The bar is low enough that simply getting people to eat less processed foods is a win. We can debate how the liver breaks down sugar, or whether milk should be avoided, but that seems inconsequential when people are eating "hamburgers" where the buns are made from two deep fried chicken breasts.
That said, virtually every major health agency recommends a diet where carbohydrates (from vegetables, fruits and grains) represent the majority of calories. For an individual, under the guidance of a doctor, it can make sense to alter this. For everyone else, just follow the guidelines.
> That said, virtually every major health agency recommends a diet where carbohydrates (from vegetables, fruits and grains) represent the majority of calories.
Aren't these health agencies also associated with governments which frequently give preferential treatment and funding to certain groups within the food industry?
The overwhelming consensus led to a diabetes type 2 and obesity epidemic. Curious that when this consensus was absent, it wasn't nearly that much of a problem, but only started to become a huge giant problem once consensus was reached. Coincidence? Totally.
Well, no, bad eating habits and people with poor self-control led to a diabetes type 2 and obesity epidemic. (I'm not saying I have awesome self-control - it's a work in progress, but I'm not going to blame external factors when I'm the single largest determinator of what I put into my body).
Sigh.
I get sick of reading this, that people think it's some grand conspiracy, or that big corporations are poisoning you. Look, for most people (read - you, me and most people around us) - it really does boil down to self control. Eat less food, and exercise more.
I'm always amazed by the portion sizes I get when I go out. And then when I don't shovel down food like my friends, they're like, "What's wrong? Are you sick? You should go see a doctor".
I'm like, no...err, I'm just full?
Yes, I have moments of weakness and I have my vices (liquorice...yummy), but if you just cut down on food in general, and the sugar and processed stuff, you will lose weight. I went from around 75kg to 68kg that way - sure, I suppose I could go lower, but I don't think I could maintain that level of self-control 24/7...haha.
And another poster is right - a lot of the success of these fad diets is probably just due to people being conscious of what you eat - which they're normally not. The fact they're dieting probably means they realise exactly how much they're eating, and consciously or not, cut down on it.
eating "hamburgers" where the buns are made from two deep fried chicken breasts
You're referring to KFC's Double Down I assume, but if you look at it's nutrition facts (1) it's not as bad as you think, especially for a Paleo/Atkins based diet. And it's delicious.
You're eating it for the protein (52g) and the taste. Not fair to compare a chicken breast to carrots in terms of nutrients. And the saturated fat isn't a big deal, that's the fuel your body uses when you're on the keto-diet, as I learned from my own switch to a keto-diet 4 years ago.
edit: just realized there's supposedly no trans fats in KFC food. This is surprising and interesting. (apparently trans-fat free since 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KFC)
N-6 fatty acid over consumption is still a huge problem, trans or not. Anything cooked in vegetable oils is bad for you. I believe the rise in vegetable oil (soy, corn, sunflower, canola, peanut) consumption is a key factor in the obesity epidemic. It has the effect of lowering metabolism and increasing inflammation.
Yes, there's lots of recent research showing the importance of managing n3/n6 ratios, typical western diets being up to 15:1 6/3 whereas ideal would be purpoted to be more closer to 1:1
The ratio is not nearly as important as keeping PUFA intake as low as possible. Fish oil is just as bad an idea as canola oil. There is a pretty clear body of literature linking PUFA of both kinds to cancer.
Plus it depends what exercise you're doing. If you're doing heavy weight training (5/3/1, Starting Strength etc) then 52g of protein in one meal isn't that much.
Unfortunately macro ratios only don't matter a whole lot in isolation, there are studies with any imaginable result out there for macro ratios so it's easy to pick-and-choose to represent any world view which makes the signal/noise ratio shit.
The easiest take-away is to start with avoiding heavily processed food, regardless of the macro ratios.
The guidelines are worse than useless for example making no distinction on types of carbohydrates and essentially the food pyramid was the result of lobbying and not evidence. There's a Harvard food pyramid thats different from the one on cereal boxes.
Agree with this very much, the bar is indeed so low that the conversation should mostly be about eating real food and only then optimize further (and it's still very much inconclusive which macro nutrient ratios are "the best" and there may not be a single answer here).
Ime it's been most problematic to get "real food" on the go, on travels, airports, etc. I feel like there's a disruption waiting to happen here in many western countries (for example in Thailand it's relatively easy to get fast-food made from fresh ingredients just-in-time).
> The bar is low enough that simply getting people to eat less processed foods is a win.
I suspect, with no research other than my own life (anecdote of one), that this is the fundamental benefit of any diet like paleo. Start with "food," avoid things in the ingredient list that are not "food" as much as possible.
For example, when buying peanut butter (arguments for or against legumes aside), prefer the one where the entire ingredient list is "peanuts."
Your ingredient list should be zero (produce and meat) or very short.
> eating "hamburgers" where the buns are made from two deep fried chicken breasts
There is a burger joint in Santa Cruz, CA (aptly named "Burger.") that has a menu item called "The Snooki" which is a chili burger that uses two grilled cheese sandwiches as the bun. They have some other interesting items but that one just screams "heart attack."
It's still the square meal from the 1970's with some small adjustments. Eat a small plate that looks like that. The meat portion should be 4 ounces or so.
Thanks, nice to read an article about food that is weighed and quotes some scientific studies, especially seeing there the following phrase: "a long-term randomised controlled trial" !
The tl;dr seems to be:
"What happened? Both groups lost weight, but after six months the women on the Palaeolithic diet had lost more, and their waists now measured less than those on the Nordic diet. It seemed as though this diet was better, but then things changed. After two years there was no difference in weight between the two groups. The only difference was in levels of the harmful blood fats, triglycerides, but even then they were at what would be considered safe, normal levels in the people on the Nordic diet too. Both groups found the diets difficult to manage and most people didn’t achieve the targets of eating the right amounts of each food group."
and, from the closing paragraph:
"When it comes to losing weight, the advice is pretty dull – eat less and exercise more."
The people that I know that are on the Paleo diet have lost weight and feel healthier. I am skeptical about the rationale behind the Paleo diet and attribute most of the benefits to them paying attention to their food intake and general health (and eschewing junk food) rather than the theory. The outcome is the important thing.
It's the same argument for vegetarians/vegans as well. When you have an unlimited supply of food (and variety of foods), you can eat without thinking, and eating without thinking leads to poor food choices. When you specifically and consciously limit that variety, you have to become much more creative and active in how to enjoy the foods you eat while staying vegan/paleo/whatever. The problem is that the people following these diets attribute it to the diet itself, when in actuality it's the methodology of food selection from a subset of healthier foods that was the real attributor to their success.
I'm not convinced. Vegans have to be mindful of what kind of vegan food that they eat in order to get enough proteins, and perhaps also B12. This is something that is usually easily/trivially satisfied by a regular omnivore diet.
So it's not just a question of eating varied vegan food as a side-effect of not getting bored with it, but getting enough vegan food that has proteins in it.
Does paleo suffer the same deficiency, i.e. is it simple to be lacking in some specific substances that are pretty vital when following a paleo diet?
I have followed a vegan whole foods diet for over more than 2 years (and lost 50 lbs of fat). Protein is the least of my problems on such a diet. When you eat enough calories from whole plant foods (whole grains, legumes, vegetables), you get plenty of protein. When your calories consist of vegetable oils, sodas and white flour products, that's where you might get into trouble.
I think a vegan would intentionally need to try to avoid protein, or a specific amino acid, to run into any issues (or be uneducated about basic nutrition, in which case any diet could be dangerous).
B12 is a different issue. I cheat and eat Corn Flakes and plain Cheerios with various types of fortified "milks".
You're focusing on one macro nutrient. Paleo followers are mindful of what kind of carbohydrates they eat to the point where they will argue to the teeth as to why legumes are somehow not a good form carbohydrate and protein (while vegans would argue the opposite). They also focus on animal fats as a primary source of fat over vegetable oils (olive, coconut, etc), again the opposite of what vegans choose for their fat intake.
Deficiencies exist in all diets (as they are, by nature, restrictive), the problem is that the extent of these deficiencies is blown way out of proportion. It is very hard to be truly deficient in a vitamin/mineral/amino acid in the privileged western world, but there are a few diets which do mess this up, and vegan is one of them, particularly iron for women.
It's ketosis that causes the weight loss (Liver producing ketons that break down fat cells). And it's been around for a while (i.e since Atkins days).
When you cut out processed foods, and grains, you are left only with pretty much only healthy foods, so it's no wonder they feel better. But that isn't the same as saying all grains and processed foods are bad for you.
Yes and no. Most mainstream paleo isn't low carb enough to keep you in ketosis. Sisson's Primal Blueprint is probably the closest to advocating for keto. In reality the mechanism for weight loss is most likely increased satiety from higher P&F intake vs Carb intake (without dropping below ~50g C/day for keto).
Fruits and vegetables. Starchy roots are heavy on the carbs, and so are apples and strawberries. Primal allows dairy if you're not intolerant, and milk has lactose (a sugar).
While I personally believe in the effectiveness of the paleo diet, I think there's too much focus on whether or not it allows people lose weight without eating less. The average American dietary intake per day is around 3,700 kilocalories[1], compared to a recommended value of around 2,000 kilocalories, so it's no mystery why people are getting fatter. I hence think an effective topic of study would be how effective various diets are at making people consume less calories, and the paleo diet seems to be great at this, due to involving many foods that produce greater satiety.
Even if the body treated all calories equally, automatically storing all excess energy as fat, the paleo diet could still have an advantage purely because of its interactions with human physiology somehow reducing appetite and hence reducing total calories consumed.
Something is off in these numbers. There are 9000 calories in a kilogram of fat. If Americans were really eating 1700 calories more than required each day they would be gaining around 1.3kg/week (about 3 pounds). Of course, given the same amount of physical activity, the heavier you are the more calories are required to maintain your current weight, so that eventually this 1.3kg/week would level off.
From personal experience, I would say the average weight gain per year in the US is a few kilograms, let's say 2. This is 18000 calories in excess, which is just about 50 calories a day, or basically one apple too many. The clear lesson to be learned is to cut back on the apples.
Well the numbers are from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and I can't think what reason they'd have to produce flawed statistics, but then again I can't find the original study methodology so there's no way to be sure.
I think the table on the Wikipedia page is misleading. The first paragraph states:
"Food consumption refers to the amount of food available for human consumption as estimated by the FAO Food Balance Sheets. However the actual food consumption may be lower than the quantity shown as food availability depending on the magnitude of wastage and losses of food in the household, e.g. during storage, in preparation and cooking, as plate-waste or quantities fed to domestic animals and pets, thrown or given away."
This is the amount of food available for consumption per person, not the amount consumed. Waste at the grocery store, waste at home, and uneaten food left on the plate are not taken into account, and I would guess that all three are important factors.
The per-capita value is also going to be inherently skewed above the recommended level due to that there's more room for eating over the recommended level than eating below it. It's much easier to be stable at 3000 calories per day (due to either being already overweight or exercising a lot) than at 1000 calories per day.
I’ve been doing Paleo and low-carb for about an year. It’s been unquestionably effective. However, in the course of trying various adjustments over this time, I’ve basically concluded that any sort of “eliminationist” diet — Paleo, low carb, gluten free, vegan, you decide what’s best for you — can work well, as long as it’s generally safe and you pay attention to how your selections affect how you look and feel. Such an approach is what I’d recommend over generic calorie counting. Food is such a potent input into your body; picking and choosing what you put in can make all the difference.
I have been grain free for 6 months. 25 pounds down and within 4 pounds of dropping below 25 BMI. (55 yr old male) I am convinced that the best way to "eat less" is eliminate all grains. Within three weeks I lost all cravings for carbs. I can walk into a Starbucks at the airport and not even look at the pastries. The breadbasket before dinner at the restaurant invokes a meh response. It takes about three weeks to get over what feels like a carb addiction. Read the first chapter of Wheat Belly for inspiration. Read Grain Brain next.
I have friends who've been all over the whole low-carbohydrate and grain-free fad. They're still fat. That's probably partly due to the quantity of what they're eating, plus there's a lot of junk food that doesn't contain carbohydrates.
Myself, I like my carbohydrates, and I eat a fairly large amount. And most of the other triathletes I train with, or endurance guys - they also eat a stackload of carbohydrates, and are pretty darn healthy looking. Also, most professional cyclists/runners are probably also quite carbohydrate heavy.
So I don't get it when people say carbohydrates are evil, and you'll get fat eating them. I don't think we know enough about the science to go one way or the other on something like this.
If it works for you, sure. But I suspect a lot of it's just due to being more attentive to what you're eating, and having good self-control. Eat less and exercise more - that's been the line since the 1970's, so it's hardly anything revolutionary.
Heck, our ancestors probably figured out if you ate less, you'd lose weight...
Longest I've been able to resist is about 6 months, sometimes I just crave a good sandwich for which there is no substitute to two slices of bread or oven baked mac & cheese or pho with it's delicious rice noodles. It's such a slippery slope, I have one sandwich and next thing you know I'm in some run down motel itching for my next fix, haven't seen light for days other than the crack through which the delivery guy slides in a large pizza or baked lasagna. Kicking my grain addiction is harder than anything I have ever done.
Well there you go. Dieting and personal health is the new enlightenment. Who needs scientific statistical studies of samples when what matters is our own reaction to treatment. Only we can do an experiment that is verifiable, repeatable, and trustworthy. :-)
Bread is a heavily processed food, and it's essentially sugar, and it's so easily broken down into glucose, this process is so easy, it first starts in your mouth as amalayse (sp?) begins digestion while you masticate. A common intro bio lesson is to chew a soda cracker until it begins to get sweet. Whole wheat breads are sugar with soluble and insoluble materials that aids in moving food material through the gut because we evolved eating a lot of crap that we couldn't digest. So to suggest that I've evolved in 7000 years to digest milk, but not evolved to no longer require fibre requires genetic proof, and I've not seen that study. Evolution doesn't work that way regardless, and certainly not over as little as 200 generations that were geographically locked genetically for all but the last few hundred years. That said, just because it's processed, doesn't immediately make it bad for us. Olive oil, yoghurt, etc... all have some observable health benefits. And products like cheeses and bacon are absolutely processed, and show little to no health benefit, but if you took them out of my diet, I may suffer depression, so I unscientifically say they cure depression (in me).
The biology of the human body and food is so complex, science is nowhere close to understanding it helpfully enough to design a diet, even if you call it an old diet. I'd bet you'd find a high correlation between unhealthy diet and degree of "scientific" perspective people had on their diet. I offer the United States as exhibit one.
> The biology of the human body and food is so complex, science is nowhere close to understanding it helpfully enough to design a diet
To me, this is an argument for eating real foods, and a reason to be skeptical of things like soylent. But I don't think you can get from there to saying it doesn't matter what you eat, or that anybody with a rationale behind their food choices is delusional.
To me, too, this is the biggest argument in favor of avoiding specific fads and eating "real" food, there's been too many reversals of x is good / x is bad in the recent decades to try to even pretend we know. (not to mention there are still new phytochemicals being found in fruits and vegetables all the time, things we wouldn't even know to artificially add in things like soylent)
Couple of questions I have for anyone in the know about this.
While we may have not evolved a great deal over the last 30 thousand or so years, our bacteria may well have. That would cover our entire digestion systems mouth to anus. I suspect those bacteria have evolved in many ways that may mean we can eat a more modern diet without doing any harm or perhaps doing better. Has this been covered by any of the studies?
I have to question the avoidance of things like bread. Even in Paleolithic times we had crude forms of processed grains and bread. Are proponents of palaeo saying to cut these out completely or just cut out the highly refined kinds?
Paleo Diet is not really a best name to the describe this diet. Better name would be "hunter-gatherer diet" but that's not too marketable.
The whole premise of this diet can be summarized as this:
- eat what you can kill
- eat what you can gather
- eat only stuff that can be eaten raw (that includes meat and fish)
Todays grains are actually a highly-processed food that you can't really digest when they're raw. There's no one simple rule for food on paleo/primal, but one rule of thumb is "feel free to cook, but only eat things you could eat raw."
I hate this articles conclusion, I truly hate it. Every single body is different and you need to find out what works for you. That requires wading through an unbelievable amount of false and misinformation in order to find the truth - for you.
I followed a (modified) ketogenic diet very successfully for the winter and lost 20 lbs. That diet will absolutely NOT work for everyone but it will work for many people. As will paleo, as will atkins, as will south beach. Find out what works for you. Experiment.
Finding a magic bullet for dieting is like finding a magic bullet for fashion. There is NO one size, one style fits all solution.
I've been paleo for about a year now and, while I like the results, we're talking about a 35 woman study (70 total women divided into two groups). That's the basis for an alpha study, not a conclusive result. I'd love to say that "this is the proof we paleos have been wanting to show everyone!" but the sample size is just too small. Yes, it's encouraging but let's not blow it out of proportion.
I feel like rather than diet fads, for weight loss. People just need to learn about Ketosis[0] and how to trigger it in your body (hint: have a tiny amount of carbs).[2]
Your body turns into a fat burning machine. Any way you can achieve it without feeling like you are starving is going to be an effective weight loss strategy. Paleo, Atkins, Lemon/Honey/Coffee/whatever detox, etc. You cut out carbs, your liver starts burning fat.
But beware: They (the scientific community) haven't reached consensus on whether you should do this long term[1]. It seems to be trending towards "it's probably okay" though. I think it puts more strain on your kidney's (because of the ketons)
The Paleo diet is all the rage here in The Netherlands as well. While I applaud people being conscious about their nutrition, I find the caveman-parabole hilarious. Most cavemen didn't live to see 40, and there's the little thing called evolution, too. People can adapt to different eating habits even within their own lifespan, let alone in +10,000 years.
The magic bullet for diets: a moderate intake of food from a diverse diet consisting mostly of fresh fruit, vegetables and some form of protein, paired with ample exercise. Wether you call it 'Paleo' and leave out 'modern' ingredients, leave out the carbs and call it Atkins, or focus on good carbs and good fat (South Beach), it doesn't matter. My wife lost a good amount of weight by eating until she didn't feel hungry anymore, and exercising regularly.
All the people complaining about this diet being a fad are just regurgitating the fads from their childhood as facts. Vegetables and fresh fruit needn't form anywhere near a majority of a diet for you to be healthy, there are enough traditional societies for this.
The problem for the modern diet is that we have the appetites of an animal that should burn about ~4000 calories a day yet only expend around ~3000 on average.
Now if you want to be healthy as well as skinny instead of lowering your calorie intake you're much better off increasing your exercise.
There is evidence of a "hunger gene" or "starvation gene" that tells us to gorge when we can, because there may be no food for a week. It seems to be more strongly expressed in some groups than in others, for example some of the native Americans who have huge obesity problems in the modern era, apparently because their systems don't know how to handle so many white carbohydrates e.g. sugar.
For them, it seems that meats, vegetables, fruits and native whole grains probably should be the majority of their diet, and adding sugars, processed grains, and toxins like alcohol have been disastrous.
Reconstructions of what medieval people ate indicate they were often downing over 4500 calories a day. And their food was probably a lot more nutrient dense than ours in terms of minerals and vitamins.
I think with typical modern foods it is somewhat difficult to get adequate micronutrient intake on a sub 3000 calorie diet. This is where the calorie in/out idea falls down. If you undereat you are going to tank your metabolism and also have some deficiency problems.
Not only are we made to be walking around getting exercise for much of the day, it is critically important to realize we are made to be doing it outside. Sun light exposure is a huge deal for health. People who spend time outside live longer. Just light exposure on its own boosts metabolism.
Yes, but we probably aren't half as active as those medieval people...
I agree with you about the activity though.
It's like you go to rural China, and you see the farmers eating tonnes of rice and vegetables. And I'm sure the low-carbohydrate crowd is going "OH NO! You'll get fat!!".
Well, no, they're farmers, and they work damn hard outside all day.
Or the fact that professional swimmers down 20,000 calories a day - well, yes, if you're in the pool 6 hours a day and doing weights out of it. You're still going to look like Thor...
I agree with you that the caveman parable is silly but you are also drawing a false conclusion. It probably wasn't a caveman's diet that caused him to die young.
You're right, but the 'eat like a caveman to stay healthy like a caveman' is exactly what paleo-proponents use for argument.
What I meant was that you can't draw any 1:1 conclusions to the diet-to-health relation of cavemen compared to our diet-health relation. As always, people find it hard to understand that correlation is not the same as causation.
Didn't they? Is that based on the median age, or the average? Because the average age tends to be skewed by infant mortality.
> , and there's the little thing called evolution, too.
The central argument is that our bodies haven't changed significantly in the time between "cavemen" and present day. So evolution is central to the argument of its usefulness. Whether it is correct that the evolutionary forces is relatively insignificant is, perhaps, up for debate.
Paleo diets happen to be high protein and low carb. Protein is the most satiating macronutrient and carbs are the least. This type of diet is effective because macronutrient ratio it makes it easier to have a calorie deficit and not be hungry.
"In studies of satiation, it is important to match the palatability of the foods when they are compared. If it is not, the fact that one food tastes better than another could override any effects of the nutrient composition on amount consumed (Drewnowski 1998). In addition, to study the specific effects of macronutrients, they must be manipulated independently of energy density."
"These three studies indicate that the amount of fat in the diet did not influence satiation when the energy density was held constant."
"These results provide clear evidence that the energy density of food can affect satiation independently of macronutrient content and palatability."
There's a lot of poor science behind the paleodiet hypothesis - though it may well work as a healthy diet.
The one point I'm going to make is that our ancestors of a million years ago ate a very wide range of diets that were entirely ecosystem & lifestyle dependent (as we still observe in the modern world). So there is no such thing as "the diet" our ancestors ate, they ate many diets, some were better than others.
I also find the assertion that our digestion - even in terms of commensal gut bacteria - hasn't changed in that time a bit odd. We observe rapid adaptations to diet (e.g. in a handful of generations) in other species.
Do we all have this blind optimism that someday, one day, we can actually wake up and read the news that there finally is a magic pill to solve our problems? All of these articles read the same - link bait title convincing you that the magic bullet might be here, followed by an article analyzing the diet, and a conclusion that there is still no magic bullet; that diet and exercise have (and continue to be) the tried-and-true (boring) methods for longevity, weight management and overall health. How is it that we still get sucked in?
>Proponents argue modern disorders like heart disease, diabetes and cancer have arisen primarily from the incompatibility between our current forms of diet and our prehistoric anatomy.
I would argue these problems have been around forever they just may be more identifiable today. Now the rate at which we get things like heart disease is probably going up because of the rise in obesity. A diet is not exactly the problem its more of the rate and quantities in which a lot of people eat.
You should follow the Paleo diet if you don't want to live past your 60's like the Inuit and the Masai, who have been on a low carb diet for generations and have very low life expectancy.
Just research what science (not blogs) has to say about spending your life in ketosis.
Though I would necessarily say it's that simple, the article kinda seem to end up with a similar conclusion
> So, there’s no hard and fast evidence yet that we should be eating like cavepeople. It is of course unhealthy to eat a diet which mainly consists of highly processed foods like white bread and sugary cereals, but this doesn’t mean that all dairy products and grains need to be avoided unless you have a specific problem with them.
"Cave people" ate whatever they could get their hands on: it's time to put this diet fad to rest. Now, should you eat mostly vegetables, a little fruit, lean protein and some healthy fats while skipping the processed foods and sugars? Yeah, but stop acting like you're getting back to something from the "cave days."
"Now, should you eat mostly vegetables, a little fruit, lean protein and some healthy fats while skipping the processed foods and sugars? Yeah, but stop acting like you're getting back to something from the "cave days.""
Literally none of that is true, these are just old diet fads that have become folk knowledge.
People have managed to survive for thousands of years in the arctic circle eating nothing but fatty foods, people have survived in the fertile crescent for thousands of years eating nothing but cereals for thousands of years.
The human body can adapt to just about any sort of food.
What people nowhere have adapted to do is sit in a chair for 14 hours a day and not move.
Agreed that the human body is adaptable, but I would argue that it's also adaptable to an idle lifestyle of 14 hrs/day in a chair. There are many examples of individuals with indolent lifestyles or office jobs who are living well into their 70s and beyond. My own father is an example - never walked, never exercised, smoked for 50 years - and is pushing 90, albeit not in great health but mentally still sound.
I think most of us would enjoy a better quality of life if we ate optimally and stayed active, but genetics seems to be a key factor nonetheless; luck of the draw.
I believe once people learned to cultivate plants and process grains is when they started forming cities instead on being nomadic or cave dwellers. Also if you look at places like North Korea you will see what improper nutrition will do to a population's height.
Once we made the switch to a non-paleo diet is when we really started to advance beyond hunter/gatherers.
My problem with Paleo people is the dogmatic language they use. They draw some very convincing conclusions but then turn their speculation into rigid rules. It's hard to have a conversation about the diet without throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Are you referring to lifespans? Of course modern medicine has been great. I don't think anybody would deny that. But the question is, where could that number be today with a better diet?
If it was not marketed at "eat like a caveman" I think it would have more adoption. Paleo is really just about eating more natural foods (less processed foods). It works well.
I have the feeling the paleo diet is more popular among programmers / nerds than for example a whole foods vegan diet (which I'm following). Why could this be?
Programmers read a lot of blogs and use reddit, and paleo bloggers and /r/paleo are much more popular than vegan bloggers and /r/vegan. Of course the causation could go in the other direction, so I'm just guessing here.
That said, virtually every major health agency recommends a diet where carbohydrates (from vegetables, fruits and grains) represent the majority of calories. For an individual, under the guidance of a doctor, it can make sense to alter this. For everyone else, just follow the guidelines.