Does the paleo diet hold the secret to health? | ZOE Dailies with Christopher Gardner 

Totally agree 💯

Big fan too Jill. Love paleo but like you also eat diary & pulses , tho I'm not organic. My rationale for adhering is that as a type 1 diabetic, low carb helps my blood glucose stay more stable (am usually at least 70% TIR )

I know Zoe is a proponent of nearly vegan diet, but Paleo is the only diet I lost weight on in the last 30 years, and I happened to feel good too. So I’m a fan.

the sharpness of mind comes from eating fewer carbs, you don't need to eat more meat for that

Your energy level and sharpness of mind are probably a result of removing junk food from your diet (like sweets). What about exercise? Why not just eat a healthy diet of whole foods? Also, if you added dairy and pulses, you are not paleo. What whole foods don't you eat? Grains and potatoes? I rarely eat grains myself but I wouldn't call myself paleo.

That's just it...this video is just a straw man. I don't eat paleo either, but the arguments given are just like, the worst representation I've ever seen of the diet. There is valid criticism to be had of the diet, it's just not in this video. Like, I don't know anyone who follows paleo who advocates for fast food or processed meats outside of a situation where they have no other options and need to choose the "least bad" option, like being on the road and needing to stop at a truck stop to eat, and making the best of what they have. Most people I know who do Paleo also advocate for grass fed or pasture raised or free range meat and poultry. Not everyone can afford it (but with current rates of food inflation where I live, a vegan diet is also prohibitively expensive too for many people) but when you can, most advocate for buying the quality, non-farm raised meat. So these arguments are just not really a fair assessment of how most people follow the diet, or what they're advocating for. But at the same time, the exact same criticism could be levied at Keto, "you take off the buns and all of a sudden it's a healthy meal" but that wasn't an argument given in the keto video, it was all about not being able to actually get enough fat, and eating too much saturated fat. So it's just hard to feel like this video was given the same thought as the other 2 released already, and was just being lazily dismissed.

@@angekfire it seems you both missed the main point of his argument. tribes that actually eat this way eat very little meat, because hunting is hard work, and they often come home empty handed. processed or not, humans today get into their vehicles to pick up the days "catch", and not only eat animals everyday, but often at EVERY meal. so, even strict adherents to the diet aren't actually following the diet as it existed.

@@tracyehrenberg6074 If that was his main point, then why was there a need to use a strawman about processed meats? Is your argument here that everyone who isn't hunting their own food should just be vegan?

"I feel like this is something a strawman argument against Paleo." I agree. In particular, it's not clear that there were no fabaceae (pulses and legumes) available to be foraged by paleolithic humans. Soaking/cooking/fermenting are necessary to make legumes edible to humans. But it's well established that humans had not only fire, but cuisine as much as 100k years ago. It seems strange to assume that they wouldn't apply their existing food processing technologies (soaking, fermenting, roasting, even boiling in skin bags with heated stones, or cooking a mash wrapped in meat) to take advantage of this wild food source. Similarly, I felt too little attention was given to other elements of a foraged diet -- seeds, nuts, roots, tubers -- all high in fiber. Also how a forage/hunting dependent diet would have tremendous variety and seasonality. These all lend towards diversity of gut biome, which is becoming increasingly understood as important to health. I don't feel that Professor Gardner has demonstrated that a paleolithic-emulating diet eliminates food groups necessary to human health. Only that the popularized "paleo" diets heavy on meats and processed foods is unhealthy. But such a diet is not really "paleo" either.

Thank you!

I don't see how anyone can be "Paleo" whilst buying food from shops. The only conceivable way of doing it remotely accurately would be to live off the land as maybe some isolated tribes are still doing. This must involve a lot of going hungry and eating pretty unappealing things. I wonder what the life expectancy is?

​@@reggiedixon2 This series is meant to look at popular diets, and thus far the focus has been on "what are the results of removing certain things from your diet, and are those results positive?" If we look at Keto and what needs to be removed from a keto diet, and look at the video Zoe released a few days ago, they say it's pretty bad because it's not sustainable for most people, and removing fiber and carbs nearly entirely, and eating so much saturated fat is bad for you. Fair enough. We look at the low-fat diet, and how usually this results in removing health fats along with the good ones, and that's not good either. So what I am saying is, why is it acceptable to say "A low-fat diet is actually good for you as long as you avoid the processed foods that have added sugars and stuff to compensate for the lack of fat, and focusing more on unsaturated fats", but when it came to Paleo it's "Well it's bad because you're eating processed meats." Why was low-fat given the nuance that "it's healthy if you remove processed foods" but paleo was bad...because maybe you're doing it with processed foods? Why is avoiding grains, tubers, and legumes automatically mean you're not getting enough fiber when almost all the vegetables, nuts, seeds, and fruit you'd eat on paleo are packed with fiber? We can certain say conventionally raised meats are bad, but again, you can focus on higher quality meats like grass fed or free range, and then that criticism kind of disappears. It's not about whether one can TRULY live exactly as people did thousands of years ago in diet and lifestyle. But it's about this video just being a strawman of what paleo is and dismissing it for reasons that were given nuance in a video in the same series literally yesterday. Low fat is good IF you are avoiding saturated fats and processed foods. Paleo is bad, end of story, because it has processed foods and saturated fats. Just feels biased in presenting the information.

Completely agree. It all boils down to the one sentence at about 10:00, "most people don't follow it as intended". Okay, and the people who do follow it as intended, what then? Please give your viewers a little more credit.

What was misleading?

Same in France where meat breeds are fed essentially with grass and cattle fodder with some by-products of agriculture, cereals and less than 1% of soybean meals which are also a by-product of the soy oil production. But in the vegan narrative eating meat in UK or France should be the reason for deforestation in the Amazon.

He can't speak science anymore because most of the time he is only promoting the vegan diet to best serve the interests of his main sponsor, Beyond Meat, a fake meat producer.

it all depends on the investors! If some investors want to push for plant based burgers (aka plant based processed food), there will be speakers that push veganism at all means, if it is a harmful type of veganism! They will compare organic fruit with highly processed meat, as if not most of the vegies and fruits out there are full of cancerogenerous chemicals! It is a 100% clear to anyone who s a bit unbiased, that they make unfair comparisons between diets! Not all of the team members of zoe, but some of them. And to be fair they have brought people like Peter Attia who s part of the wider keto community (even if he does not follow it any more). I think there is a lot of controversy between the zoe team members so dont be suprised if in a year from now as they grow they split into 2.

it would be interesting to see a debate between some of Zoe scientist and the likes of Shawn baker and the likes of Paul Mason.

Shawn Baker and Ken Berry are scammers and jokers. Archpriests of carnivore diet. On the opposite side of these religious diets is Michael Greger with his fanatical veganism. Social networks are full of these "influencers" and people follow delusions instead of listening to their bodies.

@@DarkLxrdWhat does your body say to you?

@@davidr1431 I don't see my previous comment, but when I talk about the body, I mean the microbiome and its chemicals, which it uses to communicate with the brain and nervous system (postbiotics). The same applies to digestion and appetite. If you have a sweet tooth every hour or two, your microbiome is asking for nutrients to survive. And those nutrients are primarily fiber for him. If you don't give them nutrients, they die and you're still hungry. This is where your body tells you, eat more fiber (vegetables, fruits, whole grains, etc.). The same applies to macronutrients (sugars, fats, proteins, water). Regarding the topic carnivore vs. vegans, both extremes. Of course, plant-based food is healthier and more natural than animal-based food. 70-75% plant food, 20-25% animal food.

There is absolutely nothing unhealthy about modern fruit. No fruit is unhealthy. It is silly to think fruits are unhealthy.

​​@@donwinston well, that is not quite right. Less modern fruits really have much more fibre and less sugar.

​@@donwinston NotACat is right. Modern friss and vegetables way less healthy than they once was. They contain way less vitamins and minerals, they are full of sugar, and have less fibers. To make it worse, off season greenhouse grown plants are basically balls of sugary water with some fiber. There are studies comparing vegetables between mid 20th and early 21st century and even in this sort time the quality and nutritional value of plants dropped by a frightening amount. To makes it even worse, "green revolution" introduced pesticides, fungicides, monocultures. GMO, ever present micro and nano plastics; other pollutants like toxic heavy metals make it even less healthy. I wish I could taste good from the 10th century or even just from the Renaissance era. It would be mind blowing.

@@roswithabed3650 So what. Modern fruits are not unhealthy. They taste way better! Contrary to the horseshit on social media sugar is not poison. The amount of sugar you can eat that is healthy depends entirely on how physically active you are.

@@roswithabed3650 They still have plenty of fiber and loads of phytonutrients and tastes way way better. Sugar is not poison.

Yes. It was a great pity and denies people who come to Zoe for health improvement the opportunity to see what is actually working for others.

Echoing exactly that feeling when I see the guy!

I’ve literally seen carnivore gurus on RU-vid actually suggest eating McDonald’s burgers without buns.

@@MichelleNovalee link me

Thanks for your comment. I'm not Paleo, but I did think that Christopher was presenting a very biased and unobjective view about the diet. I assumed that many would be eating meat sourced from more quality producers than he was stating. I'm very disappointed that a more balanced view was not presented.

We evolved from vegetarian primates. Veganism is at it's root the ethical position of animal rights. Maybe it would have been a good thing to stay at a few million hunter-gathers. Now, with nearly 10 billion people, we are threating by a global climate disaster (for us). We will have to learn to control ourselves, or be forced back to true paleo-ism.

Or look at actual human outcome data and vegans do very well

Not possible; there are no facts here, only radical vegan BS.

😂

You are right. My PH.D. is from MIT (Economics, 1982), and I am used to think highly of Stanford U. On the other hand, I knew that Stanford and some Stanford staff were behind some nefarious activities. Due to my respect for Stanford I just did not put 2+2 together. I will be 71;this month and in my life I have never seen behavior like this from faculty of a still respected institution.

Sorry, Ph.D.

paleo is nonsense because, first , we do t know what it was it was different for different groups and also paleo humans lived to be about 40yo so you’re welcome to it with your Ph.D - none of the things you’d eat on paleo actually existed. This is a diet for first world rich ppl who are cosplaying paleo lifestyles

The beef in the US is nothing like wild meat even if it isn't processed. I live in Indonesia, the locally grown meat is far less fatty and tougher - the chicken actually has flavour... So your super soft meat, often pre-chewed if it has been processed, is almost certainly digested differently and made up differently to the meat eaten by the actual paleo people who ate meat. Also you would have eaten far more seeds with any fruit because paleo fruit was less flesh and more seed - so lots of additional fibre. So the paleo diet is basically nonsense

Exactly! As you said Also roasted nuts were very popular in paleolith Middle Europe. I find people mixing up 30,000 years ago with 3,000,000 years ago.

@@4124V4TA-SNPCA-x indeed. They also enjoyed fermented and ground mustard seeds on their meats which included salted and smoked meats for long-term storage. There may have been fermented oat pancakes as well as chestnuts roasted on an open fire and many mushrooms, too.

@@dennisward43 With neanderthals? They are still around and kicking. The 3 homo (sub)species intermingled in Eurasia and became one. Fun fact: neanderthal Y chromosome became extinct long before humanity became more unified, and all (known) neanderthals of later period carried sapiens Y chromosomes. I am also part neanderthal myself. 😌

This annoys me as well, but YT demands that creators mention this in any/all videos that are posted. Gotta harvest that $.

I eat a la Zoe. I cycle a lot (150 to 260km a week)and used to eat a lot of processed carbs and added sugar in things like biscuits. I used gels because my metabolism was set on carb utilisation and had fallen for the gel manufacturers hype that you need to buy their products to be able to maintain sustained performance. I used to bonk on long rides if for some reason I didn’t have enough gels etc. Now that I have cut out the vast majority of added sugar and hyper processed grains my body is much better at burning its preferred energy store I.e. fat. I can ride hard for over over 2 hours now fasted and much longer at low intensity. On long 6 hr days I will carry a gel or bar just in case but almost never actually use them as long as I get a real meal on the ride. Google Prof Tim Noakes . South African professor sports medicine who was a good endurance athlete who gave himself type 2 diabetes using old mantra of carb loading! I also do zone 2 training which also boosts your ability to burn fat and switch between this and carbs. Google Peter Attica and others on zone 2 training. This has further boosted my fitness and stamina and feeling of well being. I am 59 now and am definitely fitter than I was 3 years ago when I started cutting out added sugar and refined carbs following a gut health scare. I actually followed the Zoe programme which I would recommend as long as you can afford it. It is not just a diet, it gives very useful insight into what is good for you as an individual based on how you deal with fat and carbs and gives useful information on your gut microbe health. But just as importantly, it links this with the importance of exercise, sleep, stress management, alcohol intake and provides useful insights into the basis of hunger and cravings and helps you to properly assess when you are truly hungry and in need of food as opposed to using it as an emotional prop for example. I have been trying to answer your basic question for a while but, for me anyway, I am confident that I have found the exercise diet answer . Eat real food (minimise stuff out of a packet with loads of ingredients) minimise added sugar foods, minimise processed carbs, work on your sleep patterns if you have a problem, try and reduce stress, and don’t follow the no pain no gain exercise mantra. Do 80% zone 2, 20% high intensity. Works really well for me.

Think there is actually a Zoe podcast on excerice as well but

Nothing wrong with fuelling if you have to just make sure you've carb loaded enough in the previous 24 -48 hrs. Other than that an appropriate meal a few hours before a marathon or long session but for the average gym goer there isn't much need to "fuel" per se.

Try again. 😊

@@BGood496 Just look it up.

@@BGood496 “We found this type of plant culinary preparation in all phases of occupation [of the caves], including Neanderthal and early modern occupation levels at Shanidar, and later occupations at Franchthi. The use of cooking techniques to make plant foods edible has a much deeper and longer ancestry than previously thought,” Kabukcu explained. Article: Cooked plants were part of Palaeolithic diets - Advanced Science News

I've seen many doctors, who advocate for high-fiber foods and diets, being mostly plant based, etc. talk about how in their practices, they've seen some people come in on a carnivore diet with no fiber and they are thriving and in the best health they've ever been in, and even though they don't advocate for it, if it works for the individual then great and it seems that it works for some people. Maybe some people's bodies do better with less fiber, or the bacteria they end up building up instead helps counter for the lack of fiber. I'd be interested in hearing their take on that too, though.

@@angekfire What's sure is when you have a gut surgery your surgeon recommends you to avoid fibers for a while. Could it be a clue telling us fibers are maybe not that great for our gut?

Go Helen! 😂

and where is the comedy from Zoe? I haven't laughed yet. I do sneer at your biased comment though. Maybe another zealot of the carnivore cult? Most people have probably forgotten to eat a varied diet and prefer to join either the cult of carnivores or the cult of vegans. Brainless sheeps.

Great comment 😂 There's no idiot quite like an educated idiot.

@@DarkLxrd Which animals in the wild eat a varied diet? Don't most eat a very specific diet? Why should the human animal be different? Even sheep only eat grass.

@@davidr1431 I'm not an expert on animal digestion, nor have I read many studies on the subject, but many animals have significantly different digestive systems than us humans. Not only anatomically, but also endocrine and microbiome composition. Most mammals probably do not have a varied diet for various reasons. But there are animals that eat everything possible. Perhaps an interesting question for some scientific specialist.

Yes! Better yet, you can only eat plants you have foraged in the wild as pre agricultural hunter-gatherers did in older eras.

Touche!

And in my country, as in many other, cows still eat grass and fodder. But we must understand that it serves better the vegan narrative to tell that cows eat our cereals and our soy (even when soy is cultivated mainly to produce soy oil and if soybean meal which are by-products represent less than 1% of the food ration of cows). These people lie about everything, health benefits, sustainability, ethics... we can't trust them.

Sorry I'm late, long night.

Chris is just trying to nudge people of animal foods, their health and recent science be damned. He has been at it for decades, Beyond Meat and Zoe are just his latest bedfellows.

Science doesn’t care about feelings

This was a study of the bones from just 24 sets of human remains from a very specific area in the andes mountains dating back no more than 9000 years ago and possibly as little as 6000 years ie not the paleolithic age. The palaeolithic era is generally seen to end about 8000 years ago and had lasted for the previous 2.5 million years. If the principles of the paleo diet is to eat the food we evolved eating, this study offers nothing on the topic.

I think I remember a program showing that wild gorillas eat raw leaves, shoots and stems, larvae, ants, snails, roots, bark and rotting wood. Tasty!!

But congratulations on such brilliant weight loss.

@@amelia2656 Haha. Yes, I read that too. I don’t eat EVERYTHING a gorilla eats. Basically the principle of mostly plant ie veg, salad leaves, nuts berries plus the occasional bit of dead meat that falls my way, coupled with miles of walking. I don’t swing through the trees either. I was saddened to read that Clyde, the ape that starred with Clint Eastwood, after a life eating fast food and drinking with the film crew, ended up viciously and neurotic. He was eventually put down. Now there’s a lesson.

@@amelia2656 IKR?

@@amelia2656 ...and their own shit.

Shakes your cognitive bias up, hey?

@@GordonPavilionno, he pretends to know things about diets he knows nothing about.

Interesting. But this simplistic argument does not survive a quick google search. Infant mortality was very high, making the average age 30-40. But look into what the average age of paleo human who made it past childhood.

Good point

The paleo diet is a joke in itself! People were making flour 32,000 years ago. This is well established! And then modern people (who walks around with smartphones, are vaccinated, and buy food at grocery stores) decide that early humans (whose life expectancy was only 32 years) ate no processed food and arbitrarily decide that this is the healthiest way of living-the one everyone should aim for.

The paleo diet is a joke in itself! People were making flour 32,000 years ago. This is well established! And then modern people (who walks around with smartphones, are vaccinated, and buy food at grocery stores) decide that early humans (whose life expectancy was only 32 years) ate no processed food and arbitrarily decide that this is the healthiest way of living-the one everyone should aim for.

The paleo diet is a joke in itself! People were making flour 32,000 years ago. This is well established! And then modern people (who walks around with smartphones, are vaccinated, and buy food at grocery stores) decide that early humans (whose life expectancy was only 32 years) ate no processed food and arbitrarily decide that this is the healthiest way of living-the one everyone should aim for.

The paleo diet is a joke in itself! People were making flour 32,000 years ago. This is well established! And then modern people (who walks around with smartphones, are vaccinated, and buy food at grocery stores) decide that early humans (whose life expectancy was only 32 years) ate no processed food and arbitrarily decide that this is the healthiest way of living-the one everyone should aim for.

I think this is broadly correct. If we ate a diet free from modern foods like processed and refined foods, i doubt many people would develop obesity or chronic diseases.

Misinformed choices are not the sort of choices people should be making.

Yep it’s not the 80s anymore!

You are full of crap.

Those stupid vegans hate to hear that.

How can you be 'mostly vegetarian' in an ice age? Plants are seasonal and where they could grow in the ice age, the season was much shorter - plants much smaller

@@anungunrama7646 Oh for crying out loud. Neanderthals lived in Africa, Asia, and Europe. They didn't live predominantly in the "ice age".

​@@donwinston That is not entirely true. Neanderthals and contemporary sapiens and genisovans ate a very varied diet. Tooth plaque and micro wear only lets us peek into a small time frame of days to months. Diet was seasonal and wisely dependent on era and location. Coastal communities ate lots of scallops, fish and seals, for example.

@@4124V4TA-SNPCA-x Yes of course but if they were eating a lot of meat there would have been evidence of it. Obviously not all Neanderthals ate this particular diet. Plaque turns into tartar and lasts a very long time. 100's of thousands of years!

Yup!

Go to the zoo and hunt for a meal without fire or weapons,good luck 😊

If you’re not willing to listen to a person who actually studies nutrition for a living simply because he doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, that your meat eating habits are not healthy, then you dismiss him outright. If you don’t agree with him, fine. Continue eating meat. In about 10 years, let us know how that played out for you.

One thing that is being left out of this discussion is the fact that “expert” carnivorous hunters like lions, tigers and African wild dogs, don’t make a kill every day. In fact, many of these hunters actually go hungry for several days. Our ancestors were no different. I’m pretty sure obtaining food for them was not like driving to Costco and getting everything you want. So those people who actually want to eat the Paleo way, should consider that also involves fasting for a few days periodically. They have to pretend that they didn’t make a kill that day. They probably didn’t eat 3 meals a day either.

@@Tony-un3vf 3 meals a week maybe

Didn’t you also want to follow up on what Palaeolithic animals ate?

Didn’t you also want to follow up on what Palaeolithic animals ate?

What I heard was that he believes our Paleolithic ancestors devoted a great deal of their time and energy on hunting but that meat did not provide the clear majority of their diet because hunting is hard, game is scarce, and other sources of calories were available that were more reliable. Is there any reason why the diet of Paleolithic people would be radically different from the diet of the Hadza? Also, he expressed concern that modern practices have altered the nutrient profile of meat just as it has for fruit and vegetables, but that most people who try to follow a paleo diet do not get the majority of their meat from wild game.

​@@christopherbrand5360What makes you think game wasn't abundant there weren't as many of us around taking all there land. Fruit and veg were much less abundant since they are seasonal and fruit today in no way represents what would of been around back then depending on location berries may of been around for part of the year. There are loads of videos of the hadza on RU-vid and they only eat the tuber's when in need, most of the time their hunts are successful and they eat nose to tail. Also why would someone taking the time to choose a diet and choosing paleo decide to eat fast food meat when wild caught fish, grass fed beef and pasture raised poultry is easily available.

He talked about hunting. What are you talking about?

Did they die of obesity, diabetes and heart disease?

Ever looked at grass fed modern beef compared to wild grazing animals? I wonder how people come up with these ideas to be able to eat paleo.

@@roswithabed3650 because herding was paleo and crop farming wasn't?

@@Caladcholg I live in Switzerland. We have loads of grass fed beef. The body composition is nowhere near what the paleo folks had to get along with. Besides, learning about history outside the paleo diet box is very worth while. You sound as if you are willing to think outside the paleo diet box.

@@roswithabed3650 @roswithabed3650 oh cool, Switzerland!, Thomas Mann's magic Mountain is one of my favorite books! (I know, sorry for stereotyping XD). But yeah, I don't think the DNA of any of our food, livestock, crops or otherwise, is the same as it would have been 'Paleolithically'. I don't fall into the paleo box, just the seeking truth in nutrtion box. Since you are Swiss, I'm assuming your are lactase persistent (as I am) and dairy is a large part of your diet as well? So the dairy part of paleo isn't even really relevant. And while I understand grass fed isn't wild, it appears to be much healthier and less painful for the animals than feeding them grains, and the nutritional composition of the resulting meat is much more ancestrally appropriate for humans.

@@Caladcholg personally I am not much into dairy, no. And until about 3 years ago I ate 1 pound of chocolate and meat each, per week 😉. And loads of veggies to get a full stomach.