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111 of 116 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
5 stars for the paleo diet, 3 for this version, August 10, 2011
This review is from: The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to Eat (Paperback)
I'm a big supporter of the Paleo diet concept and the idea that we need to eat the traditional foods our genes need to be healthy.
This book claims to be the last word in explaining what our ancestors ate, and to not be just another book full of fads, but it is seriously flawed. The author seems to be trying to merge information on what the caveman diet consisted of with as many modern food fads as possible. He is particularly ignorant about healthy fats and oils.
The book is also not very convincing in the way it explains the scientific basis for the Paleo diet.
I disagree with the authors very-low salt stance and would advise them to read about unrefined sea salt and the work of Dr Brownstein on the many myths about salt and low-salt diet scaremongering, and the cholesterol scaremongering as well. The author has also been grossly misinformed about saturated fats. You should probably ignore what the author says about fats and oils in this book, as most of it is just plain wrong.
Liquid vegetable oils did not exist in paleolithic times and cooking with flax oil is very unhealthy! Saturated fats are also an important part of a healthy diet, and eating eggs does NOT raise your cholesterol levels. The 'very high' cholesterol levels mentioned in the book of 208 are also not high at all, and well within the healthy range of 200 - 240 according to lipid expert Mary Enig PhD.
The healthiest oils to cook with are ghee (unless you're 100% dairy free), lard, tallow, coconut and palm oils and olive oil. Oils should never be heated to very high temperatures such as in deep frying. These are the traditional fats to cook with, not flax oil!
The book is also very inconsistent and vague when it comes to talking about supplements. The recommendation given for vitamin C is very low and only the alpha tocopherol form of vitamin E is recommended rather than a supplement containing all 8 forms. It is also not a good idea to take only a few supplements in larger doses as this creates imbalances, and a general basic supplementation regime is a much healthier option.
The book also claims 'protein can't be overeaten' which is just not true as excessive protein intake stresses the liver. Far healthier than a very high protein eating plan is a high fat, moderate protein and low carb eating plan as described in the books on traditional eating listed below. Our ancestors ate a lot of fat and a lot of it was saturated. Saturated fat offers many benefits to the body.
The author is also wrong about the 'calories in, calories out' theory of weight loss. The book 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' by Gary Taubes explains that:
1. The 'calories in, calories out' mantra is a myth
2. 'A calorie is a calorie is a calorie' is a myth
3. The 'just eat less and do more exercise to lose weight' message seems to be logical but is actually wrong and unhelpful
4. Overweight and obese people often eat no more calories, or even less, than their thinner counterparts
5. Low calorie diets also reduce the amount of nutrients in the diet
6. Dietary fat, including saturated fat, is not a cause of obesity. Refined and easily digestible carbs causing high insulin levels cause obesity.
The book 'Know Your Fats' by lipid expert Mary Enig PhD explains the facts about fats and oils and why the saturated fat = heart disease hypothesis is wrong. See also books such as Ignore the awkward! How the cholesterol myths are kept alive.
The book ' The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram your genes for effortless weight loss, vibrant health and boundless energy (Primal Blueprint Series) is a far better book on the Paleolithic diet.
The book 'Deep Nutrition' offers a far more well researched and credible discussion of traditional foods and how they affect our genes. This book provides a wealth of fascinating and compelling information that is not available for free online. This book and 'Know Your Fats' and 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' are essential reading.
The Paleo approach generally is very solid, but not as it is interpreted in this book. This book contains an okay quality 3 star version of the diet - far better than the standard diet full of refined foods and grains but missing out lots of good information as well. This is not the last word on diet, but a book which is quite faddish in its approach overall.
Jodi Bassett, The Hummingbirds' Foundation for M.E.
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415 of 466 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
simply THE book to read on proper nutrition, February 17, 2002
By A Customer
I would like to write this review for 2 reasons: 1)I just want to say that I first started to lose weight when I switched to a low-carb diet, but continued to eat lots of dairy and soy, as I was a vegetarian. I have always been a size 12-14, and was quite pleased when I dropped to a size 10 by eliminating bread, pasta and sugar from my diet. I still experienced occasional fatigue and lots of digestive upset, though, and it wasn't until I took an allergy test and found I was allergic to grains and dairy - and subsequently cut both completely out of my diet - that I started to feel the energy and vitality for which I have been searching for years. I'm also allergic to most beans, so my only alternative source of protein was meat. I started to eat lean, unprocessed meats and fresh fruits and veggies, and my energy was not only soaring, but my depression lifted, my skin became smoother and softer, and I dropped down to a size 4 without even trying to lose weight! (I've never been less than a size 10 in my life!) Anyways, I effortlessly maintained that level of vitality and a size 4 until I started to eat rice flour, oats, processed meats and candy. I quickly gained 15lbs and fell into depression once again, leading me to realize that once on a paleo diet, it must become a way of life. The foods that Dr.Cordain describes as detrimental to our health (grains, dairy, legumes) are indeed factors in all sorts of health problems. If you are a possible buyer of this book, please take note of this, you cannot expect to lose weight and then go back to your usual style of eating. Buy this book and undertake Dr.Cordain's suggestions only if you are ready to change your lifestyle - it will be well worth it, I promise! In any case, I have since started back on the paleo-lifestyle route (feeling better already and have lost 5lbs in one week), with the help of Lauren Cordain's book, and it has been an invaluable resource for me. I have beeen waiting for him to write a book for a while now, as I have been reading interviews and papers written by him on www.beyondveg.com since I first started on the paleo nutrition route 2 years ago. This brings me to my second point in writing this review: 2)In response to the reviews that mention disdain at the apparent contradiction with Dr.Cordain discouraging the use of saturated fat while promoting the idea that humans' natural diet contained lots of meat, known to be rich in saturated fats, I have read research that sheds some light on this, at least for me. It seems that the saturated fat found in lean game meat - buffalo or wild boar that has been running around the jungle or the plains all day - has a different composition entirely than the saturated fat found in your average piece of supermarket meat - cows, chickens, even free-range game. There is a more favorable ratio of omega 3:omega 6 fatty acids in the lean game meat, as well as other aspects that I can't remember offhand, but you can read more for yourself on this subject in interviews of Dr.Cordain on beyondveg's website. One more note for those of you trying to decide between Dr.Atkins or something similar, or a book such as this one or Neanderthin: speaking from the point of view of a person who has developed IBS and multiple food allergies as a result of the Standard American Diet, I wholeheartedly agree with the low-carb way of life, but must offer my 2cents that any diet that fails to caution the consumer on the downfalls of consuming fake foods such as artificial sweetners and salty, processed meats, cannot be healthy for the long-term. I would eat fresh cream or whole milk before I put MSG, nitrates, sulfites or Splenda into my body. I have tried Atkins, and I felt a big difference in my general health from that program to one of eating more natural foods as advocated by Dr.Cordain, Diana Schwarzbein and Ray Audette. If you are undecided, please take your long-term health as well as your short-trem weight into consideration. Any of the above-mentioned authors can help you lose weight and feel great, but unlike Atkins or Eades, they will help you do it for life. As far as deciding between the above-mentioned authors, "The Paleo Diet" is written by a well-respected professor and expert in the field of paleolithic nutrition, and if you were to go with one book on low-carbing, this would probably the healthiest, most sane and moderate approach I have seen out there.
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418 of 477 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not such a great book, but it is worth reading, April 11, 2007
Let me begin by saying that I am a 100% believer in the paleo diet/ caveman diet concept. I am a national-level olympic weightlifter and have tried every combination of high/low carb/fat diet to find something that allowed me to stay in the same weight class as I got older. The only thing that has ever worked is the paleo diet.
For a good, concise description of the paleo diet, search for it on wikipedia.
Having said that, I will now be critical of this book. I found this book to be very verbose and never provided a convincing argument for the paleo diet. Very little evidence was provided that the diet described in this book was what was eaten 20,000 years ago. Most of the argument for this diet was modern research on how ingredient X (e.g. omega-3 fatty acids) is good for you. I have heard excellent evidence supporting the paleo diet during a few lectures by a scientist that studies coprolites (few thousand year old petrified excrement), unfortunately, similar evidence is not in this book.
Furthermore, there are a few technical issues I have with what is presented in this book. I have a PhD in theoretical chemistry. Having gone through graduate school, I know that just about anyone can get a PhD or become faculty if they are patient. Because of this, I'm immune to the Doctor/Professor name dropping used throughout this book.
Repeatedly, the author asserts that chloride from salt causes the body to become more acidic. Offhand, it is not at all clear to me how this could happen. Chloride ions in solution are basically inert. I have to believe that this conjecture is wrong.
The author also makes repeated comments about how bad salt is for you. A few years back, there was an article in the journal Science (one of the two highest tier scientific journals) about the politics of salt. The article describes a political agenda to show that salt caused medical problems. A few hundred million dollars and a half dozen project leaders later, the program was shut down because the researchers could not prove what the politicians wanted. I'm not suggesting that people should eat a lot of salt, since cavemen ate much less sodium and more potassium than we do today, but I am suggesting the health problems blamed on salt have sketchy research backing them up.
In spite of this book's problems, it is worth reading. The description of the paleo diet is good enough to be effective when followed.
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