so so i just started doing this paleo diet thing - feels like it should be bullshit. is it?

Pardon to interrupt the gnawing and grunting, but I was impressed by the committment bordering on obsession required to put together this dense 9 1/2 hour jeremiad against paleo.

Livestrong has this to say about paleo and anemia:

Avoiding grains without making up for the B vitamin lack in other ways could lead to serious B vitamin deficiencies. B vitamin deficiencies can lead to skin issues, anemia and poor oral health. If you choose the Paleo diet, consider supplementing with a multivitamin supplement that contains 100 percent of your daily value of B vitamins.

Here they're talking mostly about B6, B9, and B12. Heavy meat eaters are likely getting plenty of B12, but B6 (pyridoxine) and B9 (folate) might present problems.
Note the synthetic folic acid in supplements isn't biologically equivalent to the folate from greens (it was recently discovered we lack the enzyme that allows rats to interconvert the two) and folic acid has raised a lot of concerns WRT carcinogenesis. Then again, iron supplementation has some serious side effects, too. This handy site of food high in vitamins might be of help for dietary sources of yer Bs.

oh, I suspect I've been anemic for a while. I've been a chronic ice chewer/eater for like 3 years, so it's been at least that long (long before I was paleo)

eat liver!

I am not eating wheat, no. But I guess the villi in your intestines can take up to 18 months to be repaired for proper absorption!

and yeah, I've been frying chicken livers and eating a few of those a day.

Did not see a Mediterranean Diet thread so:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/pour-on-the-olive-oil-big-study-finds-mediterranean-style-diet-cuts-heart-attack-stroke-risk/2013/02/25/8b83f40e-7f3f-11e2-a671-0307392de8de_story.html?hpid=z3

Mediterranean meant lots of fruit, fish, chicken, beans, tomato sauce, salads, and wine and little baked goods and pastries

Two followed a Mediterranean diet supplemented with either extra-virgin olive oil (4 tablespoons a day) or with walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds (a fistful a day).

article lost me after the ancel keys mention

It's like waving a red flag at a bull.

xp:
BTW, its probably not the olive oil, which is just as atherogenic as saturated fat in animal studies, worse than fish or canola in endothelial function, and offered hardly any effect on mortality (in a multiple regression model) in the big recent Greek study (see table 2).

Present Greeks eat plenty of olive oil, and have the highest obesity, diabetes and hypertension in the EU. Most of the benefits seen my Keyes et al, especially in Crete, appear to have been from WWII and just post-war dietary pattern, when people were poor, walked miles every day, and ate mostly bread, home-grown lentils/vegetables/fruit, and fish, and couldn't afford olive oil or red meat on a regular basis.

Oops, I meant table 3 in the 2003 NEJM study.

yeah it's mostly bullshit

"I see nothing fundamentally conservative about being sanguine about the power and influence of the agricultural-industrial lobby, and the corporations which exist in symbiosis with government largesse."

He doesn't??

Yeah, it's mostly bullshit, pt 2:
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/10/paleofantasy_stone_age_delusions/

forget the caveman fantasy - I don't see how eating grassfed animals, tons of vegetables, limited fruit, no grains and no sugar is really bullshit?

this seems like it does a good job of getting to the core issues w/out the caveman stuff: http://www.archevore.com/panu-weblog/2011/3/30/paleo-20-a-diet-manifesto.html

A lot of it is decidedly not bullshit. Typically a transition to a paleo or low carb type of diet i.e. eliminating grains and processed sugars will result in weight loss simply because of calorie reduction.

The best part of it is that it questions a lot of what was once "settled science" (salt intake, cholesterol levels, cardio exercise "required" to be healthy et al), leading to a lot more research into nutrition. Things like the food pyramid and RDA of certain vitamins have faced reasonable scrutiny since the advent of low-carb diets, which should be illuminating to anyone with an ounce of skepticism.

hmm, that is interesting: http://www.voanews.com/content/mummies-heart-disease-sendentary-lifestyle/1620605.html

From an evolutionary point of view, who cares if you have a little cardiovascular trouble; you're dead somewhere between 30 and 50 anyway and if you've already spawned, who cares?

True. Humans are biologically expendable after age 50 without any noticeable evolutionary drawbacks. Heart disease before age 40 is quite rare.

Bottom line is that the low carb diets allow a lot of people to lose weight and still have a varied diet without resorting to shakes and point systems.

Yeah that seems alright. And I guess there's something to the idea of having a gimmick as a way of getting people to do it. Other related trends bother me more, e.g. the paleo "everyone should run" idea. Running is definitely not the best exercise for everyone and some people are not built for it.

I've never heard that from Paleoists. They're often not fond of long slow cardio if it doesn't serve a specific purpose. A number are big on a few hundred yards of balls-out sprinting every week, which doesn't have much downside if you can do it to start with.

?? People who eat a paleo diet aren't really into running.

Weights, short bursts of cardio, yes.

I think I'm getting mixed up with what is sometimes called "paleo running"

which arises out of the same caveman fallacy, although is not otherwise linked I guess

the prefix "paleo" is the bullshit part

so far in my lifetime I've lived through the following fad diets: sugar-free everything, fat-free everything, no carbs/all protein, and more recently gluten-free and grain-free... it seems like the only option left for the diet industry is the protein-free diet, which I'm looking forward to. that should kill off a fair amount of idiots.

no carbs/all protein would make one very very ill
sugar free was laden with fake sweeteners
fat free was laden with sugar

gluten free/grain free, well, call it a fad.. but try giving up grains and then tell me how you feel.

my wife's been doing basically a bread and pasta-free diet, not really paleo but more 'primal blueprint' inspired. down 14 lbs since the new year.

moderate amounts of meat and all the fruit and veg you desire is pretty hard to argue with vs. fat-free/Atkins/etc., though

If you want to tackle caveman fantasies, cool, whatevs, but that's sort of a strawman here.

Intermittent Fasting was the Diane Rehm topic today, I need to see if I can listen online.

Life would be less worth living for me. I really enjoy grains. And gluten-free baked goods are usually barely edible. I do get the refined flour thing though -- I noticed a big difference in how I felt when I switched from my normal morning multigrain bread (often sprouted wheat) to bagels (we had a bunch left over from a brunch). Cutting down on carbs seems worthwhile, whole grains seem worthwhile. I can't imagine eliminating grains altogether would be worth it to me.

I also haven't seen any convincing articles or research as to why EVERYONE should cut gluten, as opposed to just people with specific sensitivities to it.

I don't see many people arguing that everyone should cut gluten, so... The idea is that more people are sensitive to it (vs. just celiacs or obvious cases) and that experimenting with eliminating it is worth a shot.

i feel like gluten sensitivity is a "thing" for sure, and maybe more people have it than there are people who are aware they have it. i noticed drinking witbiers that i reacted negatively to them, and it was either not an issue before or i never noticed it. breads don't affect me, but i've still cut on on them and rarely have beer anymore unfortunately.

what really irritates me is the idea going around that "disease" is the result of an improper diet. This seems to correlate with anti-glutenism among my facebook friends who post about such things.

al, barley also has gluten in it, so it may not be the wheat that's the issue (or is wheat gluten somehow more sensitivity prone?)

i'm cool w/virtually every other beer, guinness and scotch ales and amber ales are my jam. i don't know the specifics.

Well, a lot of "disease" is tied to a shitty diet - heart disease, diabetes, even Alzheimers yada yada yada. Going gluten-free isn't going to keep you from getting cancer but a better-than-average diet (of whatever form) and lifestyle is going to do some work in warding off 'disease.'

Witbiers/etc. are my favorites but they do seem more likely to make me feel like shit the next day vs. cider or liquor. I've just attributed that to my stomach being a jerk as I get older.

where were all these gluten-sensitive people in previous generations, I ask you

anyone have or know anyone with crohn's disease get relief going gluten free?

Wheat gluten is more problematic, especially since the genetic mods to make it the easier-to-harvest dwarf version happened over the last 10 years or so. The book Wheat Belly has a summary of that and how it has changed the gluten in modern wheat.

xp

Yes Philip Nunez - my brother

xxxp -
That's not really an argument against the potential for gluten sensitivity. People suffered through things we couldn't identify or isolate for improvement back in the day. If you give up gluten and find it makes you feel better - even if it's 100% placebo effect, or even if it doesn't - what have you lost? You're not cutting out anything that's essential to your diet and can't be found in other food sources.

oh good! just the name crohn's disease sounds really uncomfortable.

people with crohn's disease pretty much have to cut wheat or they will suffer. There's no real question about whether cutting wheat is good for those people.

really really not convinced by the "wheat is bad for you!!" argument

xpost that is not true for me. I have Crohn's.

you know what DOES exacerbate my crohn's? caveman-style fresh veggies.

Even today I think it's only like 1% of the population that has some kind of "gluten sensivity." I don't seem to. I like my beer, I like my toast in the morning, and I feel fine. I did stop eating sandwiches for lunch, because I noticed I feel more satisfied when a meal relies on meat and vegetables for more of its calories. But why cut it out completely?