research in the field of nutrition and health has been deeply muddled, as Gary Taubes has forcefully argued. This is because they haven’t adopted the guiding paradigm of evolution, the theory underpinning all of biology (and this due to government distortion of science). Without a theory to interpret the data, they’re adrift at sea without a rudder, facing a bewildering array of disconnected facts with no way of relating them. Only evolution can make sense of the facts, but if they accept that, they’ll have to admit that they were wrong and that the evolutionary health proponents were right. I look forward to the day.

In this excerpt from The Protein Debate (HT Robb Wolf), Loren Cordain beautifully makes this point:

Although humanity has been interested in diet and health for thousands of years, the organized, scientific study of nutrition has a relatively recent past. For instance, the world’s first scientific journal devoted entirely to diet and nutrition, The Journal of Nutrition only began publication in 1928. Other well known nutrition journals have a more recent history still: The British Journal of Nutrition (1947), The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1954), and The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1988). The first vitamin was “discovered” in 1912 and the last vitamin (B12) was identified in 1948 (1). The scientific notion that omega 3 fatty acids have beneficial health effects dates back only to the late 1970’s (2), and the characterization of the glycemic index of foods only began in 1981 (3).

Nutritional science is not only a newly established discipline, but it is also a highly fractionated, contentious field with constantly changing viewpoints on both major and minor issues that impact public health. For example, in 1996 a task force of experts from the American Society for Clinical Nutrition (ASCN) and the American Institute of Nutrition (AIN) came out with an official position paper on trans fatty acids stating,

“We cannot conclude that the intake of trans fatty acids is a risk factor for coronary heart disease” (4).

Fast forward 6 short years to 2002 and the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine’s report on trans fatty acids (5) stating,

“Because there is a positive linear trend between trans fatty acid intake and total and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol concentration, and therefore increased risk of cardiovascular heart disease, the Food and Nutrition Board recommends that trans fatty acid consumption be as low as possible while consuming a nutritionally adequate diet”.

These kinds of complete turnabouts and divergence of opinion regarding diet and health are commonplace in the scientific, governmental and medical communities. The official U.S. governmental recommendations for healthy eating are outlined in the “My Pyramid” program (6) which recently replaced the “Food Pyramid”, both of which have been loudly condemned for nutritional shortcomings by scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health (7). Dietary advice by the American Heart Association (AHA) to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) is to limit total fat intake to 30% of total energy, to limit saturated fat to <10% of energy and cholesterol to <300 mg/day while eating at least 2 servings of fish per week (8). Although similar recommendations are proffered in the USDA “My Pyramid”, weekly fish consumption is not recommended because the authors of these guidelines feel there is only “limited” information regarding the role of omega 3 fatty acids in preventing cardiovascular disease (6). Surprisingly, the personnel makeup of both scientific advisory boards is almost identical. At least 30 million Americans have followed Dr. Atkins advice to eat more fat and meat to lose weight (9). In utter contrast, Dean Ornish tells us fat and meat cause cancer, heart disease and obesity, and that we would all would be a lot healthier if we were strict vegetarians (10). Who’s right and who’s wrong? How in the world can anyone make any sense out of this apparent disarray of conflicting facts, opinions and ideas?

In mature and well-developed scientific disciplines there are universal paradigms that guide scientists to fruitful end points as they design their experiments and hypotheses. For instance, in cosmology (the study of the universe) the guiding paradigm is the “Big Bang” concept showing that the universe began with an enormous explosion and has been expanding ever since. In geology, the “Continental Drift” model established that all of the current continents at one time formed a continuous landmass that eventually drifted apart to form the present-day continents. These central concepts are not theories for each discipline, but rather are indisputable facts that serve as orientation points for all other inquiry within each discipline. Scientists do not know everything about the nature of the universe, but it is absolutely unquestionable that it has been and is expanding. This central knowledge then serves as a guiding template that allows scientists to make much more accurate and informed hypotheses about factors yet to be discovered.

The study of human nutrition remains an immature science because it lacks a universally acknowledged unifying paradigm (11). Without an overarching and guiding template, it is not surprising that there is such seeming chaos, disagreement and confusion in the discipline. The renowned Russian geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) said, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” (12). Indeed, nothing in nutrition seems to make sense because most nutritionists have little or no formal training in evolutionary theory, much less human evolution. Nutritionists face the same problem as anyone who is not using an evolutionary model to evaluate biology: fragmented information and no coherent way to interpret the data.

All human nutritional requirements like those of all living organisms are ultimately genetically determined. Most nutritionists are aware of this basic concept; what they have little appreciation for is the process (natural selection) which uniquely shaped our species’ nutritional requirements. By carefully examining the ancient environment under which our genome arose, it is possible to gain insight into our present day nutritional requirements and the range of foods and diets to which we are genetically adapted via natural selection (13-16). This insight can then be employed as a template to organize and make sense out of experimental and epidemiological studies of human biology and nutrition (11).

My article, The Paleo-Libertarian Connection, was published today on LewRockwell.com. Here’s a quick overview: I show that the paleo community is strongly libertarian, and why it is. Then I discuss the parallels between the ideologies. I end by making the case for paleo-libertarian integration. It’s somewhat of a paleo-libertarian manifesto, a flagship article for the Paleo-libertarian group.

***Note: I checked with Knopf about copyright and they informed me that I can keep the notes up for a limited time until they withdraw the permission. Please download your own copy of the PDF while it’s still available.***

Gary Taubes’s masterpiece—Good Calories, Bad Calories—is the most important book ever written on diet and health. Drawing from an astounding body of research, Taubes challenges the conventional wisdom head on and decisively wins (the book is perhaps overkill.) He shows that carbohydrates are the root cause of obesity and most chronic diseases, and that fat is not only innocent, but positively beneficial. The book was so amazingly good that after finishing it, I decided to read it through again and take extensive notes for future reference. Now that I’ve finished, I figure that these notes could be quite useful as a reference to others who’ve read the book, or even as an overview to get more people to read the book. These notes are no substitute for reading the book though. They were written as a reference to complement the book and I strongly recommend reading it through in its entirety. Armed with Taubes’s book and these notes, you’ll be a low-carb, high-fat force to be reckoned with!

• Complete Notes to Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes
• Or, save or print a copy of the PDF version.
• New: EPUB version

If you’re unacquainted with Taubes’s work, his obesity lecture is a good place to start.

Our feet have evolved for going barefoot-our hunter—gatherer ancestors didn’t have footwear. According to evolutionary logic, going barefoot is the healthiest option for our bodies. Unfortunately, barefooting is often impractical. Physical constraints, i.e., sharp objects or cold weather, as well as cultural constraints (“no shirt no shoes no service”) prevent us from going barefoot most of the time. Fortunately, there are some high-quality and affordable products that allow us to have the best of both worlds.

Vibram FiveFingers

Vibram FiveFingers "Sport" model

The Vibram FiveFingers are the shoe or sandal equivalent of toe socks. Designed to give you the barefoot experience with the benefits of underfoot protection, they’ll make your feet come alive! There’s nothing better except actually going barefoot. They’re great for outdoor or fitness activities. I like to use them for doing sprints on the grass at the park. You can immediately run faster because the power of your toes and feet are fully unleashed and because your running mechanics improve (no more heel strikes). They also make amazing sandals or watershoes as they’re incredibly grippy (the soles have sipes cut into them, just like snow tires). Very fun to wear!

As Tim Ferriss explains, traditional shoes can be quite harmful to foot health and posture, while barefooting in FiveFingers can bring amazing relief. In his case, it eliminated 10 years of lower-back pain in 2 weeks. Primal living blogger Mark Sisson is also a big fan of the FiveFingers as primal footwear and likes to use them for playing ultimate and doing beach sprints.

Order them online from the Vibram website but be sure to measure carefully as accurate sizing is very important. Canadians can get them from Mountain Equipment Co-op for an even lower price!

Unfortunately, you can’t wear them all the time, either because of cold weather or public reasons like your job. And that’s where the Wysong Ergonomic Insoles come in handy, providing barefoot benefits all in the privacy of your normal shoes.

Wysong Ergonomic Insoles

Wysong Ergonomic Insoles

The Wysong Ergonomic Insoles are designed to emulate the natural foot support of walking in sand. The heel of the insole is missing so that your heel “floats”, relieving the pressure on it. This promotes proper posture and discourages heel strikes in your step. The toes are also cut out to create “toe-grips” which actually makes a big impact by engaging your toes for even more propulsion.

They’re the perfect solution for day-to-day use, where going barefoot or wearing FiveFingers wouldn’t be feasible. They take some getting used to and adjustment to find the right position, but they definitely put out results. Not only are they super-comfortable to wear for standing and walking, they also unleash the power of your feet in athletic activity. You can immediately feel the difference while running or jumping, a feeling of power and swiftness. You’ll feel a new bounce in your step and an urge to go bounding away! Best of all, you can put them in any shoe you want, so you can wear them all the time. I’ve been wearing the Wysong Ergonomic Insoles for almost four years and can honestly say they’re the best health product I’ve ever come across.

Available online from the Wysong website.

Verdict

I was extremely impressed with both of these products and highly recommend them—for health, comfort and athletics. Both are definitely worth a try and are affordable enough to warrant it.