Hans said:
The only "good" thing is that if they follow their own advice, they will learn that they are wrong "the hard way."
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Well, I can testify that I followed similar advice, and I learned the hard way... the advice isn't all bad, just incomplete and plagued with speculation...
It seems to me that most people eating this diet are eating mostly beef, lamb, and the organ meats thereof.
Of the "raw" paleo diet followers, I note that those who claim to be comfortable or successful with the diet are eating mostly the organ meats and fat of high quality beef or lamb and not too much muscle meat. I assume that they are getting only small amounts of PUFAs.
On a slight tangent, it's interesting that Banting (who I believe plays a noteworthy side role in the Paleolithic Diet theater) was advised not to eat pork... because it was thought that there was "starch" in it.
I on the other hand, was not able to get beef or lamb products (in the U.S. I was able to get lamb and lamb fat... and didn't notice any problems). After 6 months of pork I discovered that Hans Selys was right, and so was Houssay. This knowledge I regret having to learn the hard way.
In hindsight, it seems that one can do well on a raw version of the "Paleolithic" diet if the food consists of adequate organ meat and fat of healthy grazing animals that don't accumulate an inordinate amount of PUFAs in their tissue and some fruits and berries. As for a cooked version... I unfortunately tried that also and found it extremely debilitating. Of course, lots of oxidized cholesterol, HCA's, etc.
I think the biggest problems I had with the raw Paleolithic diet were:
1. Forensic techniques that I cannot verify as to their accuracy. I don't believe that archeologists are necessarily correct in their readings of these bones and relics, in their assumptions about the health of the Paleolithic people, or in the true nature of their diets.
2. Oversimplification. The story of the scientist who ate what he considered to be an eskimo diet is the perfect example. Lack of understanding of foundational elements in basic health and disease -- following the diet was for me an attempt to find an easy way out of various health problems without having to wade through and sort out difficult complexities and without having to understand things more fully.
3. Limitation of alternative possibilities in the search for health and freedom from illness. The impossibility of following such a diet in an evironment that doesn't provide lots of beef, lamb, or similar grazing animals along with a variety of their organ meats was the wake up call for me. So I have to find more understanding and other ways to survive in less hospitable settings. And this seems to be only for the better... because it's not all so great to be trapped in Paleolithic times as one might think at first.
There are often several ways to accomplish difficult tasks... The less knowledge and understanding, the more one has to rely on brute force and crude techniques to achieve the task. The more knowledge and understanding... the more one can appear to do miraculous tasks with little or no apparent or immediate effort. |
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