paleo

It's bad enough that I'm dead

It's unfortunate that well-meaning health bloggers and personalities have joined grave robbers around the world in misusing mummies, particularly since there aren't a lot of them. It's clear they had some pretty tough lives and in death they are being paraded around to debunk various popular diets. If you think high-protein diets are bad, you have a tiny selection of Siberian, Aleut, and Eskimo mummies to defame. If you think grains are evil, you have a nice selection of Egyptian mummies with a few bog and ice mummies from various agrarian settlements thrown in. 

But if these diets are all so horrible, why do mummies from diverse places all seem to have atherosclerosis? And the other problems commonly represented in mummies, osteoporosis and cavities, don't seem to track with particular diets at all. For example, caries are present in Aleut mummies AND copper-age grain-eaters like Otzi. Osteoporosis is present in some Eskimo mummies, but also low-fat grain-eaters from South America. With sample sizes so low and the same problems present in all kinds of populations, I'd think nutrition geeks would be happy to leave mummies alone.

But tragically, mummy abuse is rampant in the nutritional community. I recently saw a anti-paleo vegan Youtube Series that used the poor Eskimo mummies to say "What we see here are effectively long-term studies of an animal-based Wise Traditions diet and the results are not pretty." (Credit to Cordain for first abusing these particular mummies). 

Yikes, that's one sad little study, but it's not just vegans who mistreat our poor mummy friends. Dr. Eades has written quite a bit on Egyptian mummies. While  I agree it's quite hilarious that their low-fat diet didn't do much for them, I'm not sure there are a reason to throw out the kamut just yet. 

You see, while mummies are great for understanding how people lived in the past, they aren't great tools for shooting down diets. There aren't very many of them and their health problems weren't all caused by their diets anyway. An excellent book if you are interested in mummies is Mummies, Disease, and Ancient Cultures, which includes an excellent survey of various mummies and what modern science can tell us about their health problems. Like the original scientists who studied the Eskimo mummies, this text concludes that their methods of heating and cooking were extremely detrimental to their health: "The winter houses were semisubterranean with a tunnel entrance and heated by small seal oil lamps. The hot air in the house would not sink into the tunnel when the door, in the floor of the house, was opened. This effect also trapped smoke in the house. In addition it was the duty of the women to trim the lamp at night; sleeping next to the lamp increased the exposure to smoke, resulting in severe anthracosis* at an early age and lung damage, including bronchiectasis and emphysema."

So their cooking and heating practices were the equivalent of working in a coal mine and definitely worse than smoking modern cigarettes (which almost always have a  filter). Needless to say, this is not good for your lungs, heart, or bones. Indoor air pollution from cooking and heating fires remains a major health problem in developing countries. If anything, these mummies are an excellent reason to me to be thankful for my gas stove and radiator heating during this cold December. And a reminder that things like lung and heart problems are not diseases of civilization. 

For the other mummies, in the age of modern dentistry and antibiotics, it's easy to underestimate the contribution of dental disease and infection to atherosclerosis. It's also easy to overestimate the certainty of paleopathology, which can be quite controversial:

The development of vascular calcification is related not only to atherosclerosis.4​ Other conditions may lead to the formation of such lesions, including aging, diabetes, disorders of calcium-phosphorus metabolism, chronic microinflammation, hyperhomocysteinemia, and chronic renal insufficiency.3 Moreover, given the poor state of preservation of the organic tissues, a differential diagnosis for the findings should include parasitic calcifications in lymphatic vessels (particularly from filariasis).
 

Conclusion on Mummies:

Relevance to your health: low

Chance of being haunted by vengeful undead: high

*= AKA "black lung" 

 There is a great article on Yahoo about a guy who is living a minimalistic lifestyle, while maintaining a paleo diet.

What do you eat?

I eat pretty well. I don't skimp on food. I eat a lot of grass-fed meats, fruits, and vegetables ... some people call it the caveman diet. I go to farms, farmers markets, and health food stores. I probably spend about $250 a month on food. I could spend a lot less if I didn't care about eating well.

I think his budget is interesting because $250 is the max amount of monthly food stamps for a single person, so he's basically on a food-stamp diet. It's clear his life priorities are health and simplicity. What I don't get is all the comments that weirdly act as if his choices mean he somehow is trying to say everyone else can live this way. I guess people feel attacked when other people chose to live differently in a way that's obviously not applicable to everyone? I get the same kind of comments when I talk about paleo diets or homeschooling. Here are some lovely sexist/classist gems:

No no, I read that article about living making 20k a year. And the comments weren't that it's a kings ransom, but that the family had to forgo children and are severely unprepared for the inflation and healthcare costs coming down the road. Wow... Now for a mere 11k a single man can live to be trailer trash. Great. So the 99% should all live like trash so the 1% can spend 40k on a kid's playhouse so their kid can have a playhouse with running water and electricity...

He doesn't mention any "girlfriend" or "partner" of any kind... uhmm... You know the reason right? Let me put it this way, if the guy is happy on his own at 42 then fine... BUT spare me the @#$% when what he calls his "freedom" doesn't include a girlfriend/wife/partner etc. So let's be honest about it and acknowledge the fact that with his "free" life style his chances of attracting a girlfriend are pretty much zero...

I missed the part of the article where he suggested everyone live the way he lives. Personally, his lifestyle is not for me, but my own lifestyle is not for everyone either. I think his story very interesting and kudos to him for following his dreams. 

I've been moving a lot of stuff lately and I'm kind of horrified that I *own* stuff. When I moved to Sweden I brought two suitcases and then when I life if I couldn't fit stuff in my two suitcases I gave it away. I'm giving a lot of stuff away this move too, but I have a lot more stuff that I'm keeping, I guess because I never was sure how long I'd stay here and I did invest in some nice books/clothes that don't have holes in them. But I still view stuff as a burden and I'm happier if I own less of it. 

 A poor evolutionary nutrition narraive posits that because we didn't have X food in the paleolithic, we are maladapted to it. I think Mat Lalonde covered issues with this nicely at AHS and in the latest Paleo Solution podcast. 

Here is a funny twist to the story if it turns out to be true:

John Hawks, a biological anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, notes that many HLA genes pre-date humans' split from Neanderthals and Denisovans, and that the differences may have arisen by chance as the groups evolved.

Hawks, too, has been digging into the archaic genomes, and his team has already discovered that Neanderthals and Denisovans lack certain forms of genes that may help modern humans to fend off epidemic diseases, such as measles. This is hardly surprising: the low population density of hunter-gatherers meant that epidemics were unlikely, so they probably would not have benefited from these immune genes.

But Hawks's team is now using the find to test whether the defensive genes are linked to autoimmune diseases. In September, Hawks and his colleague Aaron Sams are scheduled to present data at a meeting of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution in Leipzig, Germany, showing that the Denisovans lacked nearly all of the gene variants linked to coeliac disease, a gut autoimmune disorder present in modern humans. Hawks suspects that the variants may actually be in the same genes that are linked to epidemic resistance — if they are, further study could reveal how recently such autoimmune diseases arose in humans.

Haha, it would be funny if an adaptation to civilization (diseases worsened by high population density), would also turn out to be a maladaptation as civilization progressed. 

 Last year I met a girl who was trying the paleo diet and complaining she "felt weird" and her stomach hurt. I asked her what she was eating and it turns out she was eating 5 tablespoons of coconut oil for breakfast! I told her that wasn't food, that it was an ingredient you can use to make foods or a supplement and that maybe she should try eating food. Later she said she felt better. 

I guess there is some impression among certain people that because I and others don't think fat is *bad* that you should drown yourself in it. As far as I'm concerned it's a far cry from a certain Paleo cookbook that advocates trimming fat off of GRASS FED meat, throwing away the fat that is leftover from cooking grass-fed meat,  and avoiding grass-fed "fatty cuts" like shanks to eating a pound of bacon for breakfast with a side of heavy-cream flavored coconut milk. Let's be honest: I don't eat that way. I cook with tallow that I save from the whole goats and lambs I buy, I certainly don't ever throw away any "fatty" cut, and sometimes I use some ghee, bacon, butter, or coconut milk as ingredients. I go through a pound of bacon a month, mostly because of my boyfriend, and maybe a can of coconut milk every two weeks and a pack of Pasture Butter a month. I never make any "paleo" desserts anymore and I don't eat very much dairy unless it's well-fermented and raw. Heavy cream makes my digestive system into sludge. I do eat some grains: I find my stomach is happiest when I include some rice in my diet every few days or so. 

I suspect someone who is more athletic or who doesn't have IBS might tolerate more fat. But this is my personal "sweet spot." I do have experience doing almost-vegan paleo: starches, veggies, fruits, no added fats, and only shellfish as protein. Perhaps it could be perfected, but I found that my keratosis really was itchy and red. I also felt more depressed and had bloating. If I tried it again I would probably use some coconut milk with carrot juice or something in an attempt to get vitamin A, but maybe my body isn't suited for it because of my genetics and health problems. Maybe it's also different for people in different life-stages. I'm a woman of reproductive age, so it's possible my need for certain vitamins is higher. 

I also would note that food sensitivities don't care about the paleolithic. It's very possible to be allergic or sensitive to a host of "paleo" foods from types of meat, to nuts, to eggs, to shellfish. I am personally quite sensitive to vegetables like broccoli, onions, and cauliflower. Honestly, they do a number on my stomach worse than any grain. I think people get caught up in the "paleo" paradigm thinking that because we evolved with foods like it, it must be good. But modern food sensitivities don't discriminate. I find that interestingly my stomach feels much better if I get starch from regular potatoes rather than sweet potatoes. The latter is considered "more paleo" though that stems from botanical ignorance. 

Either way, I don't really follow an orthodox "paleo" diet either, though I do use what I learn about the paleolithic to think about what I eat. I think there is tons of room for experimentation, particularly as the evidence for starch consumption in the paleolithic becomes stronger and stronger.

I don't think there is much room for combining "paleo" with various religious philosophies and I'm a little dismayed that Chinese medicine has somehow crept in and become tolerated. I think if I blogged about how I use Christianity to tell me what to eat I'd get about a million angry comments. Remember, the mechanisms behind Chinese medicine are scientifically implausible and even if a few tiny studies show that Chinese medicine works, it's not because of supernatural forces like conveniently undetectable "energy fields" operating outside of the forces of biology, chemistry, and physics. I know plenty of people who follow a "paleo" diet that is compatible with their religion, such as kosher or halal folks, but they don't claim that their diet is somehow better because of it or that it explains their diet's success. 

There has got to be a scientific explanation or I'm just not buying it...

Addendum:

It seems that some people were upset with the idea that I was attacking alternative medicine in the last post. No, I was attacking scientifically implausible theories of food being integrated by the ancestral food community. It's because people don't want to believe there are both unverifiable supernatural beliefs AND beliefs worth investigating to find out whether or not they have some natural basis or benefit.

Acupuncture, for example, is a system worth investigating because of the possibility that the ancient literature refers to real physiological processes, as Chris Kessler points out, and not energy fields (scientists have looked for these energy fields and NOT found them).

The idea that some Chinese roommates once told me that going to bed with my hair wet would cause demonic possession leading to pneumonia made me wonder if perhaps people in rural China did get sick from chills, but otherwise it is a supernatural belief.

Likewise, I am a huge fan of traditional Chinese foods, but when my waitress at my favorite restaurant in Flushing tells me I eat too much fatty "Yang" food and will get acne and clog my blood (that would be awesome since I have a mild form of hemophilia) I think it's worth investigating, but most of the time Chinese traditional food beliefs have been investigated, they have found to be incorrect or vast simplifications. I'm impressed at the latter, but I won't be basing my food choices on whether or not foods are "Yin" or "Yang." I suspect these beliefs have very little to do with Taoism anyway, as they were probably added on as Taoism blended with local folk religions.

Some of these folk beliefs lead to some absurdly unhealthy behaviors. I know Thai people who believe it's good to wash down beef, which is a "hot" food, with Coke, which is a "cold" food. And Chinese people who follow their fried chicken with heavily sugared red date tea because it's "Yin" and replenishes their "Qi." Since these beliefs are not based on real concepts, they are particularly vulnerable to industrialization. 

Religions/folk beliefs and food: worth investigating and important tools for believers, but not always scientific.