Paleo diet - Page 10

Well, that and also, 400 years ago, sugar was not such a ubiquitous substance in the diet, and there was no such thing as High Fructose Corn Syrup. We've only really seen a surge and surfeit of refined sugars and flours in our diets in the past 200 years, coinciding with the rise and prevalence of modern diseases, i.e., metabolic syndrome.

Would you consider sugar a poison?

I'm only speaking for myself but I much preferred the non-modern dietary diseases, like scurvy, beriberi, and kwashiorkor.

I'm not sure if you're being serious or not, but my answer to that question would be that sugar can be a poison, especially in its refined and processed form. To qualify, however, it is a chronic and dose-dependent poison, meaning, obviously, a tablespoon isn't going to kill you the way a tablespoon of a poison like arsenic might. However, continuous and heavy exposure, as we see in America today, will.

Interestingly enough, the vitamin-deficiency related diseases you've mentioned can actually, in a large part, be the result of the addition of sugar and flour into the diet. For example, scurvy, or a deficiency of vitamin C, we know can be ameliorated by the addition of fresh fruits and vegetables to the diet. However, this does not mean the disease itself is caused by the lack of fruits and vegetables in the first place. Rather, a carbohydrate rich diet will actually inhibit the proper absorption of the critical vitamins and minerals, which is really what's causing the whole deficiency in the first place.

She's never serious.

Yes, scurvy is at epidemic rates on all first world countries where HFC and the like proliferate.



I love how you think you're lecturing folks.

When your average lifespan is in the 30's it is easy enough to look at the society and think they were healthier on the whole. Most of the diseases that people bring up in these types of arguments don't manifest themselves till past that age.

Times were harsh and it many struggled to keep themselves and their small communities fed. Malnutrition kept the general population low.

Yes, today we have the ability to mimic their diet with an abundance of food, but the point is there is little evidence that they were any healthier overall then we are today. People who follow the Paleo idet often have an idealized vision of what the average human looked like back then. I got news for you, it was not Daryl Hannah in a loincloth.


You could make the same argument for cooked foods. Fire didn't become widely used in the majority of societies till the Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age which spanned roughly from 300,000 to 30,000 years ago. Have humans had enough time to adapt to cooking meats?

Even saying all this, the simple fact of the matter is they ate grains. Grains were part of their diet and have been consumed by humans for longer then 10 thousand years.


This. It's overconsumption and the abundance of cheap food that is the core of the problem. Not carbs.

Worst argument ever. EDIT: Pio beat me to it

Iammatt, Piob and HM are joining in. Feels just like CE.

if as globetrotter says grains are 90% of human diet then why isn't everybody in the hopsital for celiac disease?


also when you say a carbohydrate rich diet prevents absorbtion of minerals are you talking of phytates or simply that a people dont eat fruits and vegetables simply because they're eating too much carbohydrates?

I think that misdiagnosis, or under-diagnosis, has a lot to do with it. I'm talking about the competition of cellular-uptake between the vitamin-C molecule and glucose. Both are similar in configuration, and since glucose is greatly favored in the contest, the uptake of vitamin C by cells is inhibited when blood-sugar levels are elevated. In effect, glucose regulates how much vitamin C is taken up by the cells. If we increase blood-sugar levels, the cellular uptake of vitamin C will drop accordingly. Glucose will also impair the reabsorption of vitamin C by the kidney, and so, the higher the blood sugar, the more vitamin C will be lost in the urine. So, determining the level of vitamin C in our cells and tissues really has little to do with how much we are consuming in our diet, but more about the effect the starches and sugars we consume have in flushing it out of our system, while simultaneously inhibiting the use of what vitamin C we do have. It's not the absence of fruits and vegetables that causes the scurvy, but the presence of the refined carbohydrates.

What do you believe is causing overconsumption in the first place?

That's absolutely preposterous for reasons that have been pointed out. How many people do you know with scurvy?

Food is easier then ever to produce. This has lead to an abundance of cheap food and large portions.

Of course, I am sure you will have some kind of argument linking it to carbs, sugar and insulin levels that you read out of a diet book or on a blog. We need our demons after all.