More paleo idiocy
This morning I was listening to Jimmy Moore's new podcast with the paleo luminary Loren Cordain. Oh my gawd. LOL! So much squirming and back-peddling squeezed into one hour... where do I even begin?
The desperation was oozing throughout the interview. It wasn't so much an interview as an attempt to sell his new book, The Paleo Answer, to unsuspecting fatties who listen to LLVLC show for good-quality weight loss advice. Personally, I would not be looking to Cordain for any kind of answer to the question, "How do I lose weight?" Here's why:
I got into the whole Paleo thing about a year ago via LC initially, having read Taubes, Atkins et al. I then read Robb Wolf's book and liked it. I thought it was reasonable advice for most people in most situations. I like Wolf because he seems to understand the necessity for carb restriction in obesity and he also seems to understand that creepy puritanistic food fascism where only free-range grass-fed killed-by-your-own-hand whatever is allowed is nonsense that should not be entertained. I foolishly thought everyone in the Paleo community was as reasonable as Wolf so I figured I'd read more into it. Despite the obvious idiocy of the paleo movement which became evident when the battlelines were drawn following the Taubes vs. Guyenet spat at AHS 2011, I accept the basic paleo principles and adhere to them (no grain etc.) while sticking to LC for medical reasons. That's how I ended up stumbling on Cordain (and others).
For those who may not be initimately familiar with the details of this person's work, I happen to have the Kindle version of his previous book, The Paleo Diet (2nd ed.). I remember buying this book and reading some of it after I'd already learned that the dietary fat hypothesis of heart disease was bunk. I hated the book so much I never actually finished it. It's basically a politically correct version of the paleolithic diet, some weird frankenmonster mishmash of truth and AHA-sanctioned fairy crap. Eat low GI carbs. Eat LEAN meat, shellfish, fish. Canola oil. No sugar, grains, legumes or dairy, god forbid. Gee, sounds like the diet currently peddled by "the authorities". Guaranteed to keep you hungry all the time.
People in the LC / Paleo 2.0 community who are clued in pointed out that these are rubbish, completely out-of-date recommendations. Cordain, like all health authorities, tells you that in order to lose weight you must cut out the high GI carbs. OK, I agree. So the question then arises, where should I get my calories from? This is where things get tricky! They can't tell you the truth which is that you should get your calories from FAT. They lie and prevaricate because they can't be seen to be recommending a high-fat diet. It's bad for your heart, dontchaknow. So you get told, absurdly, that this is a "high protein diet" and that the "bulk" of it is still coming from carbs, just low GI carbs. My doctor who prescribed this shitty diet to me used those exact words also. Cordain and other initial paleo hacks claimed that the paleo man ate "protein and fat", implying that protein was a significant source of calories, on an equal footing with fat or something. This is crazy.
Anyone reading this who thinks lean meat is good should read Jaminet on the issue of protein restriction. Also, go and find out what the Inuit do with lean meat (hint: feed it to the dogs) and what happened to Stefansson (the Arctic explorer) when the meat he ate wasn't fatty enough. Google "rabbit starvation". Then go to the supermarket and get the fattiest beef you can find.
How anyone could live on a high-protein diet is unclear to me as it would result in ill health and death muy pronto. Physiology 101: energy is primarily derived from CARBS and/or FAT. The dispute on what to eat is solely on whether the majority of calories should be eaten from CARBS/GLUCOSE (the position held by the AHA, ADA, USDA, every other governmental organisation, every doctor in the world) or FAT/KETONES (Taubes, Atkins, Hyperlipid, a few other kooks on the interwebz, and every human who ever lived on this planet prior to the invention of agriculture). But everyone agrees that protein could never serve as a significant source of calories. Paleolithic diets were NOT high-protein. They were high fat because the paleolithic man preferentially ate the fattiest parts of the animal. SO, DEAR AUTHORITIES, where should we get our energy from on a reducing diet? It can't be those wonderful wholegrains because they're high GI and thereby verboten. It can't be the fat because it's going to kill you and is therefore verboten. What then should the fatties who want to lose weight eat?
No doctor has ever truthfully answered this question.
Back to Cordain. He actually says in his first book in one of the chapters that people in the Paleolithic ate all the yucky parts of the animal like liver, brain, tongue, kidneys etc. Ummm, if they ate all that fatty stuff, what makes this guy think we should be eating crappy lean high-protein muscle meat??? I don't follow this leap of logic. There's a whole section warning about the dangers of saturated fat, a cardiologist's wet dream, complete with Ornish-style caveats about wonderful stearic acid. He goes on and on about omega 3 to 6 ratio and advocates high omega 3 intake from shellfish and fish. Ummm, where is the evidence that PUFAs in general should be eaten in high quantities? Is the human body made up of mostly PUFAs? That would be a no.
He also goes on about fruit and vegetables. Fruit was probably only ever eaten in season for a few weeks a year. Why an all-year-round fruit orgy, dousing your liver with fructose, would be a good thing for modern man I do not know.
So now following a complete refutation of all these batty ideas Cordain shows up on LLVLC to tell people that he's been pro saturated fat all along (didn't ya'll read my obscure article from seven years ago in some obscure journal?) and how he was the pioneering paleo guy etc etc. Sad, really sad.
In short, this is another desperado attempt from a has-been to jump the "high protein" ship. Cordain reminds me a lot of Eades, actually. Eades' whole blog is an attempt at damage control. The book, after all, is called Protein Power. All these LC diets in the 1990s and 2000s had to call themselves "high protein" for political reasons because to call your diet what it is, high fat, is to accuse yourself of being a murderer or something. Well, Rosedale thoroughly whoopped Eades' ass in that debate all those years ago. We now know that protein restriction is of prime importance not just to glucose control but also health and longevity.
In short, I would not be buying any more books from someone advocating lean meat and fruit as a healthy diet.
The desperation was oozing throughout the interview. It wasn't so much an interview as an attempt to sell his new book, The Paleo Answer, to unsuspecting fatties who listen to LLVLC show for good-quality weight loss advice. Personally, I would not be looking to Cordain for any kind of answer to the question, "How do I lose weight?" Here's why:
I got into the whole Paleo thing about a year ago via LC initially, having read Taubes, Atkins et al. I then read Robb Wolf's book and liked it. I thought it was reasonable advice for most people in most situations. I like Wolf because he seems to understand the necessity for carb restriction in obesity and he also seems to understand that creepy puritanistic food fascism where only free-range grass-fed killed-by-your-own-hand whatever is allowed is nonsense that should not be entertained. I foolishly thought everyone in the Paleo community was as reasonable as Wolf so I figured I'd read more into it. Despite the obvious idiocy of the paleo movement which became evident when the battlelines were drawn following the Taubes vs. Guyenet spat at AHS 2011, I accept the basic paleo principles and adhere to them (no grain etc.) while sticking to LC for medical reasons. That's how I ended up stumbling on Cordain (and others).
For those who may not be initimately familiar with the details of this person's work, I happen to have the Kindle version of his previous book, The Paleo Diet (2nd ed.). I remember buying this book and reading some of it after I'd already learned that the dietary fat hypothesis of heart disease was bunk. I hated the book so much I never actually finished it. It's basically a politically correct version of the paleolithic diet, some weird frankenmonster mishmash of truth and AHA-sanctioned fairy crap. Eat low GI carbs. Eat LEAN meat, shellfish, fish. Canola oil. No sugar, grains, legumes or dairy, god forbid. Gee, sounds like the diet currently peddled by "the authorities". Guaranteed to keep you hungry all the time.
People in the LC / Paleo 2.0 community who are clued in pointed out that these are rubbish, completely out-of-date recommendations. Cordain, like all health authorities, tells you that in order to lose weight you must cut out the high GI carbs. OK, I agree. So the question then arises, where should I get my calories from? This is where things get tricky! They can't tell you the truth which is that you should get your calories from FAT. They lie and prevaricate because they can't be seen to be recommending a high-fat diet. It's bad for your heart, dontchaknow. So you get told, absurdly, that this is a "high protein diet" and that the "bulk" of it is still coming from carbs, just low GI carbs. My doctor who prescribed this shitty diet to me used those exact words also. Cordain and other initial paleo hacks claimed that the paleo man ate "protein and fat", implying that protein was a significant source of calories, on an equal footing with fat or something. This is crazy.
Anyone reading this who thinks lean meat is good should read Jaminet on the issue of protein restriction. Also, go and find out what the Inuit do with lean meat (hint: feed it to the dogs) and what happened to Stefansson (the Arctic explorer) when the meat he ate wasn't fatty enough. Google "rabbit starvation". Then go to the supermarket and get the fattiest beef you can find.
How anyone could live on a high-protein diet is unclear to me as it would result in ill health and death muy pronto. Physiology 101: energy is primarily derived from CARBS and/or FAT. The dispute on what to eat is solely on whether the majority of calories should be eaten from CARBS/GLUCOSE (the position held by the AHA, ADA, USDA, every other governmental organisation, every doctor in the world) or FAT/KETONES (Taubes, Atkins, Hyperlipid, a few other kooks on the interwebz, and every human who ever lived on this planet prior to the invention of agriculture). But everyone agrees that protein could never serve as a significant source of calories. Paleolithic diets were NOT high-protein. They were high fat because the paleolithic man preferentially ate the fattiest parts of the animal. SO, DEAR AUTHORITIES, where should we get our energy from on a reducing diet? It can't be those wonderful wholegrains because they're high GI and thereby verboten. It can't be the fat because it's going to kill you and is therefore verboten. What then should the fatties who want to lose weight eat?
No doctor has ever truthfully answered this question.
Back to Cordain. He actually says in his first book in one of the chapters that people in the Paleolithic ate all the yucky parts of the animal like liver, brain, tongue, kidneys etc. Ummm, if they ate all that fatty stuff, what makes this guy think we should be eating crappy lean high-protein muscle meat??? I don't follow this leap of logic. There's a whole section warning about the dangers of saturated fat, a cardiologist's wet dream, complete with Ornish-style caveats about wonderful stearic acid. He goes on and on about omega 3 to 6 ratio and advocates high omega 3 intake from shellfish and fish. Ummm, where is the evidence that PUFAs in general should be eaten in high quantities? Is the human body made up of mostly PUFAs? That would be a no.
He also goes on about fruit and vegetables. Fruit was probably only ever eaten in season for a few weeks a year. Why an all-year-round fruit orgy, dousing your liver with fructose, would be a good thing for modern man I do not know.
So now following a complete refutation of all these batty ideas Cordain shows up on LLVLC to tell people that he's been pro saturated fat all along (didn't ya'll read my obscure article from seven years ago in some obscure journal?) and how he was the pioneering paleo guy etc etc. Sad, really sad.
In short, this is another desperado attempt from a has-been to jump the "high protein" ship. Cordain reminds me a lot of Eades, actually. Eades' whole blog is an attempt at damage control. The book, after all, is called Protein Power. All these LC diets in the 1990s and 2000s had to call themselves "high protein" for political reasons because to call your diet what it is, high fat, is to accuse yourself of being a murderer or something. Well, Rosedale thoroughly whoopped Eades' ass in that debate all those years ago. We now know that protein restriction is of prime importance not just to glucose control but also health and longevity.
In short, I would not be buying any more books from someone advocating lean meat and fruit as a healthy diet.
