Recently, I was at a potluck where despite the wide array of delicious food, many people were only eating meat and the veggie platter.
I had chosen the wrong party to bring my homemade chocolate chip cookies.
The diet of the day was the Whole30 diet, a 30-day Paleo-type diet that “will help you regain your healthy metabolism, reduce systemic inflammation, and discover how these foods are truly impacting your health, fitness and quality of life”
(For the record, restrictive diets are generally not the best way to boost your metabolism).
The Paleo diet aims to mimic that of our pre-agricultural, hunter-gatherer ancestors. It is a high protein, low carbohydrate diet that emphasizes meats and vegetables (except our poor potato) and avoids dairy products, grains, legumes (beans and peanuts), refined oils and sugars.
It is based on the premise that humans have not had enough time to adapt to our current agriculture-based diet, leading to an outbreak of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But before we throw away our bags of rice, I think we need to take a moment to consider a few other things:
• The average lifespan of people in paleo times was about 30 years (hardly old enough to get a chronic disease)
• They hunted and gathered food themselves (i.e. they were very active)
• The meat eaten was lean, free range and organic; not fattened, factory-farmed and shrink-wrapped.
• They did not smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol or sit for long periods of time.
However, my biggest criticism of the Paleo diet is that it has lost sight of the fact that we now live on a planet with seven billion other people.
If we all followed this diet, we would run out of animals and other resources pretty quickly.
Furthermore, the bulk of scientific evidence still suggests that the best diet to reduce your chance of chronic disease (and inflammation) is one based on whole grains, fruits and vegetables. Finally, it is important to remember that there is a difference between eating a deer that you have hunted yourself (without an ATV or rifle) and the 12-oz. rib eye steak from your grocery store.
-Serena Caner is a registered dietician who works at Shuswap Lake General Hospital.
