The media has done a superb job of branding the paleo diet as a meat diet. Indeed, people seem to think that's all we eat. Many naysayers go there first, naming The China Study or maybe even some other idiot who skipped Day 1 of Stats class (when they teach the refrain, "correlation is not causation"). Or worse, they cite conventional wisdom as a legitimate source, "But all doctors say the same thing about meat."
Conventional wisdom holds little weight with me, but if that's what will convince some people (perhaps the ones who skipped stats AND history class), then let's roll with it. (History class, by the way, is where you learn that conventional wisdom is ALWAYS wrong.)
Perhaps the most universally accepted piece of conventional wisdom about health, told by our grandmothers and our cartoons and our doctors and our vegetarians alike, is "eat your vegetables." Well, I'm here today to demonstrate that the paleo diet is more vegetably than a vegetarian diet. Now please allow me to unravel your cognitive dissonance with copious amounts of what is known in academic circles as 'quantifiable proof'.
Following are 4 randomly selected vegetarian food pyramids from the interwebs that espouse vegetarian diets. To account for paleo bias, I chose three that were vegan.
Vegetarian Example 1: Vegetables come in at about 15-20% of total food volume. The biggest group? You guessed it! Grains.
Vegetarian Example 2: Vegetables come in at about 15% as well, being stamped out big time by grains that dominate almost 30% of the pyramid.
Vegetarian Example 3: Same story with vegetables again at 15%, being drowned out by Neolithic foods like grains, dairy, beans, even sweets.
Vegetarian Example 4: Vegetables come out of nowhere with 30-35%! Don't know why tomato is in the carb section, but I'll let that slide.
Vegetarians average (an inflated) 20% vegetable intake on the pyramid. Not too shabby.
Now, for some mind-blowing. Four Paleo Pyramids:
Paleo Example 1: Boom. Primal Blueprint puts vegetables in the base of the pyramid, I'd say that's about 20-25%.
Paleo Example 2: Some random loser posted this I bet. Veggies at 15%. (Outlier, obviously. But we'll count it.)
Paleo Example 3: CastleGrok's pyramid gets chosen at random and delivers vegetables at a whopping 25-30%.
But wait. Paleo Example 4 (perhaps closer to average than any other) delivers vegetables at about 30% yet again.
Paleo wins with about 25% vegetables in the diet. But I'm not satisfied.
I know for a fact that I eat almost twice the vegetable matter than my veggie-minded friends and especially more than my conventional-eating cronies. And I think that deserves some exploration.
First, let's look at the economic incentives. Vegetarians are likely to eat disproportionately more grains and legumes than the pyramid recommends because those things are cheap; Paleo dieters are likely to eat disproportionately less meat/fish because those things are expensive (we buy fresh, wild, grass-fed to boot).
Another confounding variable is population. Vegetarianism attracts people for two reasons: ethics and/or health. In particular, people sympathetic to animal rights and sold on disease prevention. These populations are not concerned with measuring proportions or optimizing athletic performance and are therefore more likely to stray from the 'optimal model' or pyramid, quite reasonably leading to indulgences, not to more vegetables.
The paleo population is also dominated by people concerned with ethics and/or health. In particular, environmental responsibility and athletic performance. Because they are motivated to excel athletically, they are likely to adhere to the optimal model, which limits fruit and nut intake, inevitably leading to even more vegetables than their vegetarian counterparts who stray.
Also worth noting is that vegetarianism in general contains more categories of food, commonly dairy, grains, legumes, sweets, fruit, etc. The more categories, the more each category becomes diluted. And you bet your ass that the vegetable category dwindles with all the others.
Now, excuse me while I go eat meat.
1) The "Food Pyramid" is an outdated way of looking at food intake. Even the government doesn't put food in different sections of the pyramid anymore. They just sort of do colors. http://www.mypyramid.gov/
ReplyDelete2) More importantly, food pyramids of any variety are not an accurate representation of how people are eating. They're visual representations of "ideal" food intake, but I don't know anyone who bases what they eat off of what a food pyramid looks like. It doesn't make sense to use them for data.
Hmm, hi, I found my way here via mutual contacts on twitter. I have heard of paleo before but I just don't know if I could live without dairy. People have milked animals for ages haven't they? And why no nightshades? I'm sure I can google that. Is paleo like vegetarianism where there are different kinds, e.g. do any eat dairy ?. It's a bit off to say yes to occasional alcohol and no to an occasional latte don't you think?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteI just checked back to see if you'd replied to my comment and was a but sad at the tone of the other comments. I get what you're trying to say with your pyramids and this is a good post that has taken you a bit of time. I wish commenters would remember that when they so quickly slag off a post. Blogging is bloody hard work.
ReplyDeleteThe problem (apart from dairy) with paleo for me and lots of other people I spoken to is that we feel like our minds have evolved quicker than our bodies. I enjoy meat and my body does much better on a meat diet than a vego one (which I've tried too for a few years). But psychologically I would rather not eat it.
I feel there's been a shift in much of the paleo community. I really haven't see as much vegetable consumption as above happening anymore.
ReplyDeleteIt kind of comes down to calories. Vegetables are not dense enough to provide daily caloric needs. Since grains and legumes are not as calorically dense as meat, vegetarians require larger chunk of the pyramid to hit requirements. Vegetarian doesn't literally mean vegetables, only that food is plant sourced.
You also have to compare apple to apples. In size, paleo is not even a splinter of what vegetarian is. Much of the vegetarian world is nothing more than meat-less SAD. When paleo is compared to something like smaller more comparatively hardcore branches of veganism, it would lose the veggie debate.
Fruit is an unsung hero. Many people haven't been overly excited about my position on this, but I don't really care. I swear no allegiance to anything except real food. Expect more fruit talk in the future.
I've been thinking about creating a new pyramid for a while. I think this may have tipped me over the edge.
Nice post. I get what you're trying to say. I've written similar things.
This post was an extension of the line of reasoning that I encounter commonly, which is that 'if everyone thinks so, (conventional wisdom) must be right.' The 'wisdom', of course, and the major critique of paleo, is that too much meat is bad. This is wrong, plain and simple.
ReplyDeleteIf you follow that incorrect line of reasoning about conventional wisdom, but flip the dichotomy to examine vegetables, all of sudden you see something very interesting. That is, a high proportion of vegetables recommended compared to recommended vegetarian diets.
This is fact. Whether or not people actually eat that way is irrelevant. Paleo leaders include a high proportion of vegetables in their recommendations. That signifies something.
(Perhaps they include many vegetables out of necessity -- a truly high-meat pyramid would be disregarded as unhealthy by the mainstream. And that's kind of my point about conventional wisdom.)
Grok, if meat is high-calorie compared to grains and legumes, that means you need less of it, which leaves more room for other categories (like vegetables). You are supporting my point.
Diane of Balanced Bites once tweeted she eats more vegetables than anything else. Mark Sisson's favorite food is the Bigass Salad that he eats every day (Primal Toad loves it too). CrossFitters eat meat and vegetables primarily. I do too. There's nothing radical about my conclusion.
Obviously, there's nothing academic about cartoon pyramids. Sorry my playful little transition statement had people thinking I had peer-reviewed academic literature worth perusing. But I'm glad you hold part-time hobby bloggers to academic standards. That says something about the movement.
Checkout http://tinyurl.com/drgregercomplete http://tinyurl.com/drgregerPDF for 20+hrs on the vegetables
ReplyDeletePerhaps vegetarians should be called Gainaholics?? Just a thought with some humor thrown in.
ReplyDelete