The primal blueprint .

[Cuchilo]

Anyone read this book ? Ive just started it and i'm finding it a very interesting read regarding diets and exercising .

https://www.primalblueprint.com/what-is-the-primal-blueprint/

 

[kernowpaul]

Ive read that and a couple of the other ones. I started with primal endurance as im training for an ultra marathon this year and a friend of a friend suggested it.

Have you started trying to incorporate the diet and whole lifestyle element into your life yet?

I would be interested to hear how you find it, but it seems to be working for me and i notice i suffer now if i have a day where i eat all the things i shouldnt.

 

[confusedcyclist]

Read it. Lots of pseudoscience in that book, be warned. That said, the message itself is relatively harmless. Get exercise, eat your fruit and veg, don't eat processed crap, this book is good for those lacking common sense. I would be wary of eating too much meat though, and instead add unprocessed whole grains and legumes to balance out the diet. It borders on ideology, like most fad diets, and fails to backup many claims with evidence.

 

[Cuchilo]

Not read too far into it yet but he does seem to back up everything he says with scientific evidence and names the author of his source .
To be honest the whole idea is what i pretty much do already , although i thought adding pasta and grain to my diet was a healthy option until reading this book . I dont eat a lot of that anyway .
I'm not sure how it can be a fad diet as it just says only eat what you can forage or hunt from a man that has seen loads of fad diets to get very close to the top of his sport and suffered because of fad diets / performance diets .

 

[Cuchilo]

Paleo diet rebranded, also known as the Caveman, Stone Age, Hunter Gatherer or Warrior Diet nothing wrong with it but people have being eating grains and rice for thousands of years mainly without issue, everything in moderation, plus who knows whats in our meats.

People have been eating sausages for thousands of years , mainly without issue .

 

[Cuchilo]

The book covers that and says there is evidence they lived alot longer than 40 . It was the introduction of farming / wheat / grain that the life expectancy slowly took a nose dive .

 

[confusedcyclist]

Not read too far into it yet but he does seem to back up everything he says with scientific evidence and names the author of his source .
To be honest the whole idea is what i pretty much do already , although i thought adding pasta and grain to my diet was a healthy option until reading this book . I dont eat a lot of that anyway .
I'm not sure how it can be a fad diet as it just says only eat what you can forage or hunt from a man that has seen loads of fad diets to get very close to the top of his sport and suffered because of fad diets / performance diets .

By all means prove me wrong, but hunter-gathers would almost certainly collect and eat grains and legumes, they were after all, gatherers as well as hunters. There's plenty of anthropological and archaeological evidence to support this, just google it. However a shift to horticulturalism will have allowed humans to massively increase the proportions of cereals and grains to the detriment of other food intakes. They would no longer have to roam so far, as easy calories were on the doorstep. Humans are lazy, they want to conserve resources. If your pantry is stocked with grain for baking bread, suddenly that 2-5 hour trek from the settlement to collect leafy greens looks like a lot of hard work... so to a point I agree with the book, grains are bad for humans... but only humans without self control and knowledge of what it takes to form a good diet. If you only eat grains, and even worse, processed grains, you're definitely going to get sick, or suffer some forms of malnutrition.

However it's not cereals/grains that make people sick , it's the lack of varied intake. The book states you don't need grains, therefore you shouldn't really eat much of them, and you have fallen for the con, grains are not unhealthy per se. Grains actually are amazing, as they are a fantastic energy source, and wholegrains and cereals keep you full for a long time, the problem in modern western diets stems from eating too many refined grains, which strip out nutritional value and leave behind just the carbs. Anyone who exercises a lot certainly benefits from eat grains, sure, you don't NEED grains to exercise, but it sure doesn't hurt to eat them either, so long as you don't overdo it. The same stands for other foods. If you only eat leafy greens, or meat, or eggs... you're going to get sick. Sedentary desk jockeys however, really ought not to eat too many refined grains for obvious reasons. Let's not forget there is good reason porridge before a 60 mile ride is popular.

IIRC, this book, as well as other well known paleo diets deny that grains and legumes will have been consumed and important to hunter-gatherers (ideology), and the primal blueprint website goes as far as saying that grains are pointless. This is the crux of it, shunning entire food groups on a whim because of a belief that hunter-gatherers didn't need cereals, grains or legumes, therefore we should avoid them makes it a fad diet in my book.

Now our ancient hunter gatherers won't have eaten as much grain as the typical westerner does today, and what they did eat likely wasn't refined (white flour, pasta, cake etc). The Mediterranean diet, widely regarded as one of the healthiest in Europe includes lots of grains, cereals & legumes and oils. So grains/legumes are not unhealthy, but should be eaten in moderation and according to your personal requirements.

 

[confusedcyclist]

The book covers that and says there is evidence they lived alot longer than 40 . It was the introduction of farming / wheat / grain that the life expectancy slowly took a nose dive .

Is this correlation or causation. This is what I mean about the book being ideology, no evidence to backup the claim that falling life expectancy is related to grain specifically.

 

[Shortandcrisp]

Hunter-gatherers ate what they did because that’s what was available to them. Does it necessarily follow that their diet was therefore any better or worse than our own or anyone else’s?

 

[confusedcyclist]

Tree bark was available, lots of it. But we don't eat it... often.

 

[Alan O]

indeed and thats the point, people have survived for millennia on all different diets, but one point to consider about these cavemen diets is that who knows how healthy they really were in the long term as the majority didn't live long enough, so a paleo diet from birth as they would have done, who knows what ailments might have awaited them if they lived past 40.

I think another key point is that a caveman diet was almost certainly calorie restricted (and there are claims that that in itself is good), in that they had to expend a lot more time and energy in obtaining food than we do today, and were probably a lot hungrier for a lot longer than modern humans - it was easy for them to not over-eat, because they didn't have enough food to do so.

There are many factors (most notably not being able to examine the general health of any living ancient people for the obvious reason that there aren't any) that prevent us making an "other things being equal" analysis of different specific food groups consumed then and now, and all we can really do is compare current diets around the world.

As others have pointed out, many Mediterranean folk live long and healthy lives on diets that are high in grains. And Asian people consume vast quantities of rice during their lives, but developed Asian countries (excluding underdeveloped ones with poverty-related health problems) have higher proportions of centenarians than just about anywhere else.

There's a lot of obvious good sense in adopting a more primitive and simpler diet, avoiding refined carbs (especially sugars), eating plenty of fruit and veg, getting enough exercise, etc. But claiming that paleolithic people (a) were healthier than modern humans, and (b) were healthier because they ate no cultivated grains, is not only not supported by direct evidence but can not be supported by direct evidence, as a proper comparison is impossible. We can guess, based on dubious indirect evidence, but that's the best we can do.

The purpose of fad diet books is to enrich the authors of fad diet books, and that's inevitable given the huge numbers of people who spend billions every year on weight-loss products - when all that's needed is to exercise more and ELYFB.

 

[keithmac]

Money and gullibility..

 

[confusedcyclist]

This book, whilst not saying so say directly, encourages the reader to increase consumption of meat which is bad for us on two counts, environmental degradation and health. Ruling out healthy alternatives that addresses both issues is detrimental to society. This book has the potential to mislead and cause harm. People are right to challenge it. You need only look at the author's webpage to determine his interests. He's heavily promoting his on goods and wares at every oppertunity. I don't expect you to do it, but if you signed up to his mailing list, you'll get about 5 emails a week, all hawking his avocado oil and coconut butter, etc etc. Of course it's about money. It's not cynical at all.

 

[mustang1]

Pseudo science = witch craft

 

[keithmac]

A rich and varied diet for me.

Portion control worked well when I needed to loose weight, not avoiding complete random food groups.

Firm believer in calories in vs calories out (which at the end of the day is what all "diets" are based on however they flower it up).

I'd be dead in the water on no/ low carb diet.