In Part 1 of this two part post I will give a little background on how it is I came to eat the way that I do. Part 2 will focus more on what I eat and some of the practical aspects related to my diet.
Part 1
I have been asked a lot recently about my food choices. This may be in part because my daughter Nicole is in Medical School at the University of Vermont and brings home friends from school, all of whom want to talk about health, disease, and the role that diet may play in causation or prevention. It may also result from my trying to be more social, which provides more opportunity to share meals with others, and thus opens the door to such discussions.
In any case, I eat what is most commonly referred to as a Paleo Diet. I prefer to call it the Ancestral Diet as I feel this is a better way to describe it. If you don't believe in evolution and its related corollaries, then I can save you some time here - you should stop reading now as one has to buy into the foundational concepts in order to even discuss objectively anything I might advocate.
In essence the theory is that humans evolved over thousands of generations and that in so doing the human body adapted to optimize the readily consumable, macro-nutrient dense food sources that nature provided. Our distant ancestors didn't shop for processed food, didn't add sugar (or high fructose corn syrup) to their drinks, and didn't fatten their protein sources to obesity prior to eating them.
A common counter-argument to studying what our ancestors ate and then trying to eat that way too is that our ancestors weren't very healthy, that they didn't on average live very long. There is a wealth of anthropological evidence to the contrary and if you do your homework it is quite evident that our ancestors were exceedingly healthy and did not suffer from many of the most common ailments and diseases that plague modern society. To be sure, they lived primarily outdoors with only rudimentary shelter, they didn't have the benefit of modern medicine, so no antibiotics or other miraculous treatments for sickness and injury, they had to deal with some very nasty predators, and much of their primary protein sources were inherently dangerous to pursue and bring down given the tools at their disposal. Suffice it to say that life was strenuous and fraught with hazards, such that the average life span was relatively low. Nevertheless, for those that survived to old age, the archaeological record shows that they were remarkably healthy individuals when compared to their agriculture-fed descendants.
I came to eat the way I do via a convoluted path of suggestion from certain quarters at approximately a time in my life when several health issues presented themselves and my triathlon performance was no longer improving despite hard work and increasing experience. My health symptoms were high cholesterol, joint pain, skin issues, temperature regulation, chronic fatigue, a plethora of allergies, and frequent lower GI discomfort. It turned out that I was hypothyroid, which explained some of the problems, but not all of them. The doctors never established the cause of my hypothyroidism, as it doesn't run in my family (high cholesterol does, but without any associated cardiovascular disease).
I started taking synthroid and that led to marked improvement in my health and disposition. However, I also did some research into the Paleo Diet and made the decision to give it a try as well. I bought the Paleo Diet for Athletes book by Louis Cordain and Joe Friel, and tried to follow its recommendations for eating an ancestral diet with modifications to meet the nutritional needs of a competitive modern triathlete. My triathlon results begin to improve, my overall health was better, and I had less issues, especially in my gut and with my skin. Subsequent testing has shown marked improvement in my cholesterol panel year over year, and this year my daily synthroid dose was actually reduced. I have never felt, looked, or performed better in my life than at present. Age is having an effect, but not to the degree that I had always feared it would.
So when I say I eat an ancestral diet, what does that look like?
First of all, it means that I don't eat the following on a regular basis or as a major component in any meal:
1. Grains - all grains that humans consume are essentially grass seeds. In their natural form they are inedible and contain proteins designed to irritate the intestinal tract of any animals that consume them. Humans make grains edible by processing them, but often the harmful proteins remain and can cause mild to severe irritation and inflammation in our bodies when consumed regularly over the long term. In terms of satiety, grains are also less effective than proteins and fats, so we tend to consume more of them, whether we need the calories or not. Finally, in terms of nutrient density grains are a poor substitute for unprocessed meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts;
2. Dairy - At one time all humans were likely lactose intolerant, and milk, while naturally occurring in many species, was not harvested and consumed by humans as an independent food source until modern times. Many of us remain sensitive to dairy products both in our intestines and in terms of how our body responds to dairy intake, most notably in terms of insulin response and pH balance. I consume dairy only occasionally and in very small quantity;
3. Processed foods - If it takes processing to make the food edible, then it probably isn't good for us, or at least not as good as what nature has provided. I do use energy drinks, gels, and bars to fuel myself during long workouts and races. However, for all other times I try to stick to foods with minimal or no processing;
4. Anything with high fructose corn syrup - HFCS is a modern product of the industrial revolution. It is widely used in the food industry because it is cheaper to use than natural sweeteners. It also turns out that our bodies process fructose differently than other sugar sources and the net result of what goes on in our livers is not good for us. If you think modern American society suffers from an obesity problem, HFCS is one of the leading reasons why;
5. Anything with preservatives or other chemical additives - Our food should come to us as harvested. I don't have anything additional to say on this subject;
6. Meats that were raised on foods not natural to them - This is a big deal to me and represents a big change in what food I buy, where I buy it, and how much I pay. The logic goes something like this: if I am going to eat foods that are natural sources of nutrition for me because I believe that is what my body has evolved to optimally utilize, then this food that I consume will most likely be healthier for me if it also consumes what is natural for it. Again, the food industry makes more money if they can use hormones and unnatural foods such as corn and grains to raise huge, obese, barely able to stand or run or swim animals because they sell by weight. Bigger, heavier animals mean more money. Unfortunately it does not mean healthier food sources for the consumer, and in fact may mean that we get decidedly unbalanced nutrition from such sources.
I'll talk more about what I do eat as well as tell you what I'm focusing on or experimenting with in Part 2.
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