Mar 5, 2010
The Problem With Paleos
From Barbara King of the Friday Animal Blog:
Picture this: An apartment on New York’s Upper East Side filled with people—well, men, anyway—eating beef jerky and swapping retro recipes. Way, way retro: no pizza, no milk or cheese, no grains or other agricultural products. These guys call themselves paleos; they embrace the idea that “the human body is best suited to the lifestyle of the people who roamed the Earth tens of thousands of years ago.”
I spend a lot of time teaching, reading, and writing about human prehistory without ever craving beef jerky. So I gaped a bit as I read the description of paleos’ philosophies and preferences, published last month in the German magazine Der Spiegel. Twin pillars of the paleo lifestyle are a meat-rich diet and a commitment to intense physical activity, not sustained exercise like jogging but rather bursts of exertion performed out of doors.
It’s easy to mock the more extreme paleos, men who, the magazine reports, crawl on all fours through the bush then streak the jungle (wearing minimal clothing). Experts note, however, that genuine health benefits may accrue when someone opts for a balanced diet and rejects 21st-century couch surfing in favor of healthful body movement.
The article and a blog I found written by evolutionary-fitness guru Arthur De Vany focus largely on health benefits for paleos. Those of us who care about animals—whether we’re vegan, vegetarian, or just cutting back on our meat intake—know this focus matters because our diet impacts animal welfare so directly. But let’s dig more deeply and see what this passion for the past means for thinking about animals.
Despite the nod to fruits and vegetables, a distinct thread of conquering nature is at work in the back-to-prehistory movement; Man the Hunter fantasies hover just beneath its surface. Why are (apparently) almost all paleos male? Somehow I can’t imagine women getting all jazzed up about a past in which natural childbirth meant laboring in a cave, bears peering in to scope out the available human protein.
But there’s the rub. Our male ancestors were always more than hunters. Our female ancestors were always more than mothers. And our fellow animals have been, for many millennia, much more than protein to be gulped or predators to be avoided. They have been emotional and in some cases spiritual touchstones for our evolving lineage.
Let me insert here a key principle from anthropology: There is no monolithic, easy-to-identify “human evolutionary past.” Local ecologies varied over time and space, and the behavior of local human populations varied as well. It’s way too simple to appeal to a single past—or to the power of biology alone—in thinking about our present.
Here’s what we do know about animal-human relating in prehistory: Tens of thousands of years ago, Neanderthals in Europe and Asia interred their dead in the ground with animal bones, and fashioned jewelry from seashells and animal teeth. Early Homo sapiens in Europe, Africa, and Australia decorated caves and rocks with animal images, occasionally picturing the animals as they interacted with others of their own kind or as half-human, half-animal hybrids. Around 9,000 years ago, a man in ancient Turkey was buried with a lamb, and a woman in Cyprus was buried with a cat. Domesticated dogs accompanied the first Americans as they crossed the Bering Strait and settled our land.
Prehistory, then, in all its glorious complexity, offers us tantalizing glimpses of the deep connections between people and other animals.
My problem with the paleo fad, more than its disciples’ beef-jerky addiction, is its narrow view of our past, and of the role of animals in it.
There are plenty of female “paleos.” Lots of the problems the paleo diet works well for, like irritable bowel syndrome, are most common in women. For me, the paleo diet was a cure for the huge amounts of pain I suffered.
You don’t need a lot of meat to eat paleo, you simply need to cut out grains and sugar. As a former vegan and agronomist, I am fully committed to not eating industrially farmed animals and very much aware of the price of my diet.
Having raised working dogs, I also very much appreciate the role of animals are more than food…as friends and allies.
Being paleo simply means eating food that’s best for humans…it doesn’t mean reenactment.
I’m glad you brought up the idea of gender and nature-dominance and how it relates to the paleo lifestyle. There are many of us women who eat this way, and we’re very thoughtful about how it affects distinctly female biological processes like menstruation, fertility, and childbirth. For most of us this has led to feeling more in agreement with our bodies: PMS, painful, irregular periods, polysystic ovaries, and infertility are allayed if not reversed. Hormones regulate and sex drives go up. It’s empowering to understand how our bodies function and not feel they’re working against us. I don’t think the paleo diet is the only way to achieve this, but I have seen a lot of this kind of success in online paleo/primal forums.
I agree there is no monolithic, human evolutionary past. Paleos talk often of distinctions in cultures (Kitvians or traditional Japanese vs. Masai or Inuit, for example), and generally have a sense that there are diverse ways to achieve health. However, by embracing this new “lifetyle” we’re often excluding ourselves from normative cultural practices and beliefs. In its place we create new symbols: Grok, spears, stalking and foraging. I admit these often come from a Flinstones-like view of the prehistory, but I think it’s more for fun than anything. Most serious paleos make decisions based on current nutritional and exercise data, and not “what would Grok do?” hypothesizing.
On the issue of animals and nature-dominance: I know many paleos who have long taken issue with factory farms; some (including myself) were committed vegetarians or vegans before adopting this way of eating. I know we’re more conscientious of animal life than people eating the standard American diet. I would even venture to say a paleo diet is more concerned with life-and-death cycles than a vegetarian one. (Here’s a great post by Melissa McEwan on the topic: http://huntgatherlove.com/content/my-first-slaughter). Lierre Kieth, a former vegan and women’s rights advocate, makes a good argument in The Vegetarian Myth for agriculture as the ultimate nature dominance. I won’t rehash the argument here, but I think it’s a must-read for anyone who cares about these issues.
I don’t find the paleo diet at odds with female-ness, complex anthropological understanding of human history, or deep respect for animal life. My connections to these things have only strengthened as a result of my new way of living.
Good post, Barbara, and good questions!
I think the paleo thing is a fad, like any other. What’s missing in these fads?
To me, what’s missing is the creation/education of self-sustaining, self-thinking, self-responsible individuals.
Claims about “The Golden Age” are at least as old as Herodotus, if they haven’t always existed in some form in human culture, generally.
The “paleo” claims are just another of these.
While I don’t disagree with much of the paleo message (eat natural/unprocessed foods, decrease intake of “modern” substances (sugar, wheat, etc.), get plenty of healthy movement), the “cult” factor is disturbing.
Cult factor??? What do you reference. Those who eat Paleo/Primal are mo different than sports fans, soccer moms or coupon clippers. Anyone eating Paleo or Primal simply eat how our bodies are designed to eat.
Why is that cultish?
“Why are (apparently) almost all paleos male?”
Source, please. Quantify “almost all” as well.
“Despite the nod to fruits and vegetables, a distinct thread of conquering nature is at work in the back-to-prehistory movement”
A thought experiment: Which is more about ‘conquering’ nature, a pastoralist attitude about animal husbandry such as Bill Salatin’s (of PolyFace Farms where he has actually managed to ACCRUE topsoil, or the modern agrarian economy that has literally transformed the landscape and devestated entire ecosystems?
Which is more about conquering nature, an attitude that leads us to consume fare that we are clearly well adapted to, or an attitude that leads to attempts to ‘conquer’ our bodies and natural inclinations through consumption of edible food-like substances such as Tofu, Tempeh, Seitan, gluten, etc?
“My problem with the paleo fad, more than its disciples’ beef-jerky addiction, is its narrow view of our past, and of the role of animals in it”
The “paleo” (a term which I actually dislike) community has a far more spiritually evolved and nuanced view of animals than does modern society.
Thanks for your post, it was very thought provoking. A little more work needed, however.
I couldn’t possibly improve upon Leslie’s and Melissa’s feedback. My wife and I have had the same experience moving toward Paleo after years of strict vegetarianism (a choice we made for ethical, environmental, and health reasons …)
You are truly ignorant.
Interesting read. My girlfriend and I have been doing 95% paleo since July 09. I still do some dairy and we have had some buffalo wings a couple times with beer, but other than that all we eat is meat, Veggies/fruit, and fat. I go heavy on the fat she goes much lighter. The results are stunning and it isn’t just the way we look, but the way we perform, sleep, and it is rare we get sick, only an occasional headache.
Paleo is a method that works for those who will do it but I think the problem is that most people are way to busy and lack the time to prepare meals, I wouldn’t consider myself to eat Paleo if I had to eat out all the time. It would be too difficult, but I can control what I eat at home. For instance I am eating some chicken, broccoli and pecans right now. The cool thing is that I will eat as much as I want.
I think it’s funny & misguided & disturbing, all at once… though, ok, I like to see people thinking about what they eat! and if they say ‘wild game only’ or even ‘non-industrially farmed animals only’ I think it’s (still misguided but) better than what most Westerners are doing now… In fact, if they say ‘wild game only,’ I guess that’d make ‘em vocal conservationists, right?! Gotta have a H*LL of a lot of wilderness, to support that habit! So I guess we could have THAT in common, at least…
Philosophical problems:
1. (And this is the biggie:) Humans existed MUCH longer on a primarily fruit/ nut/ plant diet in warmer climates pre-IceAge, with (like other primates) occasional meat as a ‘feast food’ or ‘crisis food’, than they spent evolving on a primarily-meat diet. That seems like a total ‘DUH’; I don’t know how it got overlooked… The cold temperatures FORCED heavy game consumption, & we did the best we could with it; but for most of human history, that just wasn’t what our bodies evolved to need. We still have the intestines, teeth, stomach acids, and nutritional needs of a primarily herbivorous creature (like all other primates!).
2. The animals and the ‘other foods’ that were part of the actual Paleolithic diet no longer exist. Just like we’ve changed herd animals through agriculture, we’ve changed the plants. Meat from modern-day cows is not nutritionally the same thing as wild caribou (or whatever) of thousands of years ago. And we’ve strip-mined the arable land of developed countries with conventional industrial farming; plant nutrients come from the soil, so veggies/ greens found at Kroger are nowhere near as nutrient-dense as what the actual cavemen would have been eating. Though copying the diet, these guys aren’t getting the same things.
3. Human stomachs don’t make what you need to either digest raw meat or kill the disease it carries. (ew. ew. ew. ew. ew… sorry, just had to get that out!)
4. Animal fat clogs arteries; high protein diets make you pee out calcium. Exercise helps with both, so I’m glad they’re at least doing that…
5. The world can’t support it. If everyone ate like that, we’d need a couple extra planets to grow the animals on. In the real vs. made-up Paleolithic era, there are billions more humans… it costs too many resources to ever come close to feeding that many people a mostly-meat diet.
Like so many fad diets, I’m sure its practitioners think it’s simply fabulous. But I don’t think it stands up to scrutiny, either from an evolutionary, nutritional, or environmental standpoint.
” Humans existed MUCH longer on a primarily fruit/ nut/ plant diet in warmer climates pre-IceAge, with (like other primates) occasional meat as a ‘feast food’ or ‘crisis food’, than they spent evolving on a primarily-meat diet. That seems like a total ‘DUH’; I don’t know how it got overlooked… The cold temperatures FORCED heavy game consumption, & we did the best we could with it; but for most of human history, that just wasn’t what our bodies evolved to need. We still have the intestines, teeth, stomach acids, and nutritional needs”
Hmm, did you know that Google Scholar is free and allows you to look up scientific research? Look up paleolithic + meat +´isotopes. Huh, seems like the research shows that the people who you say eat meat rarely, ate meat LOTS. So much that the markers of it are still in their bones thousands of years later for us to analyze.
Wow, huh, here is a free full text research article refuting many of your points. http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v56/n12/full/1601646a.html
Furthermore, plenty of cultures and people survive on raw meat. It’s not poisonous or difficult to eat, there is a risk of food poisoning which is higher in industrially farmed meat. The Inuit or the Khanty and other raw meat eating cultures do not suffer from heart disease unless they eat western foods. Hmm, also solved by a quick Google.
Great apes are very very different and people who use them to prove we are vegetarians simply don’t do the evolutionary research http://huntgatherlove.com/content/ape-diets-even-scientists-get-it-wrong
As an agronomist, I can tell you that while the world can’t support us all eating meat, it can’t support us all eating grain either. Industrial agriculture is killing the planet and simply not eating meat ain’t gonna solve much. Read The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith. It’s a human population problem in the end.
The Paleolithic era seems to be roughly defined as lasting from 2.6 million years ago to around 10,000 BC. Yes, fossils from THIS time period will show high rates of human carnivory. But humanids split from chimpanzees about 7 million years ago, and evolved along the same path as other great apes for an additional 15 million before that.
ALL this time, our ancestors were primarily planteaters. Consider the following, from an article in Evolutionary Anthropology (NOT a pro-vegetarian source): “The marked sacculations characteristic of the human and ape colon also support the view that the ancestral line giving rise to all extant hominoids was strongly herbivorous. Further evidence of a plant-based diet for ancestral hominoids comes from the study of dentition, which suggests that many fossil hominoids were largely frugivorous (fruit-eating)… Thus, using data from various lines of evidence, there seems to be general consensus that humans come from an ancestral lineage that was strongly dependent on plant foods, and that human gut anatomy is very similar to that of other extant hominids.” (http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/miltonlab/pdfs/meateating.pdf)
So my point is that basically we’ve got 20 million years plus, under our belts, as planteaters; then about 750,000 years eating a relatively high percentage of dietary meat due to climate pressures, etc… I think it’s just ludicrous to focus in on that one narrow time period, and diregard everything else.
I think there’s value in sticking to reality-based arguments if you’re trying to say ‘This is how humans are suppose to eat.’
Incidentally, ‘The Vegetarian Myth’ did what it was s’pose to do: made the author a bunch of money. It sounds like she had the misfortune to become sick (no diet offers complete immunity from everything, for pete’s sake!), felt bitter about it, & said ‘hey, at least maybe I could make a buck off it…’ I wasn’t impressed with either her arguments or her writing.
I think people should decide for themselves how to eat; but do so based on fact & reason. People are different, & food is a personal thing. Do whatever floats your boat; but the whole Paleo thing sure looks misguided, to me.
Narrow time period? Pretty important narrow time period, given that it was when the human brain was developed. For the public, here is a great page providing ample evidence for humans omnivory and its importance http://paleohacks.com/questions/1496/are-humans-naturally-herbivores
How are you eating “Locally/ organically produced food, to the greatest extent possible” if your diet is 90% plants? Pretty hard, huh?
Joan Gussow, one of the dowagers of the ecological food movement, thinks eating less meat is important, but also recognizes that eating local in the north means eating meat. Venison is the most sustainable meat given that deer are over populated in most of New England.
Yes, both an important and a narrow time period. The human brain was developed over our whole evolutionary cycle; it was further refined, in important ways, during the Paleolithic.
I’m in a southern agricultural state, have a big-*ss dehydrator, enjoy canning & root-cellaring, & have no problem finding lots of local plant-based foods in spring/ summer/ fall, with some preserved for winter — it’s pretty easy, actually. Though I certainly don’t claim to always eat local: hence ‘to the greatest degree possible.’ Obviously what that means will vary by climate/ area/ etc, as well as by individual circumstances (if I had 4 kids under 5, for example, I probably wouldn’t have time to do as much food prep)… And I’m not arguing against hunting; I think if you choose to eat meat, that’s a more ethical paradigm than the way most people in industrialized nations obtain it. I wouldn’t do it myself, since I can get everything I need from other foods, and it’s not what I’m hungry for… but to each her own.
Considering at physiological design, it looks to me like we are primarily designed to process plant foods… I *choose* to eat almost *all* plant foods, because it pleases me to avoid killing in the absence of need, and I like how I feel (higher energy, easy weight maintenance, lack of the arthritis & endometriosis that vanished when I cut out the animal junk from my diet, etc). If others choose to eat meat, that’s a personal decision — but their bodies are still made to process MOSTLY plants. I’m not saying we didn’t evolve as omnivores; we did: just as primarily herbivorous ones.
The Paleo diet pretends this isn’t so; and is fundamentally unsustainable for the large number of humans on the planet, which, for better or worse, we seem to have. I’m no fan of conventional grain farming, either, btw (side note: it’s also true that most grain in the US is grown to feed animals raised for meat!)for similar reasons of unsustainability… I do appreciate the focus on whole food/ real food, and physical exercise, among ‘Caveman Chic’ eaters… And I think it’s a positive thing for people to be thoughtful about their food choices, even if we disagree. Personally, I find the physiological and philosophical underpinnings of the Paleo diet intrinsically flawed. But, again, food is personal; to each her own.
The problem with “paleo,” as it appears here, is that not all of us who practice it recognize ourselves in the description provided by the author. We are not all male, have yet to eat jerky, and have much more sophisticated ideas about human life past and present than any of the popular articles that have come out portraying us as Fred Flintstone without the cute. I suspect the real problem with “paleo” being documented here has more to do with sensationalist journalism than anything else. Put down Der Spiegel and read Ray Audette, for crying out loud.
Thanks to everyone who’s written in. Overwhelmingly, these comments are thoughtful and informative- even when polar opposite information and views are offered. As one example, Leslie’s post (#2) I take as a model for someone who wants to disagree with my blog post and does so in a collegial way. Thanks Leslie!!
I’m interested to learn that so many women are involved in paleo-fitness. The media coverage doesn’t reflect this– but should this be a surprise?!
I’m a biological anthropologist, and ape/human evolution is my area of work. It’s pretty clear to me that carnivory is part of our evolutionary past: systematic hunting came in fairly late, around 500,000 years ago (in places like Germany and England, judging from tool-bone remains) but meat-eating is far more ancient, via scavenging.
(And yes, some great ape species do eat meat. It’s not a large percentage of their diet, but chimpanzees certainly hunt and eat meat- even the peace-loving bonobos and the arboreal orangutans do so occasionally).
My overarching points are that 1) it’s possible to look back at our long and complex prehistory and find support for many varied – opposite- practices, dietary and otherwise and 2) the paleos’ focus on diet and exercise to me misses some of the most compelling and dynamic aspects of our variable and complex past.
I’ll continue to follow the conversation.
Barbara: What are the compelling aspects of our past the paleo lifestyle fails to include?
Leslie: What I’ve been reading and writing about in recent years is the tendency to focus on milestones– first bipedalism, first meat-eating, first systematic hunting, first language, first whatever– in accounts of human evolution. As a woman named Misau Landau wrote years ago, the result is a kind of hero myth, a narrative structure with major triumphs as the key focus.
Anthropologists and archaeologists are increasingly interested in what might be called the day-to-day backstory, the less dramatic, more quotidian, story of meaning-making in family units.
One example is Steve Mithen’s book The Singing Neanderthals, which talks about hominid emotion in daily connection, and also musical expression.
In my books Being with Animals, and Evolving God, I’m looking at the evidence for things like hominid creativity, hominid spirituality, hominid emotional relating to animals (and other hominids) as they play out in daily lives, ie trying to “flesh out” the ways our ancestors might have lived.
It’s not that the paleo movement necessarily precludes any of this, however, in the versions I have read, there’s a definite and arresting tendency to focus on the diet and exercise parts, on the hero in the environment overcoming obstacles and living well, someone to be emulated.
And in that hero people see who they want to see: aren’t the above comments a good example of this? Some seize on meat-eating, others on plants, others on exercise, but the hero becomes very one-dimensional.
So I keep asking: Why the constant invocation of THE [single] past? Whose past, where and when? Whose diet, where and when? Whose evidence anyway?
As with anything, there are more nuanced and less nuanced versions of paleo-fitness out there I am sure, perhaps I just had the luck to hit the less nuanced. You know, the “let’s swap paleo-recipes and get out there and run around like our ancestors” stuff.
As a nutritionist and paleo eater, I actually get a little fed up with the paleo is meat eater view. I like Loren Cordain’s work and research.
There are distinct differences in how we are genetically designed to eat and what we do eat – this is the basis in mine (and Cordain’s) view of paleo:
New foods, grains – especially gluten, legumes, and dairy – are problems for so many people. Before I came across Cordain’s work this became an obvious pattern in my clients. Just cutting out these foods can dramatically improve health.
The change in fatty acid balance – we now eat way to much omega 6 and too little omega 3 is stressed by Cordain – no-one argues with that.
We have changed from a low to a high glycemic load diet, as we eat huge amounts of highly processed grains and sugar. Not all Paleo / hunter gatherers eat high protein diets – but all eat a low Glycemic Load diet.
Eating paleo to me means eating quality protein, sufficient but not excess, high nutrient, high fiber, low GI fruit and vegetables, natural oils and fats (in the correct ratio of omegas 3:6)
At least this is my paleo and this is what I preach. For myself this has been life changing – and dealt with, as in completely eliminated joint inflammation, severe PMS and menstrual cramps, gut problems, and blood sugar issues.
I am not the meat eating, run like our ancestors type, I’m the bookworm and movies type, the exercise to look good and feel good, eat to look good, feel healthy and ward of disease, and wear nice clothes type of gal.