Are grains bad for you? The problem with the Paleo diet and other restrictive low carb diets.
To eat or not to eat grains…
If you have been following my journey for a while you’ll know that I was on a paleo diet for a long time. I gave up all grains and dairy for years and eventually found myself deep in the throes of poor recovery and slow but steady weight gain.
I’d found the paleo diet after being sold the idea that gluten was evil and that it would cause all sorts of inflammation. Not realising at the time that just because gluten did in fact cause inflammation to those who have coeliacs, it actually had many benefits to people who had perfectly healthy bodies.
2 years after being on a paleo diet I found Crossfit, and realised that the diet was quite popular amongst the CF athletes, so I fit right in with the I only eat 90% dark chocolate and sweet potatoes convos.
Deep in my disordered eating days I avoided most things that came out of a box, a can or a sealed bag, in fear that eating processed food would destroy my health. Little did I know that a restrictive diet was actually what would eventually cause my health to deteriorate.
Do grains cause inflammation?
Here’s the problem I have with the Paleo diet or any similar low carb diet; it claims that grains cause inflammation and as a result, is unbelievably restrictive.
It appears innocent at first, even virtuous above all the other diets out there. But what concerns me the most about it, is the fact that it is marketed towards athletes, and is exceptionally low in carbs.
It is well established within the sports science community that carbohydrates support recovery and increase performance. So no, unless you have an autoimmune disease where your body cannot tolerate it, grains do not cause inflammation.
Crossfit and Paleo
The Paleo diet within the Crossfit community is still really popular. To hear that the general guidelines recommended on their main website for athletes to follow is a diet high in protein, nuts, seeds with only some fruit and “little starch and no sugar” is a little disconcerting.
If you’re interested in the science of macronutrient for sports performance check out the blog What Are Macronutrients And Why Are They Important For Sports Performance.
Here is the Crossfit nutritional guidelines:
“eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar.”
These days the Crossfit diet is a little less rigid, following the Zone diet, which has a more reasonable macronutrient balance, but the food choices still follow the Paleo diet guidelines.
So what is the Paleo diet and what are the pros and cons?
Let’s first look at what it is…
The paleo diet is meant to mimic the diet of our ancestors. Back when humans were hunter gatherers, it wasn’t a simple trip to the local stores to grab an organic chicken to cook for dinner, we’d have to go out and kill our own beasts if we wanted to feed our families.
But here’s the the thing, the paleo diet made many assumptions about ancient humans and here are some of the things they got wrong…
Animal meat didn’t make up the majority of the calories ancient humans ate
Arguing that early humans got to eat meat everyday assumes that there were large animals to hunt on a daily basis and that those hunts were successful.
In reality, hunter gatherers had to eat what was around seasonally which meant that depending on the time of year, their meat consumption could range anywhere between 5-90%.
These new findings are based on a few hunter gatherer tribes that still exist today. More on this later.
Here’s what we learnt from real life hunter gatherers. They didn’t eat salads or leafy greens. In fact leafy vegetables made up 1% of their diet.
When given the choice, they’d prefer calorie dense options like fruit and tubers and other root vegetables.
What’s also important to note is that when they did catch a large enough animal to eat, the meat (organs and muscles) of the wild animals would contain about 50% less fat than farmed animals today.
2. Our ancestors ate grains
We have lots of evidence that ancient humans gathered, processed, and ate wild grains and legumes long before the rise of agriculture.
Archeologists have found residue of grains on paleolithic tools from 30,000 years ago.
Even our evolutionary cousins, the neanderthals, were found to have remnants of wild grains stuck in their teeth. Pretty cool right?
3. Humans have evolved to digest dairy
One of the many theories about dairy is that the human body was not designed to digest dairy from other animals. Turns out scientists do a pretty cool job of researching all the facts and have found that humans have in fact evolved to digest dairy.
This mutation is called lactase persistence and it has been around for about 8,000 years.
So you can bust that little knowledge out at a CF Christmas party.
4. There isn’t just one single paleo diet
We don’t know exactly what ancient people ate. But it’s safe to assume their diets were as varied as those of contemporary hunter-gatherer groups.
Learning from contemporary hunter gatherers.
There are few tribes that still operate like true hunter gatherers in the modern world, and the Hadza men and women are one of them. In northern Tanzania, there lives a group of modern day hunter gatherers.
They eat what they hunt, forage and live without the modern day ammenities most of us have.
What we know from research is that wherever humans migrated, from Africa to Eurasia to the Americas, the largest mammals soon disappeared. It seems humans were insistent on consuming their way through nature from the start but that’s another conversation for another time.
Because of this, we’ve had to learn to adapt our diets to our surroundings.
Grains can and other carbs can increase sports performance and help with recovery.
If grains are so good then why do I feel better without it?
For starters, if you suspect you may have grain allergy or have coeliacs disease, I strongly suggest you get tested and get the right support.
Most often however, when we do an elimination diet, we give up the processed versions of the whole food. Instead of going 2 weeks without brown rice and oats, we instead give up cereal bars, cookies and cakes and various other foods that have been heavily processed and likely don’t contain as many nutrients,
It’s during that time, we often make better food choices when it comes to nutrition and therefore end up eating more whole foods by default.
When we suddenly begin to feel better as a result of making better choices, we often put it down to the magic powers of our newly found restrictive diet.
Conclusion
Anyone who tells you there is one single solution or a “best diet” for everyone, hasn’t done their research. The paleo diet isn’t the best diet out there and neither is my diet.
Each person requires specifications based on their own needs which includes (but not exclusive to) their biometrics, training volume and food preferences.
When learning about new diet trends, question everything, even this blog.
Do you own research, read peer review papers where possible, look for both sides of the argument and always consider any confounding evidence.
So dear athlete, have you ever been caught up in the world of restrictive dieting? Share your experiences below.
References
Tishkoff, S., Reed, F., Ranciaro, A. et al. Convergent adaptation of human lactase persistence in Africa and Europe. Nat Genet 39, 31–40 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng1946
Effects of Evolution, Ecology, and Economy on Human Diet: Insights from Hunter-Gatherers and Other Small-Scale SocietiesHerman Pontzer and Brian M. Wood Annual Review of Nutrition202141:1,363-385
Michelle R Jospe, Melyssa Roy, Rachel C Brown, Jillian J Haszard, Kim Meredith-Jones, Louise J Fangupo, Hamish Osborne, Elizabeth A Fleming, Rachael W Taylor, Intermittent fasting, Paleolithic, or Mediterranean diets in the real world: exploratory secondary analyses of a weight-loss trial that included choice of diet and exercise, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 111, Issue 3, March 2020, Pages 503–514, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqz330
