There is no evidence base that paleo diet specifically reduces cardio metabolic risk as there has not been enough clinical trials done to evaluate this nor is there any clear data on what the paleo diet was. What there is emerging evidence of, is that processed foods may be increase our cardiometabolic risks. The idea of using evolution as scientific evidence is not sound;evolution does not need to take into account health after children are reared, and most cardio vascular disese occurs after this.

Regarding the evolutionary aspect, does this theory not fall down on the evidence that, europeans have evolved lactase persistence? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19714206

I discuss this in detail in my recent book (G. Jasienska 2013 "The Fragile Wisdom. An Evolutionary View on Women’s Biology and Health”. Harvard University Press, Cambridge USA). In general, it hard to do studies on this topic, since: 1. we do not really know what "Paleo" diet was, 2. we do not have most plans, animals, etc. that were consumed in the past, 3. too few people follow this dietary pattern and it is difficult to do epidemiological studies.

The concept of paleolithic diet appeared in the scientific literature about 30 years ago, Eaton and coll. brilliantly examined the possible advantages of this diet and now from time to time the paleo diet comes to the attention of the researchers and the public. Still doubt remain about its definition and the about the evaluation of its benefits (if any) in the real 21th century world. I would say, more exciting for the historians of nutrition than for the consumers.

Can I please ask that responses posted here are based on real evidence based and peer reviewed science?

Oh boy. Chemtrails and UN agenda 21. Throw in the Illuminati or the Bilderberg group and you have a kook trifecta.

There is no evidence base that paleo diet specifically reduces cardio metabolic risk as there has not been enough clinical trials done to evaluate this nor is there any clear data on what the paleo diet was. What there is emerging evidence of, is that processed foods may be increase our cardiometabolic risks. The idea of using evolution as scientific evidence is not sound;evolution does not need to take into account health after children are reared, and most cardio vascular disese occurs after this.

@Jocelyne Benatar - I love your response to this question. Indeed why would consuming a diet that we evolved to consume improve our health and longevity. As you say evolution improves reproductive success. But, improving longevity for some reason isn't matched with improved reproductive success. Look at Yoda the mouse from Richard Miller's lab - he had a really long life but reproductively he was useless. Also check out the attached review from Dominic Wither's lab discussing the number of mutations that increase life span that also impair reproductive capacity. So there is a clear mismatch between longevity and reproductive capabilities and the way I see it we evolved to be extremely adaptive organisms capable of surviving and reproducing on a wide range of diets.

thanks David. I have reviewed the evidence presented- the problem I have is over interpretation results of a small trial (n=17) looking at surrogate markers of cardiovascular disease. Definitive statements about diets are impossibly hard; observational studies have confounders, randomized studies are too short to evaluate small benefits over long periods and adherence to diets is notoriously hard to achieve. In summary we will find it impossible to answer the question definitively, and a clinical recommendation will need to be given with a number of caveats. As for athletes, as a low GI diet , the paleo diet could be beneficial for endurance exercise

There's a Mendeley group with more than 200 papers on paleo-related studies. You can find it here http://www.mendeley.com/groups/643771/paleolithic-diet-research/

I am inundated by clients wanting to do this diet or that diet. The Paleo diet is similar to the Dean Orrinsh diet for heart health. I agree with Jocelyn and her comment about processed foods. Any time I can convince my clients to eat unprocessed foods they not only feel better but their overall health is better. I do not think that the paleo diet is better than any other diet. What is important is that the person using the paleo diet understands that this is a lifestyle change and just a short term modification to their diet.

Sorry, i meant to say " and not just a short term modification to their diet.

In addition to what Heidi mentions, please go and do a search on pubMed for the hundreds of human studies showing the benefical effects of omega-3 on all of the factors for CVD.

Whist animal studies are interesting, atherogenesis in humans is different, - for example in humans early lesion s arise from smooth muscle cells whereas in mouse it is from macrophages, the intima is different in human and animal models ect.

The early point I made about the pitfalls of using surrogate outcomes to predict clinical outcomes is very important- we have learnt , much to our dismay, that using surrogate outcomes can lead to erroneous conclusions. For example, drugs like rosiglitozone in diabetes had wonderful effects on sugar, LDL-c , triglycerides ect but increased CVD risk. Supplements can do many wonderful things in short term surrogate outcome studies (e.g. effects on inflammation) but these not bear fruit when we do proper RCT that look at hard endpoints like CVD events and death –this includes outcome studies with omega 3. The only diet that has hard clinical outcome data at this stage is the Mediterranean diet- if you look at it, it is an overall change in eating habits that include legumes, oily fish, tomato based sauces, nuts, olive oil, no processed foods ect (the article is in the NEJM this week) that makes a difference. . It may be that this is what matters in the end, the overall pattern rather than one little component.

Please, note that the Mediterranean Diet has no any relationship at all with the Paleo Diet.

Paleo Diet has been established as a "magic diet" by both the Spaniard Dietetics Association (AEDN) and Consumers Organization (OCU) in Spain, and so on, it should be avoided. I may attach the file (in Spanish).

We must also consider that most of the diets with a name are also magic diets: i.e. Dukan, Montignac, Atkins, etc. Medical treatments do not use our Doctors´surname. proper scientific medical treatments are universal. A cold is a cold and must be treated as a cold. No matter our Doctor´s name to say that we are using Dr. Whatever cold treatment.

Finally, despite all Dr. Loren Cordain experience, awards and honors, I have found his academic CV: http://hes.cahs.colostate.edu/faculty_staff/cordain.aspx. I can not find at all any B.S Health Sciences on his University: http://www.pacificu.edu/academics. I ignore wether this title was available in the past at this University. Also, his later studies are focused on exercise, and not in Nutrition/Dietetics.

I think that is a matter of marketing rather than anything else, and so, in the next 5 to 10 years we will ignore his advices (I do already) as we did with Montignac or Atkins in the past.

Hi Yago,

>

Actually, there is a realtionship of sorts- both diets naively assume that what was good for some humans will be good for all humans everywhere.

At least we know what the Mediterranean diet is- there are massive arguments raging still about what should constitute a Paleo-diet, all apparently based largely on conjecture and the individual authors personal preferences.

The "paleo diet" assumes all humans are best served by the one authentic diet our paleolithic ancestors (allegedly) ate.

Long before we humans came on the scene, I'd suggest it is reasonable to strongly suspect that different populations of each pre-human hominid species exploited different resources in their particular niches or environments, and so had very different diets. This is certainly true of modern humans. What is good for me may make you very ill, or even kill you. We are descended from populations that have each adapted to their local environments.

In the paleolithic era humans occupied coastal and esturine environments, forests in temperate areas and equatorial rainforests, deserts, tundra, alpine and artic environments.

In every place they went they discovered new resources and developed techniques (technological and cultural) to exploit them.

Therefore I'd suggest that there is no single authentic paleolithic diet.

Depending on your ancestory, your body (in particular your liver enzymes) have adapted to deal with different local foods and different ratios of their nutritional components. Most of this adaption has taken place since the paleolithic era- (we didn't stop adapting to our environment just because we improved our tool kit a bit).

I'd recomend "Why Some Like it Hot- food, genes and cultural diversity" by Gary Paul Nabhan for a good refutation assumptions underlying the "PaleoDiet," a discussion of why the Meditteranean Diet won't help everyone, and for some fascinating examples of gene-environment-diet-culture interactions...

http://www.islandpress.org/ip/books/book/islandpress/W/bo3560344.html

.

Click to look inside;

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Some-Like-Hot-Diversity/dp/1597260916

Paul.

Aboriginal Australians have a higher per-capita rate of diabetes than non-indigenous Australians.

The same is true of desert dwelling people like the Navajo and Pima peoples of America.

Many desert plants are adapted to their environment by having large amounts of intercellular mucilage, which stores water. When your diet contains large amounts of these sorts of plants, the mucilage slows gastrointestinal motility and also greatly slows digestion and absorption- notably of sugars.

In 1987 Brand-Miller and Thorburn conducted experiments where they compared the responses of healthy Aboriginal and Caucasian subjects to a traditional bush tucker that is just such a "slow release" food- the bush potato (Ipomea costata) and a "fast release" food, the domesticated potato (Solanum tuberosum).

Both Caucasian and Aboriginal subjects showed lower plasma insulin responses to the slow release bush potato, than to the western equivalent. However the difference was far more marked amongst the Aboriginal subjects- the areas under the glucose and insulin curves were one third lower for them when they ate bush potato.

The Aboriginal people have been protected from diabetes-inducing pancreatic stress by their bush tucker, and their metabolisms are the product of 40,000 years adaptation to that diet. That adaption makes them vulnerable to modern diets. The Causcasian subjects are descended from people who have been eating modern diets for many generations, high in sugar and processed milled grains since the industrial revolution. Their metabolisms are better adapted to handling sudden increases in sugar levels. Accordingly, the bush potato (although of some benefit) was significantly less beneficial for them by comparison.

Similar genetic differences in responses to foodstuffs, (most famous examples include lactose and alcohol, but there are countless others) are often referred to as "intolerances" or "allergies" when they are probably more accurately described as adaptions to specific environmental influences, or their absence.

This sort of research into ethno-biology and nutritional ecology makes ideas like "The Paleo Diet" seem hopelessly simple and naive.

Paul.

My concise answer to the question;

>

1) Please define "Paleo Diet".

>

That probably depends, on:

1) See above, Please define etc...

2) The genetic background, and life experience, of the person you prescribe your particular version of the Paleo Diet to.

>

3) Yes, I would expect it is incredibly relevant. Though perhaps not in the ways some people seem to assume.

Don't be fooled into thinking that human evolution stopped before the neolithic revolution, or that our radically changing diets over the past 12,000 years or so (and more intensely in the last 400 to 50 years or so) haven't left an enormous imprint on the genome, the effects of which vary immensely depending on where most of your ancestors happened to live; and when, and how quickly, they were exposed to these changes.

I'm not disputing the benefits of avoiding modern processed foods, and increasing the amounts of dietary elements like fish oils and folic acid.

Eating lean meat, fish, less processed foods, and more fresh vegetables and fruits, while exercising more, is good advice for anyone. Mainitaining your hydration levels ditto. Even boring "white-bread" Anglo-saxons like myself are healthier on the sort of diet we ate pre-industrial revolution than post.

But this doesn't mean there is single, primordial, archetypal, diet that is better for all of us.

I'd suggest that the main benefit of concepts like "The Paleo-Diet" seems to be that they inspire people to sustainably change their eating habits and lifestyle by appealing to intuitive, emotive and not entirely rational urges form primal authenticity.

Paul.

Dear Paul:

The question is regarding de Pelo Diet, and what the author promotes can be easily seen on his website http://thepaleodiet.com/. So the Paleo Diet that this gentelman promotes is perfectly characterised on his own website.

What I said is that the Paleo has NO RELATIONSHIP AT ALL with Mediterranean diet.

Let´s not mix a magic diet (Paleo) with Mediterranean, wich is inscribed since 2010 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/RL/00394

From my point of view this Paleo theme has nothing else to talk about, at least in Spain, as I said, has been clasified as a magic diet , and so, to be avoided.

I was chatting with one of my clients the other day and we happened upon this subject. He is 65, a family history of heart disease, has one artery 80% blocked and has had a heart attack. I mention this because he lives what would be called a healthy lifestyle. What I would like to see is if there is any relation to the paleo diet or any other diet to cardio risk factors like C-reactive Protein, Small particle LDL and homocysteine. I think these issues are more important than a vague diet recommendation.

@James Simons - check out the "Twinkie Professor's" diet: http://www.cnn.co.uk/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

n=1 is simply an anecdote but it makes a good point. His markers of metabolic health improved by getting most of his calories from twinkies. However whilst on the twinkie diet he was in caloric deficit where as when on his "healthy" diet he was in caloric excess and gaining weight. I tend to believe that any diet - calorically balanced will allow for a "healthy" metabolic profile. Obviously if you live on nothing but twinkies long term you will likely develop some deficiencies etc but as far as macro-nutrient composition goes I dont think it matters. I will add though that I have no real evidence to base this on its just conjecture. I am willing to wager a significant amount of money (say a fiver :-)) that if I get most of my calories from lard for a week my metabolic profile will be fine as long as I'm in negative calories and getting the minimum requirement of essential amino acids, fatty acids and vitimans/minerals.

@Heidi Kocalis - so do you think the reason that the reason GWAS studies have been so poor at predicting metabolic disease risk is because the enviornmental factors or the phenotype haven't been taken into account fully?

I think its funny that you can predict someones risk of developing diabetes by looking at them to an accuracy of 20% (one in 5 obese will develop overt diabetes) but GWAS which costs a few million to run a study has only had a predictive power of about 5% (if I remember correctly - don't quote me on that) i.e. 5% of the risk for metabolic disease can be accounted for by gene variants. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in the figures I have quoted here.

Hi Yago,

I completely agree with your point. That's why I said "At least we know what a Mediterranean Diet is..".

The Paleo Diet isn't a "magic diet" in my opinion- it's a "fad diet", and worse, it's a "fantasy diet".

The "Israeli Army Diet" was a fantasy diet as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Army_diet

This regime is not representational of anything the Israeli Army ever fed their troops, but it was very popular. Marketing by association.

I'd suggest that the fad-status and marketing success of the concepts behind "The Paleo-Diet" is precisely that although they wear a veneer of scientific thinking they are actually a fantasy- one that appeals to intuitive, emotive and not entirely rational urges for primal authenticity.

Hi Heidi,

Nice point re gastrointestinal flora.

Paul.

Oh please Paul...wikipedia references...

Yago,

Oh no- a wiki reference!

Well, I was referring to the "Israeli Army Diet".

The originators of such fads don't tend to submit research to peer-reviewed journals, they tend to submit manuscripts to publishers of popular literature...

But here you go;

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1500555/

.

Jocelyne,

I like your comment, but think there may be a problem with this argument;

>

"evolution does not need to take into account health after children are reared,"

This is true of most species, but the fact that humans survive so long past childbearing age implies "oldies" serve a purpose.

From an evolutionary perspective, this does seem odd- how can surviving past reproductive age improve your reproductive fitness?

Inclusive fitness argues that your reproductive success is not just about how many children you personally bear and/or rear.

Hence Haldane's (possibly apocryphal) quip; "I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins."

In pre-industrial societies, older people (and older women in particular) are very important to the survival of all members of the kin group. They are midwives, look after children and educate them, and they are a repository of the shared knowledge of the group.

(For example, Oliver Sacks describes witnessing the importance of older people on an island where an unseasonable tropical cyclone wiped out food crops- the oldest women remember what food plant the old grandmas and aunties dug up last time this had happened, ~50 years before, and they remember how the food was prepared to make it palatable). http://www.oliversacks.com/books/island-of-the-colorblind/

Humans can live decades after they can no longer bear children, because our survival depends so much on cooperation , on culture (or "extra-genetic information"). Humans who die earlier will, on average, have less impact on the gene pool.

Paul.

Http://www.nature.com/news/mummies-reveal-that-clogged-arteries-plagued-the-ancient-world-1.12568

Excellent and highly relevant article.

Thanks Heidi!

Paul.

Very interesting discussion. Here's a different take on it all. The Paleo diet is becoming very popular, not because it has any specific effect on cardiometabolic risk, but because it is being used as a way to mitigate inflammatory reactions that underlie many different symptoms in those who react this way to processed foods. In this case, it has little to do with evolution or with reproductive fitness and more to do with avoiding changes wrought over centuries of agriculture (selectiing particular varients of grains for example). The diet is being supported by research linking celiac disease to autoimmune phenomenon and to the extent that CVD is an inflammatory process, it may have some benefit. It has not been tested in research trials as it may need to be specifically modified for each individual based on their antibody profile. It seems to be a starting point for many and this is why it is being promoted now. We are in a very interesting time in terms of nutrition research. We are learning much but due to medical specialization, we are not all speaking the same language anymore (or at least not reading the same journals.

Interesting discussion. I work on a project where we are looking at commercial food versus raw food diets that dogs have consumed and correlate this with the diseases they have. We find a lot of correlations. To report this I would be interested in taking in the paleodiet as a human "synonym" of the canine raw food diet. Do any of you have any articles that you think I should not miss?

Thanks for this - but I was actually thinking of human paleo articles. Any important ones of these?

anna

Hi Heidi and all others. I have been planning to do this for a long time and I am in the nice position right now that I can try to measure nutrients in the blood, plasma, serum, feces, and even skin biopsies and hair and at the same time in the raw food that the animal will eat. Give me ideas of what nutrients you think could be possible inflammation mediators. I will look at a lot but at this time I have a special interest in antioxidants like Vit A, C, E, Se, Co-entyme Q, the amino-acids, minerals like stontium (Sr), vanadine (V) and molybdene (Mo) and dietary fats.

I would add Vitamin D to that list. A lack of Vitamin D has been linked to inflammatory conditions and developement of diabetes. However a word of caution with using Vit D, I would concentrate retrieving the Vitamin D samples into one season. Vit D can be tricky because of amount of light exposure, and season.

Below is a recent reference relating Vit D deficiency to chronic kidney disease as an inflammatory state.

Querfeld, U. (2013). Vitamin D and inflammation. Pediatric Nephrology, 28(4), 605-610. doi:10.1007/s00467-012-2377-4

.

Thanks for that Julie!

anna

Paleo diet has several other names as; paleolithic diet, Caveman diet, Stone Age diet, Hunter-gatherer diet…etc.

Paleolithic era is a period of time that ended with the development of agriculture about 10,000 years ago.

The Paleo diet is based on eating natural foods ancient diet of wild plants and animals that humans habitually used during the Paleolithic era that would be available to humans in the absence of all technology (the diet of hunter-gatherer). Paleo diet helps to achieve good health and a good physique.

The Paleo diet includes the whole spectrum of animal food (beef, fish, shellfish, lamb,..etc) including their fat and organs as well as eggs, vegetables and limited amounts of fruits and nuts

In the past 200 years, the introduction of artificial, processed and/or genetically modified foods, has resulted in a negative detrimental effect on human being health and lead to several diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, auto-immune diseases, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s and cancer.

Paleo diets provide optimal use of the fatty acid metabolic pathways. As the body becomes accustomed to a reduced carbohydrate, which ultimately will keep blood sugar levels within normal ranges during the day and during exercise; the human body will be a more efficient fat-burning mechanisms.

Walter L. Voegtlin, a Gastroenterologist, has published in 1975 a very valuable book which has the following title: Stone Age Diet: Based on In-Depth Studies of Human Ecology and the Diet of Man. In this book he demonstrated that the dietary changes he had his patients undergo resulted in positive outcomes for common multiple GI diseases. This nutritional principle has been promoted and adapted by a number of authors and researchers in several academic books and journals.

It is good to know that Walter L. Voegtlin was one of the first to prove by evidence based study that following a Paleo diet could improve a person’s health and performance.

To conclude I can say; the Paleo diet could be considered the ideal diet for human being health and well-being as well as performance, because it is devoid of sugars, legumes, grains, dairy and anything processed.

"Evidence" in nutrition is difficult to come by if you define it as conclusions based solely on repeated clinical trials with large numbers of people. The recent New England Journal article on the Mediteranean diet is one of the few that qualifies. We make most of our conclusions in nutrition from epidemiologic studies that only prove association, not causation.

The issue of reproductive fitness is important in analyzing the Paleo diet but there is no way anyone could eat that way now, because we have too many people and we have altered the panet too much (out meat today bears little resemblance to what our forbears had access to.

Samir, I fear we may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I imagine that hunter-gatherers ate pretty much whatever they could find, food being such a scarce resource. Animal protein was difficult to come by, insects were probably an important source of protein. I don't think we want to suggest that we give up on all grain and all legumes as we would not be able to feed 1/10 of our current global population that way. The inflammation caused by excess consumption of sugar, salt and fat are probably what is responsible for much of our chronic disease so we don't have to go all the way back to Paleo to get healthier. Remember that we are feeding our microbiome as much as our internal tissues, so lets try and keep the gut bacteria in mind in all of these dicussions. Those guys have probably morphed quite a lot over the last few thousand years as well. Not sure we will ever know that.

@ Darwin Deen

The recognition of the broad definition of the Paleo diet is critical here. When we talk about Paleo diet, we emphasize on the following;

Fruits and vegetables, high intake of essential fatty acids (omega-3 and omega-6) and the general the distribution of energy intake in Paleo diet is as following; Protein (19–35% energy); carbohydrates (22–40% energy); fat (28–58% energy). 56–65% of food energy from animal foods and 36–45% from plant foods

Nowadays more than 70% of the total daily energy (calories) consumed by persons in the United States comes from dairy products, cereals, refined sugars, refined vegetable oils, and alcohol.

A Paleo-type diet is the ideal diet to improve your health, fitness, and over-all well being, (as well as lose fat and gain muscle) and it could be the foundation to every person’s diet if there are no food allergy concerns.

So Dear Darwin, you do not need to fear that we may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Hi Samir,

This may be true. It may not. You have provided no evidence either way, just stated it as fact.

As I mentioned above, different human populations have been exposed to very different diets for tens of thousands of years, and individual humans are intimately adapted to the environments that their various ancestors were exposed to. It is naively simplistic to expect that one diet will be ideal for all 6 and 1/2 billion of us.

Darwin Dean (and someone else further up this thread) have quite rightly drawn attention to the role of intestinal flora. I don't think anyone has mentioned helminthic parasites...

In terms of GI problems and auto-immune problems, there is some evidence that intestinal parasites are very significant. Our ancestors just 100 years ago were full of worms. Our immune systemns have evolved to cope with a pretty much constant parasitic load, and are over responsive when this pressure is removed. (It's a bit like having a nation with a large standing army, but no external threats. Eventually the army begins damaging the very people it was raised to protect). This is probably a far more significant factor in human health than our having "abandoned" a putative archetypal diet millennia ago.

A quick google scholar search yields;

http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=intestinal+parasites+and+autoimmune+diseases&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ei=ZKNfUfPZJcWViQf834DAAw&ved=0CCkQgQMwAA

.

Paul.

Hi Paul Dessauer

Without any doubt, I agree about the role of intestinal flora, however I think we should not under estimate the role of a healthy diet like the Paleo diet which is shown in multiple studies to improve the human being health, fitness and wellbeing.

I do not see your point that (we are having "abandoned" a putative archetypal diet millennia ago!!!!) by adapting the Paleo diet model, but I am seeing adopting Paleo diet model will reflect positively on human being health by implementing the right natural ingradients, reducing sugar, avoidance of anything processed and keeping the distribution of energy intake as mentioned before.

It is not matter of returning back many years, It is matter of rearranging the diet ingredients which almost available everywhere on the Globe to be consumed following a healthy diet module .

I did refer to a very good reference in my opinion which is the book published in 1975 by Walter L. Voegtlin, under the title: Stone Age Diet: Based on In-Depth Studies of Human Ecology and the Diet of Man, furthermore, Loren Cordain wrote the Paleo Diet in 2002 based on his research. These are very good references you can look at.

Regards

Slate is paying attention too...

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2013/04/marlene_zuk_s_paleofantasy_book_diets_and_exercise_based_on_ancient_humans.single.html

Heidi,

An excellent article, thanks for the link.

>

Hi Samir,

My point was that we shouldn't expect to find an ideal human diet that existed in the paleolithic era, anymore than we can find a single ideal human diet today.

Regards,

Paul.

G'day Sydney,

Avast! This be you, aye?

http://www.cardioptometry.org/

I'm not sure how many Research Gate contributors consider reference to Biblical authority as scientific, but I am very sure that all sorts of things can be found under the Red Sea. So?

If you are of Masai extraction, then I'm pretty confident that the traditional Masai diet is probably better for you than any other. That's because Masai people have heavily adapted over very many generations to a milk-based diet, and have one of the highest levels of lactase persistence in the world- equal to or higher than that in people of northern European descent;

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23028602

.

So, good for you if you share this genetic background. However, if your most of your ancestors came from somewhere else, this sort of diet may make you very ill indeed.

Wiki on Masai diet;

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston_A._Price

.

Dr Anderson reported that the Masai were healthy and disease free, and attributed this entirely to their diet. As a young man, I spent several months living with, and travelling in primary rain-forest with, traditional hunter gatherer people in SE Asia.

The first thing I noticed was how healthy, happy, playful, robust and energetic these people were.

The second things I noticed were that there was hardly anyone over the age of 40; that there was a very high infant mortality rate, and a very high rate of death from disease amongst adults; and that most families consisted of an adult couple with one or two young adults and an astonishingly large number of younger children.

1/3 to 1/2 of the children in each family were the biological offspring of close relatives who had died in their twenties or thirties, mostly of infection, partly from accidental injury, and occasionally from interpersonal violence.

Some of these people did live to extreme old age in very good health. They were highly valued and respected as repositories of traditional knowledge and culture, They were also the toughest minority of the population.

I suspect that Anderson's observations of the healthiness of the Masai might also be a biased sample of those people well enough adapted, and robust enough, to survive to late maturity, rather than evidence that this diet is good for all humans on the planet.

You write that "PubMed will tell you nothing".

It seems from my quick scan of your site, (which is rather hard on the eyes- see link below-) that Vit C is apparently your one-size-fits-all cure;

http://www.lifeextensionoptometry.org/

Even if you are the only person on the planet promoting this view, your statement would be correct. Zero people saying this before 1940, and one saying afterwards, is indeed a growing number.

However if you have convincing evidence of this relationship, you should be able to get something published in the peer-reviewed literature. It doesn't require many participants or much funding. It does require independent oversight and peer-review to protect against accidental selection bias and methodological flaws.

Vitamin C is a very potent antioxidant, however it seems to me that supplemental vitamin C may increase or decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease. Or it might have no significant effect either way. It really depends on who you are;

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/80/5/1194

.

http://www.jacn.org/content/11/2/107.abstract

.

To bring this back to Palaeolithic diets, or in fact to pre-human diets, one thing we can be sure of is that our distant ancestors DEFINITELY ate a lot of fruit and/or green vegetable matter. Fruit bats, guinea pigs, and higher primates are pretty much unique amongst the 4000 species of mammals on Earth, in the fact that we can't synthesise Vitamin C- we had so much of it in our diet that the mutation that stopped us making our own has persisted for millions of years;

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3145266/

.

Instead we need to suck up the vitamin's oxidized form, L-dehydroascorbic acid (DHA), and then transform that back into ascorbic acid. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867408002043

.

Paul.

I tell my clients that there are no miracles. There are no miracle diets, miracle drugs, miracle supplements. If any one of these things works, it is because it is addressing an unknown deficiency that exist in your body. What I think is more interesting is the fact that I see the same person or more precisely the same personality type who is seeking answers without first knowing what the question is.

I find the Masai question interesting only because it shows how personal bias can be injected into any field of study. An observation of indigenous peoples that could be consider neolithic is they tend to die between 40-50 years of age. We can name numerous reasons including disease, accidents, fighting, or the reason I think is most likely is these people work themselves to death. Civilized people have no conception of how hard living as a hunter/gatherer really is on the body. I admit that I do not know. I wonder how many of us in our 50's or even 40's could survive trying to make a living off the land?

Hi James,

I mentioned above my experience in the tropics, with Kenyah peoples in Kalimantan. The leading cause of death up there was sepsis resulting from infection.

The Australian Aboriginal people I work with, all come from traditional cultures with large extended kin groups, and complex social obligations between all members. This is the only way people in their fifties or sixties can survive as hunter-gatherers.

Hi Sydney,

Which impression of which interpretation of which translation in which language of which edition of the most reprinted book on the planet has those two improbable pieces of text in it?

Paul.

Meanwhile back to the question...There is one evolutionary effect that hasn't been considered yet. COOKING. The ability to access starches quicker and easier can't be underestimated. Not just what you eat but how you eat it. Its also controllable and measurable particularly important in sports performance.

G'day Sydney,

Paul is indeed a Biblical name- (and my middle name is John. I could be a Pope!).

The name "Sydney" is a contraction of "St Dennis", a 3rd CE Christian martyr who apparently walked several kilometres preaching a sermon after he was decapitated, (although the etymology of the name "Dennis" is from the old pagan god Dionysius).

But I am getting even further off the topic.

I would say that referring to the bible is indeed far off topic, as the question refers to a Palaeolithic Diet, and the bible was written down by nomadic pastoralists and settled agrarian people many thousand of years later.

All sorts of claims are made about the health benefits of a "palaeo-diet".

This discussion is intended to examine them objectively, which is why David has asked for published, peer-reviewed studies.

You obviously have a more playful sense of humour than I, if you assert that human beings existed 65mya. Perhaps you and I should begin a new discussion, about the merits of the "Late-Cretaceous Diet"? It would definitely be high in carbon content...

http://www.geotimes.org/aug08/article.html?id=nn_carbon.html

.

http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/8136.html

.

The reason we need peer-reviewed evidence is (as I mentioned above) to guard against accidental selection biases and methodological errors. Our brains are highly evolved means of detecting a signal in a lot of noise. Without independent oversight or evaluation of our research, we are all prone to see exactly what we expect to see;

http://www.skepticreport.com/sr/?p=175

.

Regards,

Paul.

Hi Sydney,

You write >

:-)

Is there a code in the bible? Why is peer-review important?

Very good article here;

http://www.khunwoody.com/biblecodes/TheCase.htm

.

Paul.

G'day Sydney,

It appears we are back on topic.

You write;

>

Why call such a dietary regime a "Paleo-Diet"?

Unless you are going to only eat wild fruits nuts and fungi, green herbs, and seeds from wild grasses, and limit yourself to lean unprocessed mammal and reptile meats, freshly caught fish, foraged honey and insects, surely "Paleo-Diet" is a mis-appellation.

Why not just call it "avoiding processed foods"?

Paul.

I would suggest that rather than trying to follow a mythical paleo-diet, a more scientific approach would be to develop a diet based on nutrition and health research, that is designed to suit people from specific genetic/regional backgrounds.

Here is an example;

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232609832_Dietary_composition_and_nutrient_content_of_the_New_Nordic_Diet?ev=srch_pub

.

Paul.

Article Dietary composition and nutrient content of the New Nordic Diet

Dietary composition and nutrient content of the New Nordic Diet.

Charlotte Mithril, Lars Ove Dragsted, Claus Meyer, Inge Tetens, Anja Biltoft-Jensen, Arne Astrup

1 Department of Human Nutrition, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark.

Public Health Nutrition (impact factor: 2.17). 10/2012; DOI:10.1017/S1368980012004521 pp.1-9

Source: PubMed

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE: To describe the dietary composition of the New Nordic Diet (NND) and to compare it with the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations (NNR)/Danish Food-based Dietary Guidelines (DFDG) and with the average Danish diet. DESIGN: Dietary components with clear health-promoting properties included in the DFDG were included in the NND in amounts at least equivalent to those prescribed by the DFDG. The quantities of the other dietary components in the NND were based on scientific arguments for their potential health-promoting properties together with considerations of acceptability, toxicological concerns, availability and the environment. Calculations were conducted for quantifying the dietary and nutrient composition of the NND. SETTING: Denmark. SUBJECTS: None. RESULTS: The NND is characterized by a high content of fruits and vegetables (especially berries, cabbages, root vegetables and legumes), fresh herbs, potatoes, plants and mushrooms from the wild countryside, whole grains, nuts, fish and shellfish, seaweed, free-range livestock (including pigs and poultry) and game. Overall, the average daily intakes of macro- and micronutrients in the NND meet the NNR with small adjustments based on evidence of their health-promoting properties. CONCLUSIONS: The NND is a prototype regional diet that takes palatability, health, food culture and the environment into consideration. Regionally appropriate healthy diets could be created on similar principles anywhere in the world.

Has we forgotten that we're born with atherosclerosis? What we eat and subsequent lifestyle choices, combined with environmental exposures, will affect when the "disease" merits medical attention. I had to jump in to the discussion when I saw a comment that read, "The idea of using evolution as scientific evidence is not sound; evolution does not need to take into account health after children are reared, and most cardio vascular disese occurs after this." It does not. It begins in utero and can be framed by choices the mother makes in terms of environmental exposure and dietary selections. I'm all for being guided by the evidence (the data is the data), but we should not forget that for those individuals whose phenotype predisposes them to earlier onset risk of cardiovascular disease, steps should be taken to reduce the risk. In a co-authored study with colleagues at USDA-ARS published in Atherosclerosis, we demonstrated that by adding 1% of the diet with a fruit/berry juice (as lyophilized) in ApoE knock-out mice fed a high-fat diet, we observed a 58% reduction in the formation of atherosclerotic lesions. Surprised by the degree of inhibition of formation of these lesions, we repeated the original 20-week study and observed the same phenomena. With the additional biological samples we obtained by repeating the study we were able to gather enough data to suggest six mechanisms of action to account for results. Further work has been completed at NIH-NIA that showed how compounds in the juice up-regulated and down-regulated protein expression, which further explained what we observed. This supported earlier work co-authored at NIA published in Experimental Gerontology. Analytical study of the pulp of a fruit in the juice, an Amazonian palm fruit, Euterpe oleracea, which was the major constituent of the juice, we discovered the most potent anti-inflammatory flavonoid ever reported in the literature, as published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry and in Food Chemistry. Combined with its significant antioxidant bioactivity in vitro and in vivo, observed in animals and humans, this suggests to us that dietary choices and conscious interventions may mitigate risk factors for such cardiovascular diseases and possibly neurodegenerative diseases as was just reported for the same fruit pulp at the recent FASEB meeting in Boston by another USDA-ARS collaborative group. We should be looking at whether paleo diets incorporated plant foods, and which ones, and determine if their composition may have precluded early onset of degenerative diseases common today.

Sydney, you raised a very important point about the "vitamin E" studies that reported a slight increased risk when taken as a dietary supplement by tobacco smokers. However, as you accurately point out, the "vitamin E" used in these studies contained only one of the eight isomers of tocopherols and tocotrienols that constitute natural vitamin E. I would urge anyone interested in this subject to read both of the recent edited works on tocotrienols to understand their importance to human health: Tocotrienols: Vitamin E Beyond Tocopherols. Watson RR, Preedy VR. [eds.] AOCS Press: Urbana, IL and Taylor & Francis/CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL, 2009; and, Tocotrienols: Vitamin E Beyond Tocopherols. Tan B, Watson RR, Preedy VR. [eds.] AOCS Press: Urbana, IL and Taylor & Francis/CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL, 2012. The mitigation of the progression of pancreatic cancer studies in humans funded by U.S. NIH and reported in the 2012 work is particularly important to read as it suggests that alpha-tocopherol when taken alone may actually block the inherent anti-cancer bioactivities of two of the tocotrientols found in vitamin E, especially derived from a fruit also found in the Amazon, and now available as a dietary supplement ingredient. The 2012 work is a reporting of the second international conference on tocotrienols held in late May 2012 in Long Beach, California. The advances made in our understanding of the characteristics, properties, and bioactivities of tocotrienols is impressive and just starting to appear in discussions among vitamin E researchers who in the past have focused wholly on the tocopherols.

Hi Sydney,

You wrote; >

Sorry, your meaning is not very clear; do you mean I'll see an example of a 1-in-several-thousand case specifically chosen by you because it fits the hypothesis?

And are you telling us that you paid (sorry, made a donation online) to get an Honorary Degree? (Personally, I am very proud of the effort involved in gaining my PHD (previous history of drug use) from the School of Hard Knocks. I am now a Senior Research Fellow, at the University of Life. We should compare notes sometime, mate).

G'day Alexander,

Can you any provide links to the research you are talking about?

Regards,

Paul.

Hi Sydney,

Sorry, but I do hope you know I'm not trying to be deliberately oppositional.

I wasn't making fun of you for donating to an on-line university, or saying that you didn't deserve the honorary PHD they granted to you as a result. I was questioning whether you had provided any independent evidence at all for your claims.

Colleagues saying things, and even 100% of your patients saying something, does not make that thing true. Both your colleagues, and your patients who provide testimonials, are a self selecting, and thus potentially extremely biased, sample.

I would not be at all surprised if Vitamin C deficiency was intimately involved in all sorts of human health problems. As I mentioned above, fruit bats, guinea pigs, and higher primates are the only mammals who can't synthesise this vitamin. We all have ancestors who picked up a mutation making the gene that regulates Vit C synthesis stop working, but because we had so much of it in our diets it didn't matter. So we are obviously adapted to the expectation of high Vit C levels in our diets.

I spent much of my childhood and early adolescence sailing on the Indian Ocean. I learned how important Vit C is. And I have always had much better than 20/20 visual acuity.

But Sydney, as I mentioned above, the brightly coloured site you have linked to above is hard on the eyes. In fact it looks like a lurid infomercial.

Does it say you were banned by your National Health Service?

I know I am but a young whipper-snapper compared to you, sirrah, but as I hit my late 40s I find my short-vision is deteriorating. (I still have 20/10 acuity in my long vision, though).

I can read well enough to see that at the bottom of the page it states >

Then it says;

>

Indeed you have been protected against failure!

Any medical treatment that discharges patients who don't respond to the treatment, and whose condition worsens, (and then blames them for not following instructions correctly) should be able to achieve 100% success rate, regardless of how ineffective, or even harmful, the treatment is.

How is your position any more scientific than Galen's?

“All who drink of this remedy recover in a short time, except those whom it does not help, who all die. Therefore it is obvious that it fails only in incurable cases.” Galen c.129-c.216.

I am not accusing you of such self-delusion.

I am asking what independent evidence exists beyond testimonials and your own conviction.

Regards,

Paul.

Hi Sydney,

There is some peer-reviewed literature re: antioxidants and heart disease that appears to support some of what you are saying about Vit C (and Alexander's comments re: Vit E) and arterial disease/heart disease, eg;

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/103/14/1863.full

.

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/99/9/1156.full

.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/64/2/190.full.pdf+html

.

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/106/3/388.short

.

(Personally, I drink a fair bit of alcohol, so I've always been more concerned about my thiamine intake).

Anyway, as I said, I'm pretty confident that our distant ancestors got a lot of vitamin C in their diets. However I'm not sure that this is really evidence that the "Palaeo-Diet" is anything more than another health fad.

The reason I linked to the "New Nordic Diet" above, is that it is based on sound research into nutrition and health. All of the literature I have seen extolling the virtues of the "Palaeo-Diet is not. If there is such research out there, please provide some links to it.

Are the "diseases of affluence" a product of our changed diet, or just a product of;

a) a larger percentage of the population living past the age of 40,

b) most people eating much more food of any kind than we actually need,

and

c) an increasingly sedentary lifestyle?

David's question is asking, "Are there any good studies on health benefits (or lack-there-of) from the Palaeo-diet?"

Now I'm going to throw in a wiki link; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet#Research

Regards,

Paul.

Paul, I just wrote to a professor of nutrition in Oslo, Norway, whom I have known for years and he hasn't heard of the "New Nordic Diet". He took the time to look for references citing research on this diet and came up empty, as I had, so I thought maybe it was in one of the Scandinavian native language publications. Can you send us the studies that have been published on this diet? Thank you.

Hi Alexander,

I did provide a link further up this thread- here it is again;

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232609832_Dietary_composition_and_nutrient_content_of_the_New_Nordic_Diet?ev=srch_pub

.

Article Dietary composition and nutrient content of the New Nordic Diet

>

Any links to some of the research you were discussing above would be welcome.

Regards,

Paul.

Even Our Ancestors Never Really Ate the “Paleo Diet”

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/06/03/even-our-ancestors-never-really-ate-the-paleo-diet#.Ua0sbpyEQf4

Interesting article that summarizes a few recent PNAS papers, in which stable isotope analysis was used to determine the diets of a variety of ancient hominin species.

Thank Heidi,

This is great research. Cheers.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/31/1222559110.abstract

.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/31/1222568110.abstract

.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/31/1222571110.abstract

.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/31/1222579110.abstract

.

Paul.