12,334 healthy adults aged 40 to 69 years were studied for levels of cholesterol related to cause of death. They found that the risk of death was significantly higher for those with the lowest cholesterol levels for hemorrhagic stroke, heart failure (excluding myocardial infarction), and cancer mortality. Those with the lowest cholesterol (under 4.14mmol/L – 160mg/dL) had around a 50% higher death rate than those with cholesterol up to 5.17mmol/L – 200mg/dL. High cholesterol (above 6.21mmol/L – 240mg/dL) was not a risk factor. Read that again; High cholesterol WAS NOT a risk factor.

What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie? – That’s the title of a New York Times article written by Gary Taubes in 2002 that uncovers the truth about carbs and fats. For many years it was taboo to even consider studying the health benefits of fat. But over the last 15 years, a number of studies and discoveries have come out contradicting the assumptions made so long ago about the relationship between fat and cardiovascular disease. A growing number of doctors, chemists, and nutritionists, are on board with the low carb diet and its health benefits. “Low carb” incidentally does not mean no or very little carbohydrates. It just means lower than the insanely bumped up carb loads recommended to us since the 70’s. The article quotes Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, speaking on the results of the longest running, most comprehensive diet study ever on nearly 300,000 people. He stated those data clearly contradict the low-fat-is-good-health message “and the idea that all fat is bad for you; the exclusive focus on adverse effects of fat may have contributed to the obesity epidemic.”

Studies never showed that saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet cause heart disease.
This video sums up what happened.

Some fats are ESSENTIAL to our health. Omega-3 and omega-6 are essential fatty acids (of the polyunsaturated kind) that our bodies can not synthesize and must come from food. On the other hand, there is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. We also need fat for the absorbtion of some vitamins (A,D,E & K). And, fat is a primary satiating signal to our brain to tell us we are full.

We hear a lot about adding more omega 3 to our diets. The best place to find this is in certain fish like tuna, salmon, mackerel, herring, sardines, etc. 2 factors at work here are the total amount of omega-6 and the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 in our diet. Our ancestral diet was generally thought to have an omega-3 to omega-6 ratio of 1:1 or 1:2. In the last remaining hunter-gatherer societies and even some non-industrialized cultures, we’ve seen a typical ratio of 1:2 or less. For detailed explanation fats, fatty acids and their role in chronic diseases, I highly recommend Dr. Loren Cordain’s Primer on the subject.

After 30+ years, we’ve moved away from healthy natural fats and oils to processed vegetable oils and hydrogenated fats that change that ratio to 1:17. That’s 17 times more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3! The next complication is that all of our beef and fowl, which used to feed “free range” on their natural grasses, are now fed high corn and grain diets for “fattening”. The results are significantly increased levels of saturated fats and omega-6s. While saturated fat has some influence, this elevated omega-6 level and skewed 3 vs 6 ratio, along with inflammation caused by high carbohydrate diets, appears to be what is strongly linked to cardio vascular disease.

But what about cholesterol?
Cholesterol is essential in our bodies. All mammels require it. It is an important precursor molecule for the synthesis of vitamin D, the adrenal gland hormones cortisol and aldosterone, as well as the sex hormones progesterone, estrogens, and testosterone. It’s involved in a vast number of cellular processes and I’ll discuss it in detail in a post to come.

So, Paleo considers grains, legumes, and dairy to be problematic for many people. While sugar just plain isn’t good for anyone. Let’s break this down and examine what is going on here and why we want to limit foods from these groups.

Wheat

This includes grains in general but the big offenders are wheat, rye, and barley. Have you noticed the “Gluten Free” labels showing up on so many things in your market? Gluten is the protein that comes from the endosperm of various grass-related grains. It’s actually the composite of 2 proteins, gliadin and glutenin. It is also the bain of any celiac’s breakfast plate. Celiac
disease is an autoimmune digestive disease that occurs when the villi and linings of the small intestine are damaged over time. This creates a “leaky gut” exposing the entire body to its contents and inhibits the body’s ability to absorb nutrients producing fatal results if not treated.

Celiacs are thought to be a genetically succeptible to gluten but other people diagnosed with the disease have recovered thru the elimination of gluten. This succeptibility may to be related to the number of your ancestors who have been exposed to grains. Agriculture started in Egypt about 8000 bc. On the other hand, Ireland, which introduced cereal cultivation relatively late, around 3000 bc, has one of the highest incidents of gluten intollerance in Europe. This is a pivotal point in a civilization where we transitioned from a hunter gatherer society to an agricultural one. Our diet went from roughly 100-200 varieties of wild animals, fruits, and vegetables to a very limited set of staple foods comprised of 3-5 domesticated meat species, a few cereal grains, and 15-20 other plant foods.

The term ‘gluten’ is the latin word for glue. This describes gluten’s sticky binding properties which make it so popular as an additive. Over the last few thousand years, those grains have been selectively bred to increase the amount of protein gluten in the seed as well as many other characteristics to improve yield. Most wheat today has 42 chromosomes which is a far cry from the 14 that it started with thousands of years ago. Increasing the yield of wheat production has been needed to satisfy the demand for Gluten as an additive in processed foods and a filler to bulk up even meat. This makes finding truly gluten free products very difficult. It even forms the basis for the production of monosodium glutamate (MSG).

People are going to be sensitive to gluten to varying degrees. However, this is only one problem linked to eating wheat, and may not even be the most serious one. That honor belongs to wheat lectin.

Lectins are sugar-binding proteins that play a ‘recognition’ role in biological systems. It’s like a key that fits certain types of locks. Dr. Del Thiessen explains in his article The Awful Truth About Eating Grains that “Lectins, which are proteins that are widespread in the plant kingdom, are recognized as major anti-nutrients of food. Cereal grain lectins are wheat germ agglutinin (WGA). It can interfere with digestive/absorptive activities and can shift the balance in bacterial flora shown to cause problems with normal gut metabolism. The potential to disrupt human health is high.” What’s more, WGA is found in highest concentrations in “whole wheat”, just where our nutritionist commonly direct us to. Soaking, fermenting, and cooking will remove some of the lectins from grains and legumes, but not all. And while various foods and supplements may inactivate some of these toxic lectins, it is impossible for such substances to protect the body from them completely.

There are many many kinds of lectins. They span from the extremely leathel Ricin found in castor beans all the way to those used to determine a person’s bloodtype. Robb Wolf agrees that WGA is one of the “nastier” lectins and explains in his book the Paleo Solution how lectins are not broken down in the normal digestive process allowing them to remain large proteins when they arrive in the intestines. These lectins attach to receptors in the lining and are transported intact through the intestinal lining where they are mistaken for invaders like bacteria. They also damage the intestinal lining allowing other proteins to escape from the intestines. Once loose in your system, WGA lectin can also pass through your blood-brain barrier and may attach to the protective coating on your nerves known as the myelin sheath. This book covers in detail the interaction of these nutrients and anti-nutrients with the myriad digestive hormones in the body.

Even if we put all of these concerns aside, grains still break down into sugar in our body. Our drastically increased carb/sugar intake is steadily deteriorating our health. I’ll have more on that later.

There’s a whole movement centered around ancestral health and the Paleolithic diet which has its roots in evolutionary biology. What keeps this from being just a fad diet? Most notably the fact that it’s what humans ate for at least 100’s of thousands of years prior to the agricultural revolution. It’s a diet in the “this is what we eat” sense and not in the “I want to lose weight” sense. Although you’ll find that pretty easy to do as well.

Wikipedia states “Centered on commonly available modern foods, the “contemporary” Paleolithic diet consists mainly of grass-fed pasture raised meats, fish, vegetables, fruit, roots, and nuts, and excludes grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar, and processed oils.” Unfortunately, that is about the only helpful piece of information in the first 3 paragraphs of the page. The rest is repeated fear mongering of other news stories based on biased and misinformed people. Those who make it passed the initial cries of alarm will find a decent reference of the history and science of the last 40 years of research that has led to this.

Let’s take a look again at that list of foods again…

• Beef
• Fish
• Vegetables
• Fruit
• Roots (tubers/ potatoes)
• Nuts and seeds

That’s pretty sound nutritional basis for your meals don’t you think? The second piece to this evolutionary puzzle is to weed out the offending foods that many people are not tolerant of to one degree or another. This includes grains (WHEAT), legumes (BEANS), dairy (we all know what that is), refined sugar, and processed oils. These foods can cause a myriad of health problems for people including diabetes, neurodegeneration, heart disease, and autoimmunity diseases.

In my next post, I’ll begin to explain the problems with these foods individually. Then with that information in hand, we’ll construct the reasons for being specific about where we find our beef and fish and how they are raised or caught.