What Science Really Says About the Paleo Diet – With Mat Lalonde page

[Dracil]

What Science Really Says About the Paleo Diet – With Mat Lalonde

It's a good interview. Same as what he talked about in Paleo Summit and I think AHS11 if you've seen i there.

The highlights:

7:10 Invalid Inference 1: Our Paleolithic ancestors ate this way and they were free of disease
9:45 Invalid Inference 2: We haven’t evolved enough to thrive on modern agriculture
12:12 Invalid Inference 3: We should live like our ancestors because we’re still genetically the same
18:12 What is the best scientifically backed argument for Paleo?
22:21 Why typical claims about antinutrients are wrong
26:28 The misconceptions about phytic acid
35:46 What can molecules tell us about white potatoes
39:57 Are lectins really problematic?
44:30 The least problematic macronutrient in dairy
50:38 Is slow, low cooking the ultimate way to cook?
55:35 Gluten sensitivity and coffee cross-reactivity
59:41 The real story behind Pseudo grains like Quinoa

[jamesn]

I'd like to hear more about this interview from Mark and other primal folks.

[primal pete]

The Primal Blue Print often gets mistaken as a "regress back to our hunter gatherer existence" blue print, when that's not the point of it at all. The point is simply that we can draw some logically reasonable inferences based on how evolutionary biology works, and, not surprisingly, most of what Mark preaches lines up with conventional wisdom: Exercise, eat natural food over processed junk, don't smoke, get enough sleep, don't overburden yourself (as much as you can) ect.

However it's just that, and assuming that mimicking our paleolithic ancestor's diets and lifestyle necessarily facilitates actual health and happiness is utterly logically fallacious.

[jamesn]

It's all too easy to resort to magical thinking and I am definitely guilty of that. Many of the "logical inferences" I've seen online fall under the same category. I don't understand evolution beyond a superficial level, so I am probably not capable of drawing good inferences based on it. There are many other people in the same boat, and some of them have blogs.

The part of the interview I was most interested in hearing discussion about was how many of the anti-nutrients that we try to avoid are probably not that big of a deal, especially phytic acid. Are there any in-vivo studies, or is the related research limited to in-vitro or other animal studies?

[whitebear]

You can find science for or against just about any topic. I feel better in every way when I stick to a primal/paleo WOE and that's all the proof I need.

[Mr.Perfidy]

word. I don't need no science to tell me this stuff...

when you offer food to a DOG it will smell it all over, assess it's digestibility and its impressions of the one offering. Most humans though rank lower than dogs in this respect- if it is on a shelf, or a drive-through window, they will eat it.

[YogaBare]

It's all too easy to resort to magical thinking and I am definitely guilty of that. Many of the "logical inferences" I've seen online fall under the same category. I don't understand evolution beyond a superficial level, so I am probably not capable of drawing good inferences based on it. There are many other people in the same boat, and some of them have blogs.

Lol.

And yeah, totally agree. "What Grok would have done" is far too speculative for me (and usually sidles around the idea that he ate slugs and bugs!)

Day dream time should be reserved for more interesting stuff...

[magicmerl]

Yeah, it's been posted before. It's a really good article and I have a lot of time for Chris kresser and Mat lalonde. Those two guys along with Chris Masterjohn are basically right about *everything* from where I sit.

[itchy166]

Good interview. Primal/Paleo starting point and n=1 from there sounds pretty reasonable to me.

[counterpuncher]

word. I don't need no science to tell me this stuff...

when you offer food to a DOG it will smell it all over, assess it's digestibility and its impressions of the one offering. Most humans though rank lower than dogs in this respect- if it is on a shelf, or a drive-through window, they will eat it.

Dogs will eat scraps straight out of a garbage can.
Many will eat their own crap too.