I came across an excellent and in-depth article exploring the science and reasoning behind the Paleo Diet. Interestingly enough, CrossFit got a mention in the article as well.
Have a look at the original 2-page article, posted this past February in Maclean’s Magazine. Although it’s a lot to browse through, there is valid exploration into several different viewpoints, with some good research thrown in there, to boot.
If you’ve been toying around with the idea of eating Paleo, are currently living the Paleo lifestyle, or are simply wondering what the heck the fuss is all about, this article is a must-read.
Here is an excerpt from the article, entitled “Cavemen Who Walk Among Us”:
We’re used to seeing the potato as a focal point of conflict and discord, the clichéd casualty of the carbohydrate wars. But hoopla over green beans, that healthiest of vegetables? There are lots of reasons why Loren Cordain wouldn’t touch a green bean. If you ask him, he might talk about how legumes can render a healthy gut “leaky.” Or he might rant about their “anti-nutrient” properties. But it would come down to this: green beans weren’t around tens of thousands of years ago, when our prehistoric ancestors ushered in the Paleolithic era with the first tools made of stone. And so we shouldn’t eat them today.
“It’s not rocket science,” Cordain insists. His book, The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat, now a bible to a small but growing subculture, is built around a simple premise: humans evolved over millions of years. Modern agriculture has been around for just 10,000, a blip on the evolutionary timeline. Because of this, humans are healthiest when eating as they did before agriculture came along-in other words, like cavemen.
Today’s Workout:
Buy-in – 3 rounds of: 5 goblet squats, 5 inchworms (straight legs, no pushup), 2 laps sidewalk run (from gym to sidewalk at edge of parking lot and back is one lap).
WOD – Ring of Fire
This is a two-part WOD that consists of a strength and a metcon. Do your best at each component to get the best score!
1. Front Squat – 5 x 5 reps, all 5 sets must be above 70% of your 1RM (if you don’t know your 1RM, ramp up over the sets).
2. Tabata Mashup – rotate through air squats, double unders, and pushups for 4 rounds each. Example – 1 round of each would be: 20 sec squats, 10 sec rest, 20 sec double unders, 10 sec rest, 20 sec pushups, 10 sec rest. Cycle through the exercises three more times to complete the workout. Total reps is your score (total up all completed reps from all exercises)
Add your top weight in the squat to the total reps in the metcon for your overall score.
Cash-out – partner stretches – hamstrings, quads, chest
Wednesday 7:30pm Aug 25th
Skills:
- Glide Swings + kips
- Shoulder Stands +Press to Shoulder stand
- CartWheels
That is an excellent article.
But why in the quote does it have to come down to green beans being unhealthy because they weren’t around tens of thousands of years ago?
Aren’t the “anti-nutrients”, and the “leaky” gut sufficient reasons? I guess I’m just a little uncomfortable with the simplicity of when a food existed being the determining factor as to wether it’s healthy or not. I tend to prefer the viewpoint from this post instead: http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2010/3/28/the-only-reasonable-paleo-principle.html
Also, Robb Wolf talks more about green beans (which really aren’t that bad) in one of his podcasts (around 39:40): http://robbwolf.com/2010/01/26/the-paleolithic-solution-episode-12/
i think this workout needs to be added to myfrantime.. cant find it
\you’re right Dub… Just added it!
thanks lil lady
Haha! Cam was signed in as me. He is a lil lady 😉
maybe then I should take over top spot on the ladies’ muscle up board… I’ve got 12, how bout you? 😉 haha
Cam – not sure you could pull off booty shorts and a tank as well as some of the ladies.. just sayin
haha not even gonna try!!! safer for everyone that way…
Yeah can you to 12 mu in booty shorts and a tank? Let’s see it 🙂
Hi all. Kandas and i just found this, which might suggest that what we know as Paleo might not really be accurate. With that said, hsve a read and do your own due diligence and research. Just “food” for thought.
The Stone Age baker: Cavemen ‘ate bread, not just meat’
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 4:13 AM on 20th October 2010
Stone Age man may have eaten bread as well as meat
Gnawing on a hunk of meat as he sits by the fire, Stone Age man has always been viewed as the classic carnivore.
But new research suggests that a caveman’s diet may have been far more balanced and that he ate bread at least 30,000 years ago.
The prehistoric hunters did not only rely on animals for their diet and also dined on processed plant-based foods, according to a new study.
Powerful microscopes discovered traces of starch grains on grinding stones recovered from archaeological sites in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic.
Grains were thought to have been largely ignored by Stone Age humans, at least in part because they were difficult to process.
But the stones’ wear patterns suggest they were used for grinding roots and grains in a manner similar to a pestle 18,000 years before that, according to Dr Anna Revedin and colleagues.
Grain residues on the stones seem to originate from mostly cattail and fern plants which are rich in starch – a dense source of carbohydrates and energy.
Researchers generally assume Palaeolithic European human diets consisted almost entirely of animal protein and fat, with rare plant consumption.
Dr Revedin, of the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Early History in Florence, said: ‘The discovery of grain and plant residues on grinding stones at the three sites suggests plant-based food processing, and possibly flour production, was common and widespread across Europe at least 30,000 years ago.’
Establishing these primitive people were processing plants rather intensively reinforces recent research that their diets were as a whole much more diverse than is generally believed.
‘It’s like a flatbread, like a pancake with just water and flour,” said Laura Longo, a researcher on the team, from the Italian Institute of Prehistory and Early History.
‘You make a kind of pita and cook it on the hot stone,’ she said, describing how the team replicated the cooking process. The end product was ‘crispy like a cracker but not very tasty,’ she added.
Grinding plant matter into flour is time consuming – as is making the tools to do it – to produce high energy food rich in carbohydrates that was easily storable and transportable.
The inclusion of cereals in our diet is considered an important step in human evolution because of the technical complexity and the culinary manipulation that are required to turn grains into staples.
The researchers said: ‘European Paleolithic populations are generally considered to have been predominantly carnivorous, because the evidence for plant subsistence is limited.
‘We are now able to add evidence for plant food processing, on the basis of the recovery of flour residues on coarse heavy-duty tools across Europe up to 30,000 years ago.
‘The flour would have undergone a multistep processing involving root peeling, drying and finally grinding using specific tools. After this, the flour needed to be cooked to obtain a suitable and digestible food.
‘Studies of current human diets suggest cooking is essential because raw food, as such, cannot supply sufficient calories.’
The findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Wow! Very interesting, Kingsley. Thanks for passing that on!
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