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Is dairy paleo? (part 2) Revising history with new perspectives on flocks of goats, femur bones and feckless nutritionism

Last week I told you that I find the research suggesting milk may not be good for us very unconvincing. This week we continue the conversation by asking the question When did dairying being? If it began in the Paleolithic era, as I believe, then our genes have been depending on these nutrients for thousands of generations. 

Petroglyph of woman milking an ancient cow-like animal. From the "Cave of Swimmers" in what is now the Sahara desert.

 

The History of Domestication

Various historical writers have tried to sell us on the idea that people were hunter-gatherers for an extended period of time and then BAM! abruptly switched to farming the minute they learned to smelt bronze and make tools that, among other things, enabled them to put their suddenly domesticated animals to work in the fields. I have to say find it unlikely that so many major cultural changes would have taken place simultaneously.

I know, you’re probably thinking Dr Cate, you’re not a historian. Who cares what you think about history? Here’s the thing: The unraveling of history’s big questions requires input from many scientific specialists and, given the fact that there are so many claims made around the health implications of eating meat and dairy products, the history of animal domestication is very much a medically relevant topic.

So back to my point. It’s hard to harness an animal to a plow. You need leatherworkers, metalsmiths, a ton of stored seeds to plant in the fields, places to store the seeds and then to store the food that grows and on and on.

Much easier than all that is (more…)

Is dairy paleo? Revising history with new persectives on flocks of goats, femur bones and feckless nutritionism

If you’ve been eyeing the Paleo diet as a way to lose weight, but don’t want to bid goodbye to butter and cheese, I’ve got good news for you.

One thing I love about the Paleo movement is a willingness to challenge the status quo. A few decades ago, people of Paleo were universally against dairy. Today, the attitude towards dairy is undergoing a transformation. Still, the official word on dairy is a luke-warm maybe rather than the resounding yes I think it deserves to be. I believe many of us can add dairy into our diet not just for good health, but also to more accurately reproduce a true Paleolithic era diet.

You can get a sense of the arguments both for and against dairy by reading informative and entertaining posts written by a couple of prominent Paleo figures, Mark Sisson and Chris Kresser.

Here’s my summary of the pertinent pro-dairy and anti-dairy arguments:

From the anti-dairy camp

There’s a vast volume of published literature on the harms of casein, saturated fat, and cholesterol. Each one of these components has been shown, individually in animal studies, to be associated with health harms. So, the anti-dairy crowd asserts, if each individual component might be a little bit bad, just imagine how bad all three are in combination!

From the pro-dairy camp

This is not milk.

None of the animal studies performed by members of the anti-dairy camp use milk in its natural state. Research comparing whole, fresh milk to processed (pasteurized/homogenized, or dehydrated and reconstituted) shows that animals fed processed milk develop osteoporotic bones, enlarged and fatty livers and hearts, whereas the animals fed fresh milk do not. They conclude that raw milk and processed milk are inherently different and products and it follows that they would have different health effects. This is why they recommend consuming unprocessed dairy, in the form of fresh milk, cream, butter, homemade kefir, or raw milk cheese. (Yoghurt is typically made with pasteurized milk.) (more…)

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Your 2012 Weight-Loss Resolution: Become a Better Fat Burner

If you are like most Americans, you’ve made plenty of weight loss resolutions over the years and failed to follow through. It’s probably not that you lack willpower; it’s that you never trained your body to burn fat.

If you know someone who made a resolution last year to lose weight and now, this year, you can see that they look more fit, then this means you likely have an acquaintance who has become a fat-burning master.

You too can learn to train every cell in your body how to burn stored fat—including omental fat and that cellulite you thought you couldn’t get rid of—for fuel.

When your body burns fat for fuel it is said to be in a “ketogenic state.” That’s the key to healthy, lasting weight loss. Let me tell you how its done. (more…)

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Kate Middleton Versus Pippa: Who is the more beautiful sister?

Second Sibling Syndrome Strikes Again!

Both beautiful girls, the youngest does show signs of (relative) maternal nutrient deprivation.

Just one year apart, these two highly attractive women could almost pass for twins. Still, the younger, Pippa, lacks the powerful dynamic symmetry of the elder Kate whose face features many elements now seen more often in older siblings of closely spaced children: broader forehead, higher cheekbones, wider jaw, and stronger chin (in comparison to her still very pretty younger sister). Pippa does benefit from the “more experienced uterus” phenomena, and has a slightly more feminized lower jaw. For more examples of Second Sibling Syndrome, click over to the celebrity album.

These minor changes can have major health consequences. I recently met a couple of close-spaced sisters in their early 70s. The older one was medication free, and the younger, while still very healthy, was on several prescriptions and since she had been born with a slight twist to her spine (scoliosis), she was dealing with a lot more pain than her healthier elder.

I publish this today not to make anyone feel bad about past decisions. Planning a baby’s health is not something with which our modern culture takes any interest (where’s the profit in that?) Rather, I want to point out that if the mother of a future queen can’t manage to get enough nutrients to refortify her body between babies in such a short time, it’s highly unlikely a busy working mom will do any better.

Please, ladies, don’t let the idea of a ticking biological clock scare you into rapid-fire pregnancies! A better diet makes your hormonal system work so much better, which means you can, in essence, slow that clock down.

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What is the Paleo Diet?

The Paleo diet, also known as the Primal diet or the Ancestral diet, is a low-carb, high-protein diet that’s helping people all over the modernized world rid themselves of excess pounds and prescription medications. If you don’t have friends or relatives following a Paleo diet now, chances are you will very soon.

Unlike other popular diets that have come and gone, the Paleo diet is an attempt to recreate the diet of our ancestors living in the Paleolithic era ten or twenty thousand plus years ago, when people were still largely nomadic and didn’t need agriculture to support their needs for food. Leaders of the Paleo movement hope to move people away from the Standard American Diet and closer toward those foods of our human evolutionary past. You could call it an “anti-fad” diet.
(more…)

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Giving Thanks to Your Low-Carb Ancestors: A Recipe for Brain Health

A lot of folks keen on losing weight have been convinced that a diet low in fat and protein and high in carbohydrates is the way to go. Seems intuitive, doesn’t it?: Don’t eat fat and you won’t get fat. That’s why, odds are, this year someone at your Thanksgiving table will be giving thanks without giving your perfectly browned holiday turkey a second look. Instead they’ll be opting to load their plate with their favorite high-carb “health foods”—sweet potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce.

Grain-fed turkeys gain weight faster but have significantly smaller brain size than their omnivorous wild cousins of the same breed.

If you’re a regular reader of my blogs, you already know what I think of high-carb diets as a means for losing weight: I’m not a fan. But today, I’d like to skip the weight loss discussion and, instead, focus on some of the unintended health consequences of cutting healthy fats and proteins from your diet.
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