Well at the risk of sounding fatalistic, I don't really care. That's not really it though. I see it more along the lines of John MacArthur; ie, it's a spiritual problem manifesting itself in the western world's obsession with anything that lengthens your life. Can you lengthen life by ten years? Perhaps. The never ending chase for the 'correct' formula for living life is a futile one.

Dave

The length of life is only one aspect of living. One's personal take on quality of life is, in my opinion, much more important. A long miserable life without anti Paleo foods would indeed be long and miserable. My father ate anything he wanted, including lard and he lived a long life on his terms. And that's the point, live life on your own terms and let others do the same.

I would much rather live an imperfect life and die younger–who needs to be very old, anyway. Old age is tough, and highly overrated.

So I'll eat my occasional doughnut, drink my glass of wine, stay addicted to sweets, and die happy but younger. It's no one's business but my own.
But if it makes your life better to go paleo, I support you 100% and will cook paleo for you whenever you are here. I love learning new cooking styles, anyway.

If you come to Crow Duck, though, bring your own paleo things so we don't have another experience of running out of paleo foods.

Grandma

Wine's paleo, and lard is extremely paleo. Most versions of paleo also allow for occasional cheat foods, the idea being that so long as you're generally adhering, you can go ahead and live it up now and then with minimal ill effects. Mostly, though, people report that it doesn't feel nearly as much like a deprivation as you might think, because you actually end up feeling freed of a lot of foods that tend to make you hungrier or awaken bad cravings. Sweets make you want more sweets, but if you don't eat any, you end up not even thinking about them.

But I see what you're saying, and everyone's got to find their own balance between healthy eating and what-I-really-want eating. For me, since I like to cook and since I think healthy food tastes awesome, I'm sliding it over far to the healthy end. I think most people could slide it that way too with a lot less inconvenience than they imagine, but I can't make that decision, and I can't determine what anyone else's quality of life really is for them.

Processed foods happened like everything else – because people are always looking to get ahead of the competition and make money so they can stay alive, and it's a constant battle in an economy that is always competitive and usually increasingly so. Watch as people scramble to make the bucks off the paleo diet too.

Doughnuts, or the equivalent, have been around for a long time, including before the industrial revolution.

If I don't eat any sweets, I DO think about them. It's too late for me. If you don't eat anything at all, you DO feel hungry, and you do have to eat something.

I know a woman who gave up sugar for quite a while, and she never lost a pound. Your body converts other foods into sugar anyway. It just takes a little longer to digest them, so maybe you don't feel as hungry as quickly afterwards.

And I fully agree that common sense should rule.

Irene

For what it's worth, paleo also aims to take out those other foods that your body converts into sugar, like potatoes and bread.

There are people making money off paleo, but they're mostly pretty benign. They're selling information (books where they comb the scientific journals so you don't have to), and in the worst cases supplements (to replace, they argue, the nutrients that would be in our vegetables and meat if we were still able to get them from the wild). There are some companies selling paleo snacks but they're still tiny mail-order things. Paleo is more about cooking for yourself than most other diets, so it's not too well suited to commercialization.

And I'm sure you're aware, but not eating sugar isn't the same as not eating anything. There's actually been research that's found that, of the three macronutrients in the human diet (fat, protein, carbs), carbs are the only one where there's no necessary minimum intake. You can thrive indefinitely on zero carbs (or as close to zero as practically possible), and people do.

PS – Everybody who has ever died has eaten food beforehand, so obviously food causes death.

I.

Anything is suited to commercialization. Ever hear of pet rocks?

I.

But do beware that a diet of red meat and red wine will give some people gout. Jack had it.

I.

You're right, I shouldn't underestimate people's ability to commercialize stuff. But it does have an undercurrent of independence to it that I don't see in diets like low-fat or even vegan. (Vegans cook their own food plenty, but they're also, in my experience, suckers for vegan baked goods.) I feel like that's likely to stick around and make commercializing the diet somewhat tougher even if it does get popular enough for it to be worthwhile.

It's sort of like pot, actually. Everyone gets pot from their local supplier or grower or whoever because you can't get it commercially. Except now you can in some places, but the existing dealers are still doing plenty of business, not just the weed shops. It's still connected to the rebel spirit, even if the connection might weaken.

Far be it from me to contradict anything you know about gout after living with someone who had it, but I am going to copy in what I found in that same Perfect Health Diet book about it:

“The first step in fructose detoxification is its conversion to fructose-1-phosphate. The phosphate is drawn from the energy molecule ATP (adenosine triphosphate), creating a shortage of phosphate and excess of adenosine. The adenosine is disposed of by conversion to uric acid, which is released to the blood. High levels of fructose consumption beget high levels of uric acid.

“This is problematic because humans, along with dogs and apes, are the only species lacking the enzyme uricase, which breaks down uric acid. High fructose intake therefore leads to an accumulation of uric acid crystals in the joints, causing intense pain, a condition called gout. People with impaired fructose metabolism get gout at a high rate.”

I have no idea if that process sounds familiar, and perhaps there are other pathways for gout to develop.

Inuits, incidentally, traditionally ate basically nothing but red meat and fish, though no red wine, and they had negligible rates of chronic diseases like gout and cancer and such.

I'm going back to my genetically pre-programmed diet. The German diet. Red meat, sausage, a smattering of vinegary vegetables, and beer! It's proven and probably close to being Paleo.

I'm fighting back! We live in a world where trashing liberty and the constitution are celebrated but littering brands you a pariah. So grab some brats, sauerkraut, beer, and leave a big mess behind ;-)

Dave

I suspect it's more what you ate as a growing child and adolescent that determines your dietary needs than what your distant ancestors ate regularly, however healthy. Just don't ask me to eat Schwartzsour, however you spell it.

I still maintain that it's true what my dietician friends said, which was that for the best health, "eat a variety of foods." That was their best advice.

Irene

Schwartzsauer?

I can't spell French, either.

Schwartzsauer is our family heritage. Cooked blood and dumplings. My mom made this nasty stuff once in a while and she actually liked it. It was black and stinky and I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Then or today, for that matter. I once asked one of my students who was from Germany (exchange student) if she'd heard of it and she had not. Apparently they're in the 21st century in Germany, too. Ha. Grandma

I'd eat it! Wimps!

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Dave

Let's see what sounds good today. Fried cinnamon rolls and eggs for breakfast, Bacon, lettuce and tomato on toasted whole wheat bread, with a side of tater salad for lunch and chicken fried round steak, mashed potatoes and whole milk gravy, with green Beas for dinner. Screw it, I'm 77 and will do what I want. I call it living.

All of that but the green Beas, please. Are they jealous or seasick?
Mom didn't make the schwartzsauer herself, she got it from the butcher. He used to make it every now and then and he'd tell her about it so she could buy some. He was a real butcher in a real 'butcher shop' and you sure don't see that around any more. Mom's family ate it on the farm, apparently, but I don't know who made it for them. She used to tell how embarrassed they were one night when somebody important, like the minister, showed up just as they were finishing off dinner and their mouths were all black.
I might be willing to try it now, I'm a little less fastidious than I was. What put me off was that black color, which was visibly contrasted against those big white dumplings, as much as the vinegary smell and the liquid consistency.
Irene