INTRODUCTION TO THE PALEOLITHIC DIET
by Dr. Ben Balzer, family physician
There are races of
people who are all slim, who are stronger and faster than us. They all have
straight teeth and perfect eyesight. Arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart
disease, stroke, depression, schizophrenia and cancer are absolute rarities for
them. These people are the last 84 tribes of hunter-gatherers in the world. They
share a secret that is over 2 million years old. Their secret is their diet- a
diet that has changed little from that of the first humans 2 million years ago,
and their predecessors up to 7 million years ago. Theirs is the diet that man
evolved on, the diet that is coded for in our genes. It has some major
differences to the diet of "civilization". You are in for a few big surprises.
The diet is usually
referred to as the "Paleolithic Diet" referring to the Paleolithic or Stone Age
era. It is also referred to as the "Stone Age Diet", "Cave Man Diet" or the
"Hunter-Gatherer Diet". More romantic souls like to think of it as the diet that
was eaten in the "Garden of Eden" and they are correct in thinking so.
The basic principles of
the Paleolithic Diet are so simple that most high school students can understand
them. Within 15 minutes from now you will grasp the major elements. At the
technical level, Paleolithic Diet Theory has a depth and breadth that is
unmatched by all other dietary theories. Paleolithic Diet Theory presents a
fully integrated, holistic, comprehensive dietary theory combining the best
features of all other dietary theories, eliminating the worst features and
simplifying it all.
All major dietary
components are covered- (i.e. vitamins, fats, protein, fats, carbohydrates,
antioxidants and phytosterols etc). This is for the simple reason that it is the
only diet that is coded for in our genes- it contains only those foods that were
"on the table" during our long evolution, and discards those which were not.
Have you ever wondered why almost everybody feels the need to take vitamin
supplementsat times, or why so many people feel the need to "detoxify" their
system? There are very real reasons for this that you will soon understand. Now,
come with me, I’d like to share the secret with you...
Basics of the
Paleolthic Diet
For millions of years,
humans and their relatives have eaten meat, fish, fowl and the leaves, roots and
fruits of many plants. One big obstacle to getting more calories from the
environment is the fact that many plants are inedible. Grains, beans and
potatoes are full of energy but all are inedible in the raw state as they
contain many toxins. There is no doubt about that- please don’t try to eat them
raw, they can make you very sick.
Around 10,000 years ago,
an enormous breakthrough was made- a breakthrough that was to change the course
of history, and our diet, forever. This breakthrough was the discovery that
cooking these foods made them edible- the heat destroyed enough toxins to render
them edible. Grains include wheat, corn, barley, rice, sorghum, millet and oats.
Grain based foods also include products such as flour, bread, noodles and pasta.
These foods entered the menu of New Stone Age (Neolithic) man, and Paleolithic
diet buffs often refer to them as Neolithic foods.
The cooking of grains,
beans and potatoes had an enormous effect on our food intake- perhaps doubling
the number of calories that we could obtain from the plant foods in our
environment. Other advantages were soon obvious with these foods:
· they could store for
long periods (refrigeration of course being unavailable in those days)
· they were dense in
calories- ie a small weight contains a lot of calories, enabling easy transport
· the food was also the
seed of the plant- later allowing ready farming of the species
These advantages made it
much easier to store and transport food. We could more easily store food for
winter, and for nomads and travelers to carry supplies. Food storage also
enabled surpluses to be stored, and this in turn made it possible to free some
people from food gathering to become specialists in other activities, such as
builders, warriors and rulers. This in turn set us on the course to modern day
civilization. Despite these advantages, our genes were never developed with
grains, beans and potatoes and were not in tune with them, and still are not.
Man soon improved further on these advances- by farming plants and animals.
Instead of being able to
eat only a fraction of the animal and plant life in an area, farming allows us
to fill a particular area with a large number of edible plants and animals. This
in turn increases the number of calories that we can obtain from an area by some
10 to 100 fold or more. Then followed the harnessing of dairy products, which
allow man to obtain far more calories from the animal over its lifetime than if
it were simply slaughtered for meat. Dairy products are interesting as they
combine a variety of components- some of which our genes were ready for and some
not. Whist cows milk is ideal for calves, there are several very important
differences between it and human milk. For example, the brain of a calf is only
a tiny fraction of its body weight whereas humans have very big brains. Not
surprisingly, cows milk is low in critical nutrients for brain development,
particularly omeg 3 fats.
Paleolithic Diet buffs
refer to the new foods as Neolithic foods and the old as Paleolithic Diet foods.
In simple terms we see Neolithic as bad and Paleolithic as good. Since then,
some other substances have entered the diet- particularly salt and sugar, and
more recently a litany of chemicals including firstly caffeine then all other
additives, colourings, preservatives, pesticides etc.
Grains, Beans and
Potatoes (GBP) share the following important characteristics:
· They are all toxic
when raw- there is no doubt about this- it is a fact that no competent source
would dispute- they can be extremely dangerous and it is important never to eat
them raw or undercooked. These toxins include enzyme blockers, lectins and other
types. I will talk about them in detail later as they are very important.
· Cooking destroys most
but not all of the toxins. Insufficient cooking can lead to sickness such as
acute gastroenteritis.
· They are all rich
sources of carbohydrate, and once cooked this is often rapidly digestible-giving
a high glycemic index (sugar spike).
· They are extremely
poor sources of vitamins (particularly vitamins A, B-group, folic acid and C),
minerals, antioxidants and phytosterols.
Therefore diets high in
grains beans and potatoes (GBP):
· Contain toxins in
small amounts
· Have a high glycemic
index (ie have a similar effect to raw sugar on blood glucose levels)
· Are low in many
vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytosterols- ie they are the original
"empty calories"
· Have problems caused
by the GBP displacing other foods
As grains, beans and
potatoes form such a large proportion of the modern diet, you can now understand
why it is so common for people to feel they need supplements or that they need
to detoxify (ie that they have toxins in their system)- indeed both feelings are
absolutely correct. Unfortunately, we don’t necessarily realize which
supplements we need, and ironically when people go on detoxification diets they
unfortunately often consume even more Neolithic foods (eg soy beans) and
therefore more toxins than usual (perhaps they sometimes benefit from a change
in toxins). More detail on these issues follows in subsequent pages.
The essentials of the
Paleolithic Diet are:
Eat none of the
following:
· Grains- including
bread, pasta, noodles
· Beans- including
string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas and peas
· Potatoes
· Dairy products
· Sugar
· Salt
Eat the following:
· Meat, chicken and fish
· Eggs
· Fruit
· Vegetables (especially
root vegetables, but definitely not including potatoes or sweet potatoes)
· Nuts, eg. walnuts,
brazil nuts, macadamia, almond. Do not eat peanuts (a bean) or cashews (a family
of their own)
· Berries- strawberries,
blueberries, raspberries etc.
Try to increase your
intake of:
· Root vegetables-
carrots, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, Swedes
· Organ meats- liver and
kidneys (I accept that many people find these unpalatable and won’t eat them)
Expect some minor tuning
problems- don’t worry, you can deal with them:
· It will take some time
for your body to adjust to the changes after all these years. There is a huge
surge in your vitamin intake. There is a huge decrease in your toxin intake.
· Start with breakfast
for few days, as this is the easiest place to start as most people eat it at
home, and it tends to be the least Paleolithic meal of the standard 3. For
weight loss you will eventually need to reduce your carbohydrate intake, but
ignore this initially as most people have high carb intakes and this can
continue for the first few days that you are on this diet. If you reduce too
quickly then you may fell unwell. Then move on to lunch or dinner for a few days
and then to all 3 meals. If you work, you will often find it easier to take your
lunch to work.
· Keep reading more
about the diet- and read it again. Remember, there are many dietary myths that
will need to be unlearned. Particularly, please read the section on fats several
times. Knowledge on fats has exploded over the last decade and there is a
realization in mainstream nutrition that omega 3 fats are critical to good
health. It is very important to ensure that you have an adequate intake of
these. The low fat diet craze of the 90’s was well intentioned but many people
"threw out the baby with the bath-water"- most people reduced omega 3 fat intake
as well as other fats, and sometimes even increased omega 6 fats. There is now a
realization that the low fat diet theory of the 90’s doesn’t often work (it has
about a 6% success rate like most other diets) and that the vast majority of the
Western population need to increase their omega 3 intake and decrease their
omega 6 intake. Even if you don’t end up on a Paleolithic Diet, you will benefit
from a better appreciation of fats.
Technical Aspects:
12,000 years ago the ice
planet Earth thawed out as the last Ice Age came to an end. The great glaciers
melted, carving enormous plains across the continents and the planet became
green again. The seas rose some 400 feet (120 metres) (incidentally
unfortunately drowning most of our archeological heritage). The plains
flourished and savannah, prairie and forest sprang up. Grazing animals spread
onto the plains, followed by hunting animals and amongst these last were the
greatest hunters of all- humans. Humans, being omnivores, have the ability to
eat both plant and animal foods. That is a major advantage as the number of
creatures that can live in a particular habitat depends entirely on how much
energy they can obtain. To make a crude example- imagine you are breeding
monkeys on 100 acres of land and the only edible plant there is bananas. If you
double the number of banana plants, then you can double the number of monkeys on
the land.
You might instead
introduce apple trees and have the same effect. The number of monkeys would
depend entirely on how many calories they could obtain from the environment. The
carrying capacity of the habitat for a species depends on how many calories the
species can obtain. Humans are no different. They have a major advantage in
being able to eat both plant and animals foods thereby harvesting enormous
amounts of calories from the environment. Humans learnt to cook grains, beans
and potatoes and increased further the number of plant food calories they can
obtain from the environment- probably doubling it in most habitats, and even
more on grasslands.
The reason why grains,
beans and potatoes store so well is simply because of the toxins that they
contain. The enzyme blockers put them into a deep freeze, stopping them from
sprouting. The lectins and other toxins are natural pesticides and can attack
bacteria, insects, worms, rodents and other pests (and humans too of course).
ANTINUTRIENTS- YOUR KEY
TO BAD HEALTH
You probably already
know a lot about nutrients- macronutrients (fats, protein and carbohydrates and
micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytosterols etc). Now it's
time to meet the rest of the family....... We all know that foods contain a
variety of nutrients. There is less awareness that many foods contain small
amounts of potentially harmful substances. These are toxins, as they have toxic
effects. They are normally called "antinutrients" by the scientific community as
toxins sounds too alarmist. Antinutrients are very real and for over 100 years
research has been done on them- but it is generally only appreciated by a small
group of specialized scientists. Antinutrients have an incredible range of
biological effects. As you have probably already guessed, the vast majority and
highest levels of antinutrients are in Neolithic foods like grains, beans and
potatoes. The Paleolithic diet has incredibly low levels of antinutrients
compared to the usual modern diet. I believe that this is the number one
advantage of the diet.
Textbooks on
antinutrients read like books on what not to eat- Neolithic foods are the most
prominent. Professor Irvin Liener published one of the most famous of these
books in 1980. In the first chapter he points out that when we started cooking
inedible plants, new toxins entered the diet for the first time. Ironically, he
wasn’t trying to promote Paleolithic diets- his aim was to help agricultural
scientists more safely feed the world on grains, beans and potatoes.
It’s a technical
subject, and I’ll do my best to make it clear to you.
Consider our friend, the
apple. When an animal eats an apple, it profits by getting a meal. It swallows
the seeds and then deposits them in a pile of dung. With some luck a new apple
tree might grow, and so the apple tree has also profited from the arrangement.
In nature as in finance, it is good business when both parties make profit
happily. Consider what would happen if the animal were greedy and decided to eat
the few extra calories contained within the apple seeds- then there would be no
new apple tree to continue on the good work. So, to stop this from happening,
the apple seeds contain toxins that have multiple effects:
* firstly, they taste
bad- discouraging the animal from chewing them
* secondly some toxins
are enzyme blockers that bind up predators digestive enzymes- these also act as
"preservatives" freezing the apple seed enzymes until sprouting- Upon sprouting
of the seed, many of these enzyme blockers disappear.
* thirdly, they contain
lectins- these are toxic proteins which have numerous effects. They act as
natural pesticides and are also toxic to a range of other species including
bacteria, insects, worms, rodents and other predators including humans .
Of course, the apple has
other defenses- to start with it is high above the ground well out of reach of
casual predators, and it also has the skin and flesh of the apple to be
penetrated first. Above all though is the need to stop the seed from being
eaten, so that new apple trees may grow.
Now, please consider the
humble grain. Once again as a seed its duty is mission critical- it must
perpetuate the life cycle of the plant. It is however much closer to the ground,
on the tip of a grass stalk. It is within easy reach of any predator strolling
by. It contains a good source of energy, like a booster rocket for the new plant
as it grows. The grain is full of energy and in a vulnerable position. It was
"expensive" for the plant to produce. It is an attractive meal. Its shell offers
little protection. Therefore, it has been loaded with toxic proteins to
discourage predators- grains are full of enzyme blockers and lectins. You may be
surprised to learn that uncooked flour is very toxic- please don't try eating it
as you become very sick. And yes, I don't recommend al dente pasta (if one must
eat pasta at all).
Beans too are full of
enzyme blockers and lectins. Potatoes contain enzyme blockers, lectins and
another family of toxins called glycoalkaloids. Glycoalkaloids (GA) unlike
lectins and enzyme blockers aren't destroyed by cooking, even deep-frying. GA
are particularly high in green or injured potatoes, which must never be eaten
even if trimmed heavily and well-cooked. Many people have told me that they eat
small amounts of raw potato- this is a dangerous habit and it should be
discouraged very strongly.
These toxins in foods
are commonly referred to as antinutrients. Let's learn some more about them:
Enzyme Blockers: These
enzyme blockers are abundant in all seeds including grains and beans, and also
in potatoes, serving to hold them in suspended animation and also acting as
pesticides. Most commonly they block the enzymes that digest protein
(proteases), and are called "protease inhibitors". They can affect the stomach
protease enzyme "pepsin", and the small intestine protease enzymes "trypsin" and
"chymotrypsin". These small intestine enzymes are made by the pancreas (it does
a lot of other important things besides making insulin). Some enzyme blockers
affect the enzymes that digest starch (amylase) and are called "amylase
inhibitors".
When GBP are cooked,
most of the enzyme blockers are destroyed, but some are not. In human volunteers
and in animal experiments high levels of protease inhibitors lead to increased
secretion of digestive enzymes by the pancreas. This is because the body can
sense that the enzymes have been knocked out and orders to pancreas to make
more. Even if the effect of GBP based foods is only a small increase in
pancreatic enzyme secretion, over many years it all adds up to a lot of extra
work.
They are effective
poisons- rats cannot gain weight if they have substantial amounts of enzyme
blockers in the diet. As far as their preservative action is concerned, I need
only to remind you that the potted grains in the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs
were still viable and sprouted after thousands of years locked away.
Grain eating birds have
evolved digestive enzymes that are resistant to grain protease inhibitors.
Lectins (Haemagglutins)................ Meet Hannibal
Lectins are natural
proteins that have a large variety of roles. They are amongst the most
fascinating and stimulating of all biological compounds, and I have no doubt
that they play a major role in many "unexplained " diseases. I think of them as
"Hannibal Lectins" as they remind of the devious criminal mastermind in the
shock horror movie "Silence of the Lambs.' Lectins are like master
code-breakers. The cells of our bodies are studded with receptors which are like
code pads to ensure stimulation only under the correct circumstances. Lectins
have the ability to crack these codes and stimulate the receptors causing a
variety of responses- covering basically the full repertoire of the cell and
even tricking the cell into doing things it normally cannot do.
They also have a knack
for bypassing our defenses and "getting behind the lines", and then they can
travel all over the body causing harm. They can, for example:
--strip protective mucus
off tissues,
--damage the cells
lining the small intestine- disrupting the microscopic fingers called villi and
microvilli,
--get swallowed whole by
the small intestine cells ("pinocytosis")
--bind to cells
including blood cells causing a clot to form (hence they were initially called
"haemagglutins")
--make a cell act as if
it has been stimulated by a hormone-
--stimulate a cell to
secrete a hormone
--promote cell division
at the wrong time
--cause gowth or
shrinkage of lymphatic tissue ("outposts" of white blood cells)
--cause enlargement of
the pancreas
--cause cells to present
codes (HLA's) that they normally should not use
--cause cell death
(apoptosis)
Lectins break down the
surface of the small intestine, stripping it of mucus and causing the cells to
become irregular and leaky. Some lectins make cells act as if they have been
stimulated by insulin. Others cause the pancreas to release insulin. Others
cause immune cells to divide in the wrong way, causing growth of some white
blood cells and breaking down the control of the immune system. Others cause
cells to present the wrong codes (HLA's) on their surface, tricking the immune
system into thinking that intruders have been found and activating the immune
system inappropriately- thus leading to "autoimmune disease" where the body's
tissues are attacked by its own immune system.
Autoimmune diseases are
incredibly common and increase every year that a person gets older. A disordered
immune system also has a much harder job recognizing and attacking the real
intruders- invading germs and cancer cells (you may have heard that scientists
think that most people generate many cancer cells in a life time but that the
immune system cleans most of them up).
It is not known whether
lectins can cause cancer- this is one of the most important questions in
medicine today. They certainly affect colon cells in the test tube. I feel that
they are likely candidates as they can stimulate abnormal cell growth and they
also cause disorder in the immune system.
Lectins have many other
roles besides defending seeds. For example in beans, lectins act like a glue to
enable nitrogen-fixing bacteria to bind to the roots of the plant. Many
important lectin families are found in animal tissues, but as we are carnivores,
we have evolved to be able to deal with these- just as birds that live on grains
have evolved to be resistant to grain lectins.
It is ironic that the
lectins were discovered more than 100 years ago and yet so many questions remain
unanswered- the same was true of the immune system until the 1980’s. I hope that
there is more research done into lectins as they hold a whole world of disease
mechanisms of which most of the medical community is blissfully unaware.
Exorphins:
Exorphins are food
chemicals that have morphine-like activity. They are found in dairy products and
wheat. Our body has its own natural morphine like substances that are called
endorphins. Endorphins work by stimulating a type of nerve cell surface receptor
called endorphin receptors. Endorphins are very important in controlling pain
and addictive behaviour.
Exorphins also act on
endorphin receptors and may stimulate them or block them. It is logical that
exorphins may therefore affect chronic pain and also affect addictive behaviour.