{"id":2631,"date":"2015-08-27T08:12:39","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T14:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=2631"},"modified":"2015-08-27T08:15:04","modified_gmt":"2015-08-27T14:15:04","slug":"is-the-paleo-diet-moral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/08\/is-the-paleo-diet-moral.html","title":{"rendered":"Is the Paleo Diet moral?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"By<\/a>
By trmdttr (Flickr) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>Substitute Atkins, or South Beach, or Taubes, or any similar diet that promotes meat-eating, okays fruit and vegetables to varying extents, and limits carbohydrates, from grains, anyway.<\/p>\n

Do these diets work?<\/p>\n

I read Taubes\u2019 Why We Get Fat<\/em> a couple years ago, and found the notion that, so long as you severely limit carbs, you\u2019ll automatically lose excess weight and, once you arrive at your ideal weight, effortlessly maintain that weight, hard to swallow. \u00a0How, after all, in this \u201ceat all you want\u201d diet, does your body \u201cknow\u201d when the weight-loss regimen is over? \u00a0And what happens to all the extra, unneeded calories, that Taubes says will not cause weight gain so long as they\u2019re fat or protein, not carbs? \u00a0Does the food, well, just not get digested?<\/p>\n

The Paleo Diet (per the original book by Loren Cordain, as checked out from the library) distinguishes itself by saying, eat lean meat, not fatty meat, and unlimited carbs, so long as those come from fruit and vegetables, but it bans dairy and completely bans all grains.<\/p>\n

The South Beach Diet likewise encourages lean meat, and distinguishes itself from Atkins & Taubes by criticizing those diets\u2019 acceptance of high-fat foods; it also allows whole grains in its Phase II, just not processed, white grains, and pulls in the Glycemic Index to evaluate good carbs vs. bad carbs. \u00a0Full disclosure: \u00a0I\u2019m at the tail end of the two-week Phase I, in which I\u2019m not following the meal plans so much as the general concept: \u00a0scrambled eggs with sausage and cheese for breakfast, salad with chicken for lunch, and meat & veggies (or more salad) for dinner.<\/p>\n

Why this diet? \u00a0Why now? \u00a0Especially since somewhat over a year ago, I touted \u201cJane\u2019s Weight Loss Secrets<\/a>\u201d and announced that they key was simple: \u00a0stop between-meals snacking and start exercising more consistently. \u00a0I had, after all, lost 5 of my excess 10 pounds, and was quite confident I was on my way to losing the other five. \u00a0Trouble was, the following summer, I gained back the lost 5, and by the time we returned from our mid-August vacation, I had gained a further 5 pounds. \u00a0(Yes, weight gain happens during the summer, when we go with the kids to get ice cream or donuts, and the calories expended by biking or walking there are only a fraction of the calories consumed.)<\/p>\n

Even so, I was planning on simply resuming the \u201cno snack\u201d rule but flipped through the copy of the South Beach Diet that I had picked up on a lark at the thrift store. \u00a0Partly I was lured by its\u00a0promise of fast results, but it also had warnings about: \u00a0(a) after-40 weight gain, (b) family history of diabetes \u2014 even if it\u2019s your dad, diagnosed in his late 60s, and he was always overweight anyway \u2014 and (c) weight gain at the midsection. \u00a0And I thought, \u201chmmm, I had gestational diabetes with my last pregnancy at age 38; maybe I\u2019m more at risk than I like to think, and maybe my days of eating big bowls of noodles with butter should be over*, every bit as much as big bowls of ice cream.\u201d \u00a0(*I was a big Ramen noodle-eater in college \u2014 it was one of my favorite late-night snacks.)<\/p>\n

Now, so far, in the past week and a half, I\u2019ve lost 6 pounds (morning edit: \u00a05 pounds). \u00a0Is it \u201creal\u201d weight? \u00a0Is it just water? \u00a0Dunno. \u00a0The front cover says \u201close the belly fat first!\u201d but my clothes don\u2019t feel especially looser at the waist. \u00a0After the two-week period is up, you\u2019re supposed to resume eating carbs, but gradually, and the right kind only, and the two-week virtually-no-carb period is supposed to help your metabolism and decrease your cravings and something something insulin, the last of which caught my attention.<\/p>\n

My experience the last 1.5 weeks has been that, whatever the impact of protein vs. carbs is, I have at any rate simply been eating less, both because I\u2019m simply not as hungry for snacks and there aren\u2019t many appealing snacks when you take away crackers and chips and even fruit (for the Phase I), and are supposed to content yourself with cheese in some form, and I\u2019m not a big cheese eater. \u00a0And I think my forgone starchy side dish isn\u2019t being replaced calorie-for-calorie with veggies and meat.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s my personal experience. \u00a0Will I last the full two weeks? \u00a0The meals are getting monotonous. \u00a0Will I, afterwards, find some good long-term eating habits? \u00a0Will the kids revolt against wheat pasta?<\/p>\n

I also can believe that individual overweight people stand a good chance of losing weight with these sorts of diets \u2014 though whether it\u2019s because of the magic of protein as a all-you-can-eat food, or whether because protein-heavy meals don\u2019t cause blood sugar issues and leave one satisfied for longer than the equivalent number of calories in carbs, I don\u2019t know, but even if it\u2019s the latter, that\u2019s a positive. \u00a0And in the long term: \u00a0well, there are plenty of reasons why people fail at dieting, or, just as often, lose the weight and the regain it, over and over. \u00a0Partly it\u2019s habit, partly it\u2019s the lure of a double-chocolate doughnut, but others who have lost weight report that when they limit themselves to even a \u201cmaintenance-level\u201d calorie limit, they feel hungry all the time. \u00a0Now, periodically there are controlled studies, using identical calorie counts with varying levels of carbs, protein, and fat, that seem to prove the \u201ccalories in, calories out\u201d approach, but that doesn\u2019t address the difficulty or ease of following such a diet.<\/p>\n

As to the degree to which Paleo provides optimal lifetime nutrition, or a \u201cnormal\u201d diet leads to all manner of nutritional deficiencies, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

But what do I mean by moral? \u00a0(Besides giving me something to talk about besides the current news cycle.)<\/p>\n

The cultivation of grains is what enabled man to become civilized. \u00a0Literally \u2014 only grains had the sort of yields that made it possible for cities to form, their people fed primarily by grains \u2014 wheat, rice, corn, etc.<\/p>\n

On an individual level, to live, in the year 2015, eating meats and vegetables, but no grains, is an expensive proposition. \u00a0You can\u2019t do this on food stamps. \u00a0The Paleo Diet recommendations are even more costly: \u00a0range-fed beef, free-range chicken, special-order game meat, wild-caught fish, etc. \u00a0And the basic \u201cthrifty\u201d protein source of legumes? That\u2019s completely\u00a0ruled\u00a0out on Paleo (though OK on South Beach, and I don\u2019t know about the others). \u00a0Besides which, if a large portion of the U.S. switched to a heavier emphasis on meat, and producers shifted to producing more meat, then I would expect that this would raise food costs, in general, for everyone.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, we\u2019re all being encouraged to eat more meatless meals for the sake of the environment. \u00a0Plus, the other day,\u00a0Ann Althouse<\/a> linked to a piece in the Washington Post which clickbaitily says that lettuce is an environmentally-incorrect vegetable because it\u2019s mostly water in content and takes a lot of resources to grow and transport relative to the nutrition it provides. \u00a0The same could likely be said for a vegetable-heavy diet in general, particularly given the fact that many of our vegetables are trucked in from California (though I don\u2019t see any commentary in the book on the fresh vs. frozen debate).<\/p>\n

And remember the statement that floats around to the effect that there is more than enough food to feed to world, it\u2019s just that unjust regimes allow their people to starve? \u00a0Imagine that the world adopts Paleo eating. \u00a0Bye, bye, amber waves of grain. \u00a0The Paleo Diet is a rich person\u2019s, and a rich country\u2019s, diet. \u00a0There is a considerable amount of obesity in Latin America \u2014 but should Mexicans adopt Paleo eating? \u00a0There is not enough food to feed the world, if we remove grains from the world\u2019s diet.<\/p>\n

And: \u00a0what we eat is not simply a matter of personal choices. \u00a0There are all manner of policy implications, as anyone who\u2019s ever griped about Michelle Obama\u2019s Let\u2019s Move and the school lunch program can attest to. \u00a0And if the policy implication is \u201crich people maintain their health with Paleo, poor folks are out of luck\u201d, well, that is indeed a moral issue.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Substitute Atkins, or South Beach, or Taubes, or any similar diet that promotes meat-eating, okays fruit and vegetables to varying extents, and limits carbohydrates, from grains, anyway. Do these diets work? I read Taubes\u2019 Why We Get Fat a couple years ago, and found the notion that, so long as you severely limit carbs, you\u2019ll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":2636,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIs the Paleo Diet moral?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Substitute Atkins, or South Beach, or Taubes, or any similar diet that promotes meat-eating, okays fruit and vegetables to varying extents, and limits\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/08\/is-the-paleo-diet-moral.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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