Weston Price vs Paleo

Any of you with some critical opinion/ressources regarding the Weston Price foundation approach to nutrition as compared to Cordain's Paleo ?

Paleo is quite controversial, but the Price foundation goes one step further (eg. refusing the lipid hypothesis) and I don't know what to make of it: http://www.westonaprice.org/

I personally agree with the Paleo common sense that the diet on which man evolved should be the basis of a healthy diet; but there is certainly no reason for it to be optimal (12000 years of "educated" Neolithic experience must be able to provide some improvements).

In his book (Nutrition and physical degeneration), the starting point of the foundation, Dr. Price's provides information on the diet of healthy "primitive" populations; and more or less none of those diets are Paleo (dairy,salt, emphasis on animal fats...).

Although Dr. Cordain is clear in his arguments against high-carb or vegetarians, the only argument I have seen against Price's nutrition is the relative saturated fat content of animal meat which is lower in the wild animals eaten by our ancestors. But it seems healthy "primitives" were specifically looking for (saturated) fatty meats in there diets.

Thanks for your input

"12000 years of "educated" Neolithic experience must be able to provide some improvements"

I really liked that expression

one question: do you think 5000 years ago, humans eate the best they could?did they lived longer? :wink:

I'll reply first with a corresponding question: do you think the average education in the US and Europe has gone up over the past 15 years ? and do you think the knowledge about the world has gone up over the past 15 years?

Availability of knowledge does not necessarily mean people are benefiting from it.

I believe the evidences that the human life-span decreased from the start of Neolithic -10000years ago- because we witnessed similar phenomenon in the 20th century: primitive population adopting modern diets high in refined sugar were decimated by tuberculosis (an infectious disease to which you are protected by a diet mostly high in vitamins).

The WestonPrice foundation and Cordain agree with you Gregor on this, vitamin's RDA are an absolute minimum.

I realize that my initial question is really "What's your take on the lipid hypothesis?". A complex topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid_hypothesis

I have found no non-partisan & organized debate over this subject which could help to make educated diet choices. So I guess I'll read the research papers and hopefully post a summary here.

Do you think that deer, elk and antelope are accurate representatives of the fatty acid composition of all the fauna that existed in Palaeolithic times prior to much of the "megafauna" being killed off by humans? Some of the "megafauna" were too big to be threatened by predators (except sneaky humans), did not need to be fleet of foot, and therefore might have stored much larger amounts of subcutaneous fat on a year-round basis ...

It's not really possible to draw hard conclusions about diet and health by comparing prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations to Neolithic agricultural ones. It's not exactly the same as more recent examples. The life-span may have decreased in the Neolithic, but stature was decreasing as well, and that could merely indicate malnourishment due to food resources having to be shared among larger, more densely packed, more disease-spreading populations. You really can't tell for sure whether reduced health was due to a lack of dietary quantity or quality. If it's the latter, health will go down the toilet but stature will probably remain the same or even increase (take the the USA as an example).

As for the lipid hypothesis, you may find this article useful (if you haven't read it already): http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/D ... -Myth.html.

When looking at our ancestors you also have to understand they had a shorter life span because:

Malnourishment- The Agriculture revolution caused industrialism, before this many people did not get enough to eat and had weakened immune systems. Along with many other terrible side effects, these days normally we don't have a restricted amount of food.

Hygienic Practice- People were dirty, they had feces on the streets and ground. Food especially at the start of the 1900's was covered with chemicals and had no mandatory standards. 1906 a book was released scrutinizing the meat industry, yet later that year the pure food act was passed. Feces, Dead Rats, Rotten Meat, etc. was all in food that was released and sold to the public. These days we do not have this problem. We even shower, wash our hands, and even use tissues.

Health Care- We now have Vaccines, Medicine, and Surgery along with sterilization. Although we can't cure everything we can treat a lot of problems.

Social Practices- Sexually we have calmed down since the dark ages, and renaissances. Orgy's were common and the pope would have *** parties. We now have condoms, before STD's spread like wildfire. 500 years ago we slept in the same bed as the rest of our family and if someone chose to make love everyone knew... Oh, and the bed was filled with most likely bugs and vermin. Affairs were very common back then, if a woman became pregnant and here husband was absent it was blamed on demons.

Government- Pogroms, Massacres, Cleansing, Hangings, Witch hunts, Treason, Heresy, Assassination, Poisoning, etc.

As we see a lot more was at play here then just the diet of man, many other things caused death. Diet was most likely not the main cause, yet now in days it does play a large part in it. Thus giving us some evidence to support the idea's of a diet based on our hunter-gatherer days.

*Most of my information is based on the time period of 1400-1900 A.D.