The Paleo Debate: Diet Aid or Food Fiction
By, Mohammed Shariff
The line stretches around the corner, as hungry diners wait to consume barbecue at Fette Sau in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where the daily menu includes pork and beef ribs, brisket, pulled pork and sausages, and specials. One wall is covered in caveman-like drawings of meat.
“I’m not a Paleo dieter, but I can understand the appeal of it, especially someplace like this,” says Aram Modrek, 24, an M.D. and Ph.D. candidate in oncology at NYU, and a slender man who is mindful of what he eats.
The Paleo diet is part of the fad diet line-up — a quick way to drop weight, for some, and for others a lifestyle. Proponents claim that it’s a way to reduce if not eliminate certain illnesses like heart disease and types of cancer, in addition to being a weight-loss tool. But experts in nutrition and weight loss warn that it can potentially be harmful, because our bodies are not suited to this kind of regimen.
The Paleo diet was launched in 2002 with the publication of “The Paleo Diet” by Colorado State University professor Loren Cordain, who studies the relevance of the diet to modern day health. According to Professor Hamilton Stapell, a historian at New Paltz State University of New York who also examines the paleo or ancestral period as a social movement, between one and three million people are on the Paleo diet. Diane Sanfilippo’s book, “Practical Paleo,” released in 2012, has appeared in the top ten on both “The New York Times” and Amazon bestseller lists.
The Paleo diet, also called the caveman, stoneman or primal diet, is based on what ancient or Paleolithic humans ate: Grass-produced meats, fish and seafood, fresh fruits and vegetables, certain oils. It restricts refined foods, salt and sugars.
“The concept has grown dramatically in the U.S. and worldwide since about 2009,” said Cordain, by email. “Recent randomized controlled trials by NIH’s PubMed (PubMed is an online database for biotechnological information) demonstrate contemporary Paleo Diets to be more effective in controlling obesity, cardiovascular disease symptoms and are more nutrient dense in the 13 vitamins and minerals most lacking in the US diet when compared to the USDA Food Pyramid (now called the My Plate program).”
John Zic, 32 is a senior consultant at Ernst & Young and a hardcore Paleo dieter. He started a blog, The Paleo Penny Pincher, documenting his weight loss.
“I first came across the Paleo diet in early January 2012, I watched a documentary titled the ‘Perfect Human Diet’,” said Zic.“That very next morning, I began the Paleo lifestyle and have not wavered since.”
Zic used to weigh 240 pounds, but has lost 50-52 pounds on the diet and kept it off. He hovers around 190 pounds today.
“I knew this was the way humans were meant to eat. Logically, all aspects of the diet made sense to me, especially with my prior low-carb diet experiences,” said Zic.
Zic typically starts his day with a cup of freshly-brewed coffee blended with a tablespoon of coconut oil and a tablespoon of grass-fed Kerrygold unsalted butter.
“It tastes amazing and keeps me satiated and energize for up to six hours,” said Zic.
For lunch, he sticks with salads, easy to customize with lean meats, lettuce, olive oil, lemon juice, and avocado. For dinner he will typically have a protein: salmon filet, grass-fed beef, or free-range chicken breast and two vegetable sides, sweet potatoes, spinach, or cooked kale.
“I think it’s a popular diet because it works. I can say with near certainty that following the Paleo diet stringently for 30 days will result in weight-loss and increased mental clarity,” said Zic. “The Paleo community in NYC seems to be growing rapidly, I feel like nearly every week I walk past another new Paleo-centric restaurant.”
“I’m not sure if every diet is appropriate for everyone. An evolutionary approach to health, exercise, diet and nutrition is a good place to start,” said Stapell. “The work that Cordain has done shows that the Paleo diet meets all the required food nutrients that are needed from eating, fruits, vegetables, eggs, meat, fish, and seafood. I think it’s a pretty healthful way to go.”
But some experts caution against the Paleo diet because of its restrictive quality.
David Levitsky is a professor at Cornell University in the Division of Nutritional Sciences and Department of Psychology, who teaches a course on obesity and one on the control of body weight.
“It makes for an interesting reading. I also like other types of fiction. If you follow this diet I promise you will lose weight. I have no doubt in my mind that if you follow this diet that you will lose weight,” said Levitsky. “The problem is you can’t stay on this diet for the rest of your life. People come off this diet in four to five months, only the fanatics out there can maintain this kind of lifestyle.”
The thing that upsets him the most is not the paleo diet, specifically, but what he sees as the selling of alternative non-scientific medicine.
“To sell a diet you have to have an unique aspect to it, an aura, that this is the way no one else has found. Otherwise no will buy the book. The goal is to buy the book,” said Levitsky. He recommends variety in the diet, instead, and points out that our ancestors died, on average, before they reached 40.
“To base an entire diet on the way primitives ate is ludicrous,” said Levitsky. “We get diabetes, hypertension, cancers from the fact that we are eating too much. And we’re eating too much because we are being sold this stimuli that touches upon the fundamental behavior that we have, that when food is offered, eat it.”
To him, the weight loss and health equation is simple: All of the major pathologies in the adult population are a direct result of eating too many calories. And good nutrition comes from of a composite of foods.
“We should increase our consumption of fruits and vegetables and legumes. They’re all a good source if eaten in the right amounts. The way you tell is look at the scale and if that scale is steady you’re in good shape, you’re in balance,” said Levitsky.
Dr. Sharon Akabas, associate director of the Institute of Human Nutrition and director of the M.S. nutrition program at Columbia University, is also wary of the Paleo diet.
“It has components that are helpful and harmful,” she said. “The diet itself is not harmful per se. It’s the claims that are made by the diet and the interpretation of those claims.”
She points out that meat, a mainstay of the Paleo diet, is very different from the meats Paleolithic ancestors ate, which were much leaner and higher in omega-3 fats. She sees only one potential advantage to any fad diet, which is that it might motivate someone to change the way they eat, long-term.
“The fad diet usually is a passing phase,” she said. “If it helps someone regroup, I’m not going to criticize that because sometimes people need to do extreme things in order to get back to some sense of normalcy with their weight.”
Cordain remains resolute at the other end of the debate, and dismisses the notion that Paleo is a fad diet.
“As my mentor, Dr. Boyd Eaton has so eloquently said, “If it is a fad diet, then it is humanity’s oldest fad diet,” he said, because “the nutritional characteristics of contemporary paleo diets mimic the nutritional qualities of our hunter gatherer ancestors.”
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