Nutritional Real Talk #1: the Paleo Diet

What is the paleo diet?

As popular as this diet has become, many people are already well aware of its existence. It is a dietary lifestyle adapted from Paleolithic times. Essentially, anything that would be hunted or gathered. Strictly speaking, this is lean animal meat and products (eggs and honey), fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. Nothing else.

The central hypothesis of the paleo diet is that our modern agricultural diet gave rise to the endemic of chronic diseases we are experiencing now, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Essentially, it's claimed that our genetic makeup isn’t a good match for modern standard north American diets.

Great things about the paleo diet include: 

• A focus on REAL food and encourages us to move away from processed and packaged crap. Increased fruits and vegetables add important vitamins and minerals to your diet that simply are not achieved by enriched substitutes.
• Helps keep people feeling full. When you are eating real foods, you aren’t being tricked by chemists to think you are still hungry AND the higher levels of protein help stabilize blood sugar.
• Encourages us to move away from counting calories and rely on intuitive eating. WOOHOO!! I love this.
• We don’t have medical records from our ancestors… so we’re kind of waiting to see how paleo-committed populations fare now before we can confirm or deny their hypothesis. Research to date, however, has been promising.

Let’s poke some holes, too:

• Modern paleo diets often include (lots of) alternative ways to sneak around the fact that our ancestors didn’t really eat dessert. Friends... this really isn't the point of moving to a paleo diet. Many of the desserts out there end up looking almost as processed as what is available at the store. 
• The fruits and vegetables that our ancestors ate do not resemble the ones available to us today. We probably aren’t eating the same amount as they did and fruits and vegetables today are undoubtedly less nutritional than those found in the unadulterated wild.
• On that note, neither are our meats. If animals are eating the cereals and grains you are trying to avoid because its problematic… well, you are what you eat?! Focusing on free range or wild, organic and grass fed meats is the closest thing we can do. 
• Legumes (beans), which are avoided in the paleo diet, have MANY broad benefits to health. Most of the paleo arguments against beans are all but eliminated with cooking.
• Whole grains actually have some pretty great effects too. These include things like whole wheat, barley, oats, brown rice, whole rye, freekeh, buckwheat, and on and on.
• This diet is incredibly challenging for those with social, ethical, moral or religious reasons for not consuming meat. I think we should all take a second to consider how our diet effects the environment and global warming... this isn't just about us.

So, how does the paleo diet rank in my book?

Actually, pretty darn good when done well.
Going paleo doesn't mean that you should have as much meat as you want... quality over quantity is important. In fact, Americans already tend to eat upwards of 100g of protein daily, which is almost double of what is likely needed.* There is still a balance that needs to be struck to ensure you receive well-rounded nutrition. Don't forget your veggies!

While I'm not convinced that eliminating all legumes and whole grains is really necessary, the paleo diet is shown to help stabilize blood sugar, reduce allergies, improve cardiovascular health, and improve many autoimmune conditions despite their exclusion. I can't debate the evidence there!

I do believe that any restrictive diet can be difficult to maintain longterm, and the paleo diet qualifies as pretty rigid in my opinion. However, with the right resources and medical supervision, this diet can surely be adapted for long-term maintenance and potentially reduce the causative and exacerbating factors of several chronic medical conditions.

When is the paleo diet NOT or no longer good for you?

If you are eliminating too many carbohydrates, you can push your body into starvation mode, which then causes a whole host of negative downstream health effects - decreased metabolism, low thyroid function, AND increased LDL cholesterol (the bad kind), which is associated with heart disease. Some of these conditions can be difficult to correct, so the diet should be discontinued or altered if these health markers appear.

In individuals with chronic kidney disease, it should be differentiated whether the CKD is caused by chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and autoimmunity or if it is specific to the kidney itself (primary kidney disease) before beginning a paleo diet. A paleo diet, due to its high protein nature, may cause harm in primary kidney disease.

I usually refrain from recommending diets with rigid rules to anyone with a history of eating disorders. While this diet can be great for intuitive eating, as a widespread fad diet, is has caused an overflow of "cheatsheets" with very strict definitions of what is or is not allowed. What is helpful for some, can be harmful for others.

*Protein needs are generally calculated based on body weight. Multiply your weight in pounds by a number between 0.33 (sedentary) and 0.5 (active) to determine the number of grams of protein you should consume daily. This algorithm is based on a sedentary to moderately active and healthy adult and may not apply to everyone.

This article is intended to be informational and in no way should be misconceived as medical advice or recommendations. Please speak with your medical team about whether this diet is right for you. 

Photo by Lily Banse on Unsplash