Christina Warinner on the Paleo diet and why its wrong

Science • January 2014 • Views: 2,611

Christina, an expert on the diets of ancient people blows the lid off the Paleo diet. I should have watched this before I commented on my last post. I had bookmarked this video awhile back, but I had forgotten watch it until now. I thank Norbrook for his comment, on that post, since he reminded me that I had found this video, but hadn’t watched it.

Debunking the paleo diet: Christina Warinner at TEDxOU
Youtube Video

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12 comments

freetoken Fri, Jan 10, 2014 6:40:35pm

TEDx !!!!!

freetoken Fri, Jan 10, 2014 6:41:30pm

After watching all those Onion Talks videos I’ll never be able to watch a TED video with a straight face ever again.

freetoken Fri, Jan 10, 2014 6:54:03pm

“What even is broccoli?”

Maybe the best phrase in a Ted talk ever.

wheat-dogghazi Fri, Jan 10, 2014 6:54:07pm

A couple of my relatives have put themselves on this diet, in an effort to lose weight. As soon as heard the name and premise of the “paleo-diet,” I knew it was as unscientific as any other fad diet that’s come around the bend.

CriticalDragon1177 Fri, Jan 10, 2014 9:23:33pm

re: #4 wheat-dogghazi

Some of their arguements seemed convincing enough to me, that for awhile, I wondered if there might be something to it. Fortunately I found this video.

wheat-dogghazi Fri, Jan 10, 2014 9:44:35pm

re: #5 CriticalDragon1177

I have a sense that it appeals to people sympathetic to the idea of Intelligent Design — that early humans were “designed” to eat certain foods; therefore, we must revert back to such a diet.

CriticalDragon1177 Fri, Jan 10, 2014 11:32:32pm

re: #6 wheat-dogghazi

Except that “intelligent design” is a type of creationism, and the people behind the paleo diet try to make it sound like their claims are backed up by evolution. They claim we evolved to eat their way, not designed to eat that way. If they said we were created to eat that way by an intelligent designer, I don’t think I would have even considered what they were saying for a moment. The people who it probably really appeals to are people who love meat, especially if they also like green vegetables, fruit and nuts.

wheat-dogghazi Sat, Jan 11, 2014 2:16:54am

re: #7 CriticalDragon1177

Except that “intelligent design” is a type of creationism, and the people behind the paleo diet try to make it sound like their claims are backed up by evolution. They claim we evolved to eat their way, not designed to eat that way. If they said we were created to eat that way by an intelligent designer, I don’t think I would have even considered what they were saying for a moment. The people who it probably really appeals to are people who love meat, especially if they also like green vegetables, fruit and nuts.

Oh, I know they don’t use the word “designed,” but the implication is that our gut is somehow finetuned to a paleolithic diet, because evolution made it that way. This is backward reasoning. They are taking a presumed diet and then supposing, without much real evidence, that evolution destined us to eat that way, instead of eating crops and domesticated livestock. A better analysis would conclude evolution permitted our early ancestors to eat almost anything, permitting us to progress from a hunter-gatherer diet to an agricultural diet.

It’s a little like the anthropic principle you see in discussions of cosmology — the universe is especially suited for human life, because we are here, so it’s special.

I blogged about this today.

CriticalDragon1177 Sat, Jan 11, 2014 2:01:46pm

re: #8 wheat-dogghazi

I see you used this video as one of your sources. Nice blog by the way.

Indepublicrat Sat, Jan 11, 2014 4:05:33pm

I’m not on a Paleo diet, but I have friends who are and they tell me there are actually many different programs that call themselves “the Paleo diet.” Unfortunately, Warinner seems to have picked the easiest possible straw man version to debunk.

My Paleo friends eat a whole lot of vegetables and fruits supplemented by appropriate proteins from fish, poultry, beef, pork, and in some cases dairy. They would all agree with Warinner that a diet of primarily red meat is stupid, dangerously unhealthy, and probably not what the human digestive system has evolved to process. What my friends cut out are grains, most of which my wife also has to avoid because of her celiac desease.

Nobody knows for sure what prehistoric humans ate, and probably there was a wide variety of diets over time and in different parts of the world, but our entire species experienced a radical diet change during the agricultural revolution. The variety of commonly eaten foods went way down and included unprecedented levels of starches and grains—wheat, barley, rye, rice, and maize. We’ve barely had time to adjust before our diet changed again in recent years as we’ve added hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, preservatives, trans fats, and other unhealthy molecules meant primarily to increase corporate profits and personal convenience. I think most of us would benefit from some kind of diet adjustment.

Even this video seems to acknowledge that humans have evolved to their diet. People in cultures where animal milk is consumed have, over the past few thousands of years, evolved enzymes that enable them to digest milk proteins even as adults. And we only need to consume Vitamin C because early primates consumed such a fruit-heavy diet that producing even more Vitamin C internally was no longer an evolutionary advantage. This is a legacy our common ancestor also passed down to our ape and monkey cousins.

Pie-onist Overlord Sat, Jan 11, 2014 6:32:09pm

Dana Loesch is Derping all over Teh Twitters about the Paleo Diet and how it keeps her slim and hot and in shape when she goes out to the gun range.

They should actually call is The Bacon Eater’s Diet.

wheat-dogghazi Sat, Jan 11, 2014 9:40:09pm

One of my nephews and his wife are on this diet, and they say it works for them. Both have weight and health issues, so anything that helps is a good thing. My beef (as it were) with the paleo-diet is the sketchy science behind it. That there are so many variations, with different proportions of meat and plant-based foods, suggests the promoters really have no idea what our ancient ancestors ate.

Generally speaking, it’s really no different from many other diet plans already available under less sexy names. Cordain’s meat-heavy pyramid is an outlier, and a dangerous one for men prone to high cholesterol levels.

re: #9 CriticalDragon1177

Thanks! Yeah, the Warriner video was a good resource. Her message is basically mine — forget the handwaving “science” about our paleolithic diet, and focus on a varied diet involving many species of animals and plants. Her comment that most processed foods are primarily made from only three ingredients, wheat, corn and sugar, is worthy paying attention to. Americans eat a lot of bread and pastries, eat and drink a lot of sweets, and high fructose corn syrup or corn syrup solids are in practically every thing Americans buy.

The paleo diet should really be called the “Stay away from processed foods and fast food joints” diet, but that’s not sexy enough.

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