Paleo

As with many of my thoughts, this TedX talk got me thinking: Debunking the Paleo Diet.

For those who don't want to watch it (and some of the things border on kinda sorta might be triggering, kinda sorta...if you know what I mean), the gist is this:  There is no way to replicate the Paleo diet in our modern society.  What real paleolithic and neanderthal people ate is in stark contract to the meat-heavy, grain absent diet trend of the 21st century.  We eat an agriculturally based diet, and have for so many years that even the whole food we eat today is not like it was eons ago.

When I see things about paleo-like diets, there are many pictures of meats, eggs, and legumes - mostly whole foods.  Fat is not an issue, but grain is.  Sugar is an absolute no.

Until this talk, I didn't really know what a real Paleo diet was, so for that I am thankful.  Pretty much, paleo diets weren't a one size fits all.  Depending on where the species lived, they ate different things.  If Paleo Person A lived in a climate without much seasonal change, they may have eaten more regular food than Paleo Person B who lived in a climate much like mine in New York - snowy for a good portion of the year, nice sometimes, and very hot others.  This person probably relied on different food in the winter than summer, much like I personally do now.  No, I don't eat "paleo" but relying on fruits and vegetables during the winter is hard as I much prefer fresh strawberries in June than ones in the grocery story in February.

Still, according to this anthropologist, paleolithic people ate what was available to them.  This did include meat, yes, but it includes grains as well, something our culture is fearful of at the moment.

Let's not think about paleo diets - then and now - about only the food.  Rather, let's think about the reasoning behind eating the food available to them.

In Paleolithic times, eating was for survival.  If you didn't enjoy eating rabbit and it was the only meat catch you got in the day, too bad.  If the only thing you had to eat was wild carrots, then you better hope they go down ok.  Eating was for survival and that was it.  Anything edible was fair game, vegetable, grain or meat.

Today, eating is just not the same.  It's complicated.  We, whom are able to do, so are choosy with our food because we can be.  We have so much choice, so much abundance, that our entire species dying of hunger really isn't an issue.  Sure, there are starving people around the world - they are in our cities, in other countries.  They are everywhere but certainly not from lack of food on our planet.  It's not survival of the fittest, but rather survival of the privileged, wealthy and fortunate.

The majority of us are bombarded with food choices, sizes, tastes and textures.  For this, we don't just look at food as something for survival, but something of pleasure too.  Maybe cheesecake is not necessary for survival, but it sure tastes good and how great it is we can take something like food and turn it into something to have fun with, to enjoy.  Paleolithic people probably didn't experience that nearly as much as we do, and maybe not even at all.

Even with this abundance, with food being a source of enjoyment, we yearn to go back to paleo times.  We are overwhelmed with all the food.  And it's not just the quantities that overwhelm us, but the messaging around it.  Super-size the fries but shrink your waist.  So much food and all our society screams at us is to not eat any of it, or if you do, get rid of it somehow, preferably through vigorous exercise.  After all, society says that consuming all the foods around isn't healthy, and it certainly isn't attractive.

In fact, we are so overwhelmed and discouraged by abundance and by this messaging that there now exists published diet books on paleolithic eating.  We want to go back to a time where food was only survival because we've lost our way in the food.  What else can we do, we wonder?  How else are we going to win the fat war?

As someone who has/had an eating disorder, I can't tell you how uncomfortable abundance makes people like me.  It's more than just wondering what to do at the party around the chips and dip - we avoid the party altogether.  We, in essence, go back to being paleolithic within our disorder.  If you've ever suffered or seen the diet of someone who has had anorexia or another restrictive eating disorder, you will see their diets are not only limited but bland.  For years, I ate the same exact thing for breakfast, lunch and snacks (yes, I ate snacks - surprised?).  It was the same thing - routine, predictive and just enough to survive, but barely of course.  Kinda old-school paleo when you think about it - similar, predictive, survival. 

In the end, new age paleo eating is just another diet fad.  It seems good now, and perhaps it is in the long run.  Science has not backed up a certain kind of eating enough to say it was beneficial.  Some studies support this, others that.  Again, it's so complicated.

Can we learn anything from paleolithic people?  Per the TedX talk, whole foods are our best bet, but even as the speaker points out, our whole foods have been agriculturally modified so much - and I'm not talking GMOs or chemicals.   We have the modern diet we do now, and good or bad, we can choose how we deal with that without getting caught up in caveman times.