The Paleo Diet: Much More Than Food

The Paleo "diet" is plagued with a problem. Not one that arises from the actual recommendations made by its author Loren Cordain but rather from branding. The word Paleo is a reference to our common ancestors existing some 2.5 million-20 thousand years ago. The Paleo anachronism may bring to mind images of Flinstoneesque characters, pronounced brow ridges, protruding lower jaws and individuals adorned in leopard skin garbs living in rock homes (minus the pig trash compactor) . Continued explanation of Paleo can result in glazed over looks and the discussion may end with the listener missing the tenets of the diet or any of its guiding principles. The "diet" is actually the long-term application of habitual practice and lifestyle changes.

Some may be afraid of drinking the 'Paleo' Kool-Aid since it requires close examination of the way we live our lives. The food we eat, the ways we deal with stress, our interpersonal relationships, work, exercise, the way we sleep and for how long. All this change can sound daunting if one is living in discordance with what our human body was evolved to do. Changing a lifestyle can be difficult to impossible if the belief structure surrounding it doesn't change first. Believing that health is a priority and that the things that jeopardize it are not things that we are missing out on is essential to implement lasting changes. Putting health as the top priority makes all decisions easier. When we trade time to eat well, exercise and sleep sufficient hours, our levels of stress rise and we trade disease for health and well-being. Modern society does not promote human wellness as its top priority leaving the burden on the individual to create a healthy environment for themselves.

Regardless of our diets or lifestyles dogmatic views of the world will almost certainly lead to conflict. This results from an inability to change, to allow new information to add, subtract or modify our existing theories or worldview. This is the antithesis of the scientific method. Any eating regime or habitual practice unable to be modified is intrinsically flawed if new data cannot alter it. Allowing information to alter our ideas is essential to making informed and rational choices and is the heart of the scientific method. This can make a lot of people reticent to make a stand on any position since new information may lead them to retract their position or force them to adopt a new one. In an effort to save face many people will form alternate assumptions that ignore detrimental data in an effort to fit to their own worldview rather than to alter it.
There are people who want to make us believe that the Paleo diet is not viable because it discriminates against certain food groups or  labels a particular food as the root of all evil (baguette anyone?). This may be true in practice but is not what the underlying principles of Paleo are. Elimination of foods occurs from first principles derived from scientific data rather than on a purely subjective or ideological bias. The Paleo diet was created using primary scientific literature to form hypotheses, it makes testable assumptions and predictions along with being open to refinement through newly acquired data. Paleo is constantly changing as new information comes to light since it is rooted in the scientific method. This may make it seem sometimes that Paleo recommendations vacillate but like any theory it is open to refinement. Fad diets are constructed from anecdotes and suffer from individual variability and are generally not sustainable. They can also be loosely based on government recommendations for health which have been shown to be flawed and falsely modified to support corporate profit.

Paleo is More than Just Food
The Paleo diet was coined to describe a set of ideas about diet that would address issues with nutrition, metabolism and disease in modern society using anthropological and biochemical data. The use of the word "Paleo" belies the implications that it sets forth about the way that we view not only food but the way we live our lives. This diet can undergo modification to tailor individual sensitivities and genetics making it better to refer to the Paleo diet as the "Ancestral Template". The Ancestral Template makes a much clearer impression of what the aims of the diet/lifestyle are. It provides us with an evolutionary lens to examine the choices that we make in our lives and consequently our food choices.

The reason I prefer Ancestral Template is it points out the fact that its not just the common ancestors of all humans but also the ones that were evolving in disparate groups over the past few thousand years as well. This means taking into account not only how our common human relatives were adapted to their environments but also the variations in populations separated for thousands of years around the globe. Human beings exhibit adaptive radiation to the point where humans are found in all environments around the world. To say that everyone should follow Paleo canonically would be a poorly thought recommendation. Individual variation makes any global recommendations only a starting point with certain foods being more tolerated than others due to individual genetics and environment. This is why personal experimentation is so important to determine how Paleo fits into your life with your genetics.

The Ancestral Template makes assumptions about our optimal lifestyle through observing human behavior and understanding our common biology and physiological needs and constraints. The ideas promoted by the Ancestral Template are arguably all designed to make a person feel happy, adjusted and productive.
A short list of these practices: avoid anti-nutrients, reduce inflammation, exercise with movements that humans are mechanically designed for including sprinting/running/walking, reduce stress, sleep when it is dark, enjoy community and get adequate sunlight exposure.

The human experience is filled with choices with most of them made with partial information. Our health has been under investigation by humans possibly for as long as humans have cohabitated. Shamans and mystics were needed to heal humans when there was little information about the nature of disease as humans used their experiences to heal to the best of their ability. As more information came to light the use of medicinal plants and concoctions were applied to healing. Each discovery created new levels of health for humans. Science has given us the opportunity to evaluate and understand topics in depth to levels that no humans have ever had the ability to do. Antibiotics, vaccines and modern medicines are examples of how discovery can lead to new ways of understanding disease. Modern medicine  is our most powerful tool for cases of catastrophe but performs poorly in preventing disease. Applying the evolutionary lens to human health provides us with a set of practices to promote health before disease strikes.

Extending the ideas of the Ancestral Template to our relationships with the organisms we interact with adds another thread to a rich and vibrant tapestry of human health. Humans are animals and exist as part of an ecological web in which they evolved alongside all other organisms.

The Ecological Mindset: Beyond Paleo
The Ancestral Template attempts to look for the most ecological solution to the problem of understanding human health. This template is an extension of a greater principle at work I will term the ecological mindset; a way to view the world and our interactions with it to produce the most harmonious and sustainable outcomes. For instance, the ecology of our bodies consist of  a trillion of our own cells and a 10-fold greater number of other species' cells. These complex interactions create our metabolism, determine our mood, our sense of well-being and our overall health. Discord in the community we call self creates disease. When examining our choices in life we must examine the effects that our choices can have on this community called self along with the community of interactions outside of our self. Understanding what makes these communities operate at maximum efficiency will produce the best possible humans with healthy relationships. This is the goal of the ecological based mindset.

Adopting an ecological mindset is applicable to all areas of our life and has implications on our social, political and economic structures. Using a discriminate eye and thinking of ourselves as interconnected with the environment and within ourselves promotes a world filled with well-adjusted, energetic, friendly, healthy and happy people. Practicing the Ancestral Template and basing our life choices with an ecological mindset can be used to create a better world for all humans. It creates by working in harmony with our biology and ecology. Creating more efficient energy capture systems by promoting natural processes, using our environment to promote human health while creating self perpetuating systems underlies the ecological mindset. This mode of thinking puts emphasis on creating well-being in all systems  including our own local systems (i.e. our bodies, communities, cities). Ultimately the cost of this mentality is self examination, internal reflection and critical examination of all our actions and the impact they have on our ecology.
References:
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1. HarvardSchool of Pubic Health: the Nutrition Source,
Food Pyramids and Plates: What should you really eat? 2014
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/pyramid-full-story/
2. The Paleo Diet: Loren Cordain 2002