djslatt

I've heard spelt is a 'healthier' wheat (and delicious -- I do bake sourdough bread with it). Do you know how it compares with emmer?

tandoorichicken

Not sure about spelt. I think it does affect people with celiac to some extent. I've heard emmer takes more elbow grease to grind to flour because the wheat berry is particularly hard. I'm sure it would be equally tasty though. As a heritage grain, though, it might also be more expensive than spelt, like kamut/khorasan.

Sourdough is also a good prep method because the fermentation step enhances mineral availability. Sourdough spelt sounds really yummy, btw.

Rubystars

You're right. I'm learning more all the time.

One of the things I was thinking of was that a lot of paleos say we're not adapted to eat grains. I disagree with this because while some people's ancestors might not have eaten grains on a regular basis, if you have ancestors that came from the Middle East or Europe, or even most of Asia, then they ate lots and lots of grains for about 10,000-15,000 years.

Even back in the hunter-gatherer days, I can't see a group of hungry people turning their noses up at eating grass seeds, when nearly all types of grass produce edible seeds and they were very knowledgeable about their environment and the plants in them (down to the medicinal qualities of them which formed the only pharmacy for most of human history).

I saw a guy on youtube harvesting wild grass seeds (he said you have to be careful about ergot, so you may not want to try that at home). And he was able to get a pretty substantial amount of grain from them with just little effort. I can't see our paleo ancestors turning down this potential food source if it was available to them.

Humans are incredibly flexible omnivores that can eat a wide variety of plant and animal materials and derive benefit from them.

Even with this change, it seems strange that people have been having so much trouble just within the last decade or so. It seems like there's suddenly this epidemic of "gluten sensitivity" which didn't exist before even with durum wheat. I wonder if it has to do with some GMO contamination? Maybe they added even more chromosomes to already modern wheat or mixed it with a fish gene or something?

I like the Nature's Path brand cereal that's called Heritage grains. It has a mix of different ancient grains and pseudo grains and they taste pretty good. I usually have it with some almond milk. I've been trying to eat less inflammatory foods lately (whole grains are supposed to be less inflammatory than refined grains) and so I will usually have it with some almond milk and sometimes some nuts too. I figure since almonds are anti-inflammatory that it might cancel out any inflammation from the grains. I try to pair things up like that as much as possible although I don't get too obssessive about it.


One thing I like about his approach is that he focuses on insulin and controlling insulin as being important to weight loss. I think this is one reason why the avocados were helping me last year, because they suppress insulin (and fat storage).

I don't think I could eat that high of a percentage of fat every day because I need to have more volume on my plate which is why I try to fill the plate up with food that's not very calorie dense most of the time. Fatty foods come in smaller portions.

A lot of the blogs/sites I've seen seem to indicate that paleo is low carb which is why I got that impression. If it's just based on natural foods then that's more reasonable and something I can't say is bad, but the way a lot of people seem to approach it seems unhealthy and dangerous. I actually saw on one of the sites that people were recommending to someone needing to lose weight to eat lots of butter. I wondered what planet these people were from!

Skoorb

I read the book. I think it had a lot of good data but don't agree with its ultimate premise that we should all be high fat, high protein ultra low carb. Also I take issue with the idea that the average substantially overweight person can "eat to satiety" and still lose weight as long as carbs are fully restricted. Trust me, I can pile down 1000 calories of almonds like it's absolutely nothing at all.

One of the reviews on amazon challenged with a good point I don't recall being addressed which is that modern meat is very high in saturated fat; i.e. it just isn't the same as the meat from yesteryear. The way around this is organic grass-fed, which many paleos like, but have you seen the price of it? Very expensive. I do eat some of that stuff but my diet primarily of that would break the bank. I see tandorchicken refer to a study about sat fat and heart disease, but AHA continues to recommend a limited intake of it. I can only assume they are aware of a meta review of its effects. This is similar to the talk about cholesterol in food. I'm not sure how to reconcile the recent view that cholesterol in food isn't such a big deal after all with AHA's continued recommendation to limit cholesterol-high food.

What the book did for me is have me take a serious look at my macros and my source of food. I will say right now I'm pretty darn low on processed food. I also have upped fat intake a lot (about 35% of calories), and there is fairly conclusive evidence that a high-carb diet is bad for triglycerides and blood pressure; it really is a bad diet, so the book helped me to think a little outside the box. I am 40-45% carbs, though still, but it's not processed (as long as I don't include canned beans without sodium as not processed!).

I've seen some mainstream stuff recently as well (maybe wasn't paying attention before) about low-fat diets and their injurious nature. They were touted for a long time but there's no evidence they really help fat loss, and there is evidence that they cause harm to the body (aforementioned triglycerides). Some continue to adhere to them ignorant of these ideas, though, and are still scared of fat. Taupe makes a fine point that there are no essential carbs. It is thought we could live long term on nothing but protein and fat. However, I am positive many still see fat as "worthless", as in "I already have some on my body, so why do I want/need to eat more of it?".

A recent staple of my diet is avocados. I eat them like I'm paid to. Those and almonds regularly create my lunches these days.

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Drawing parallels between diet of people years back and how that is relevant to us is very hard. We know little about cavemen, for example, other than that 40 was probably old age, so even if they were all going to have heart disease at 50 it didn't matter.

tandoorichicken

For anyone who's interested, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study today that pitted three diets against each other over the short term (4 weeks) for ease of weight maintenance. As many of us know, weight loss is hard enough, but maintenance is 10x trickier.

The link's here but the here and there of it is that a low carb diet resulted in an extra 300 calories/day extra energy expenditure at rest compared to a low fat diet that's typical of what's recommended by AHA. Low glycemic diet resulted in an extra 120 calories/day compared to low fat.

Most reviews of this study do remark that the low carb diet increased markers of inflammation that enhance heart disease risk. However, those same reviews for some reason fail to highlight that the study also found that the low fat diet has the worst record among markers for metabolic syndrome (which also raise heart disease risk), such as lowest HDL, highest triglycerides, and worst insulin sensitivity among the three diets. In fact, it's the low carb diet that boasts highest HDL and lowest serum triglyceride among the three.

Just some food for thought

Skoorb

Is interesting, but I think the diet didn't use many participants.

I do think nutritionally a high-carb diet is more likely to include processed foods, many of which are as close to worthless as one can get. I was eating corn chips last night with cheese for dinner (normally I eat much better) and thinking how patently worthless those things are. They have on carb energy and nothing else. Everything has been refined out of them. So I wonder if the high-carb dieters' results are due to some metabolic inefficiency. If that's the case though I might think a less efficient body requires more calories, not less. I dunno

tandoorichicken

The diets in this study were designed, controlled diets (e.g. the meals were handed out, not left in the hands of the study subjects) so calorie levels and nutrition values were equivalent among subjects. Individual variations in metabolism were also accounted for as everyone did all the diets, in a random order. Low carb still burned 300 calories more per day than low fat. It's true, the study only comprised 21 people in a metabolically deranged subset of the population (obese teenagers); that would also explain higher systemic inflammation during low carb (fat burning in obese individuals can release fat-soluble toxins into the blood to be excreted, which is why fat loss sometimes makes you feel physically miserable), (not to mention that teens are an inflamed bunch in general, what with all the hormonal block parties going on in them). In the end though, they didn't have an explanation as to why low carb burned more calories than low fat, only that it happened. 300 calories a day is still a significant number though, and worth looking into.

getfit1980

Just an update my success with low carb. Its been a bit over 6 weeks and I've lost a solid 20 pounds! I can honestly say that this diet is significantly EASIER than any calorie restricted diet I have been on. Some dicipline is required, especially in the begining, when avoiding carbs, but there is no hunger pains and no irratability. My exercise regime started one month into the diet and consists of light cardio 20 minutes a day, 5-6 days a week. The light nature of my exercise program reflects the message Taubes gives about exercise. Too much and your hunger will be increased.

volleyballgranny

Good points--all the way down the line. I'd like to add that I don't say anything to people who are chowing down on the foods I view as unhealthy--processed carbs (grains) and legumes. Yet, they insist on trying to change MY eating habits. I get tired of explaining the reasons I eat the way I do--and my health problems are really none of their business.

Actually, my generation didn't fall over from eating PBJ because the foods we ate started out as food. My mom made home-made bread from wheat berries ground into flour on the day she made the bread. Our PB was not GMO, and our jelly/jam was home-made from fruit off the trees in our back yard or from fruit she bought at the farmers market. We had PBJ a couple of times a week...or maybe once a day during the school year. We didn't have PBJ, a Twinkie, an orange, and a bag of chips every single day. If we had PBJ, it counted as a dessert, too.

Additionally, it didn't knock us out because our bodies functioned well. The fact of the matter is that my body does not function well any more...I cannot tolerate wheat, seeds (nuts, beans, rice, corn) or raw veggies. Not only do many of those things make me FAT, they now make me gravely ill.

volleyballgranny

I am so glad to see your results! Many of us have seen this type of result in our own lives, but we are not professionals and people pooh-pooh us. You will be able to help your clients so much more now that you understand a smart-carb, healthy-fat diet.