Chapter 1
Paleo 2.0
The reason I wrote this book is quite simple. Paleo Dieters, as well as newbies to the concept, want to learn more about the Paleo Diet and how it can help them lose weight and improve their health. Although the term “Paleo” has become a household word since the publication of my first book, The Paleo Diet, many people simply don’t know where the term originated or what it means.
“Paleo” means “old” and is short for the Paleolithic Era or the Old Stone Age. The Paleolithic period began 2.6 million years ago with the invention of primitive stone tools and ended with the beginning of the agricultural revolution about ten thousand years ago. During the Paleolithic Era, all of our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers until the arrival of farming, animal husbandry, and permanent villages. Although ten thousand years ago seems to be historically far away, on an evolutionary time scale only 333 human generations have come and gone since the advent of agriculture. Research confirms that our Paleolithic genomes have barely changed in the last ten thousand years. We are literally Stone Agers living in the Space Age. The Paleo Way means the Old Way, and this is a book about adopting a modern healthy diet and lifestyle consistent with our genetic heritage as hunter-gatherers.
I am not suggesting that we abandon electricity, central heating, public sanitation, or clean water. We need to recognize our humble roots as hunter-gatherers and adopt the best of their world, while leaving the worst behind. Many aspects of hunter-gatherer lifestyles are unpleasant, detrimental, and life threatening. Think about camping out for your entire life, and you can begin to comprehend some of the shortcomings of hunter-gatherer lives. Our foraging ancestors were at the constant mercy of the elements and risked life and limb on a daily basis in a treacherous environment. I am thankful for the skilled physicians and surgeons whose application of modern medicine can intervene to save our lives in the case of trauma, serious injury, or severe disease. I think very few of us would consider trading the comforts and securities of our twenty-first-century world with the stark reality of hunter-gatherer existence.
Perhaps the most important lifestyle change we can make to improve our health and well-being is to put our twenty-first-century diet in sync with the Stone Age by mimicking our ancestors in the food groups they ate. Improving our diet is far and away the most important lifestyle modification we can make to increase the quality and length of our lives. By following the evolutionary template, we can gain insight into complex diet/health issues in our modern world that will allow us to live longer, more healthful, fuller lives.
In this book, I focus on a variety of nutritional issues about the Paleo Diet concept that require more detail or have become contentious since the publication of my first book. For instance, the saturated fat question has become huge in recent years. What is the evolutionary perspective? Should we eat or avoid saturated fats? How about whey protein powders as nutritional supplements? Should we use them or not? How can vegetarian diets influence fertility? What about soy products and concentrated soy proteins—thumbs-up or thumbs-down? What is the evolutionary approach to meal patterns? Should we eat three meals a day or small frequent daily meals? How about snacking between meals? Fasting and intermittent fasting have become contested matters. What about the new governmental recommendations for vitamin D? Should we take supplements? How about the water we drink?
In The Paleo Diet, I spoke of the 85/15 rule—meaning that if you are 85 percent compliant with the diet most of the time, significant improvements in your health can occur. The other 15 percent—normally, three meals a week—are open meals, meaning you can choose to eat a normal amount of foods that fall outside the diet plan.
There are actually many ways you can individualize and customize your own Paleo Diet, as you’ll see in The Paleo Answer. I refer to this variety as “Paleo diets.”
In January 2011, I had the pleasure of meeting Chris LaLanne, the grandnephew of fitness legend Jack LaLanne. Chris invited me to speak at his CrossFit Gym in San Francisco. As I walked into Chris’s fitness center, there before me on the entry wall was a larger-than-life poster of Jack LaLanne in his signature jump suit, flexing his muscles. Sadly, Jack passed away a few weeks later, and I never got to meet this inspirational man. But what a life he led—the epitome of health and fitness throughout his effervescent ninety-six years. My favorite Jack LaLanne quote is, “If man made it, don’t eat it.” Jack clearly got it right and was eating Paleo about eighty years before this lifelong nutritional plan became mainstream.
We should all be so lucky to live a long and vibrant life as Jack LaLanne did. As I’m sure Jack would have concurred, his longevity and health had less to do with luck and more to do with proper diet and exercise. Jack got a head start on us all by not eating man-made foods for most of his life.
What better time than now to start the Paleo Diet? I believe that many aspects of ill health caused by decades of improper diet can be reversed within weeks or months of adopting humanity’s original nutritional plan. People with serious health issues or who are grossly overweight will require considerably more time to restore their health and vigor, but your body is a wonderful biological instrument, and when you provide it with the foods nature intended, you will be amazed at its restorative powers, regardless of your age.
As of December 2010, only four human experiments involving Paleo diets have been published in the scientific literature. All four studies show good success in ameliorating disease symptoms and/or promoting weight loss.
In his first study in 2007, Dr. Lindeberg and associates placed twenty-nine patients with type 2 diabetes and heart disease on either a Paleo diet or a Mediterranean diet based on whole grains, low-fat dairy products, vegetables, fruits, fish, oils, and margarines. Note that the Paleo diet excludes grains, dairy products, and margarines, while encouraging a greater consumption of meat and fish. After twelve weeks on either diet, blood glucose tolerance—a risk factor for heart disease—improved in both groups but was better in the Paleo dieters. In a 2010 follow-up publication of this same experiment, the Paleo diet was shown to be more satiating on a calorie-by-calorie basis than the Mediterranean diet because it caused greater changes in leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite and body weight.
In a second study of Paleo diets in 2008, Dr. Osterdahl and coworkers put fourteen healthy subjects on a Paleo diet. After only three weeks, the subjects lost weight, reduced their waist size, and experienced significant reductions in blood pressure and plasminogen activator inhibitor, a substance in blood that promotes clotting and accelerates artery clogging. Because no control group was employed in this study, some scientists would argue that the beneficial changes might not necessarily be due to the Paleo diet.
In 2009, Dr. Frasetto and coworkers put nine inactive subjects on a Paleo diet for just ten days. In this experiment, the Paleo diet was exactly matched in calories with the subjects’ usual diet. Almost any time people observe diets that are calorically reduced, no matter what foods are involved, they exhibit beneficial health effects. The beauty of this experiment was that any therapeutic changes in the subjects’ health could not be credited to a reduction in calories, but rather to changes in the types of food eaten. While on the Paleo diet, participants experienced improvements in blood pressure, arterial function, insulin, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and triglycerides. What is most amazing about this experiment is how rapidly so many markers of health improved—and that they occurred in every single patient.
In an even more convincing experiment in 2009, Dr. Lindeberg and colleagues compared the effects of a Paleo diet to a diabetes diet generally recommended for patients with type 2 diabetes. The diabetes diet was intended to reduce total fat by increasing whole-grain bread and cereals, low-fat dairy products, fruits, and vegetables, while restricting animal foods. By contrast, the Paleo diet was lower in cereals, dairy products, potatoes, beans, and baked goods but higher in fruits, vegetables, meat, and eggs compared to the diabetes diet. The strength of this experiment was its crossover design, in which all thirteen diabetes patients first followed one diet for three months and then crossed over and followed the other diet for three months. Compared to the diabetes diet, the Paleo diet resulted in improved weight loss, waist size, blood pressure, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood glucose, and hemoglobin A1c (a marker for long-term blood glucose control). This experiment represents the most powerful example to date of the Paleo Diet’s effectiveness in treating people with serious health problems. Yet you don’t have to have serious health problems to enjoy the advantages of the Paleo Diet and the Paleo lifestyle.
Paleo Success: Ross Werland’s Story
I was stunned a year ago when my doctor mentioned that I should lose some weight. Compared with most Americans, I thought I rated on the thin side, except for a gut that refused to melt after I quit smoking for the first time about fifteen years ago.
I probably wouldn’t have tried to lose weight, except that the idea of the Paleo-type dietary regimen seemed to make sense, gut or no.
For me, it wasn’t as though I had been a slouch physically. After quitting smoking the second time, about eight years ago, I started to cultivate a healthier lifestyle. I cut back on red meat; began to limit fast foods, added more vegetables, legumes, and lots more fish to my diet; and started a moderate weight-lifting routine. With in-line skating, bicycling, canoeing, kayaking, and lots of walking, I figured I already did enough cardio.
Then I read The Paleo Diet. Following it strictly on weekdays and more loosely on weekends, I cut back dramatically on grain and dairy products and quit adding salt or sugar to anything. As with my religion, I simply tried to get it mostly right but forgave myself easily.
The hardest thing to give up was wheat grain. It had never dawned on me how often most of us eat wheat, especially refined grain such as pasta, pastries, and white bread. I still allowed myself whole-wheat toast and jam on weekends.
My diet primarily became three heaping bowls of fresh vegetables daily; lots of fresh and frozen fruits, especially berries; plus sardines, salmon, and low-sodium turkey. Sparkling water became my beverage of choice, but I also had plain water, coffee, and unsweetened tea. Sugary soft drinks didn’t pass my lips. Wine and the occasional martini did.
Within two weeks, I was down 9 pounds. Within six weeks, I was down 15, to 150 pounds. During the next couple of months, I drifted even further down to 145 and plateaued there. At a height of 5 foot 7, that still—unbelievably—puts me on the high end of my ideal body mass index, at 22.7, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nevertheless, my gut vanished, leaving me with a waistline I haven’t seen since college: 30 inches, down from 34 when I first went mostly Paleo four months ago. All obvious fat under the skin is gone.
My cholesterol after three months on the diet was a total of 153, with HDL at 60 and LDL at 76. By most measures, that’s fantastic. My highest reading in total cholesterol was about 220 right before I quit smoking the second time.
Now my energy level seems boundless. My weight-lifting goals in repetitions are much easier to reach than before. Even running, which I never really cared for, is fun.
Maintaining the diet has become easier, once I figured I could find all of the vegetables and the fruits I wanted at nearly any salad bar. Trips to the grocery store still tend to feel like an alien experience, but I’ve learned to ignore all of my previous loves, especially Lucky Charms.
In fact, now I burn excess calories simply by rolling my eyes at all of the processed foods that are offered to us as sustenance.
Oh, yeah, I’ve also gotten a little preachy.
So—welcome to The Paleo Answer!