Despite the many grain free recipes on this blog and my frequent admonition to eliminate refined grain based carbs from the diet and limit even properly prepared grains to a moderate level, I don’t choose to eat paleo or primal.
I especially don’t want my children to eat this way.
My reasons are pretty straightfoward when it comes to Paleo. They are more subtle with regards to Primal.Â
Paleo Diet – Misguided from the Get Go
The Paleo Diet as written by Loren Cordain can be quickly dismissed as unhealthy because it makes a number of wild claims that are completely unsupported through close examination of Traditional Societies as studied and documented by Dr. Weston A. Price in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.
For starters, he says that wild animals are low in fat, but buffalo fat is more saturated than even beef fat from domesticated cattle.
He recommends canola oil as a source of omega-3 fatty acids, yet most canola oil is deodorized during manufacturing which destroys these delicate fats. It is almost always of GMO origin.
Cordain extols the virtues of lean meats but Traditional Man prized the fatty, cholesterol rich liver and other fatty cuts.
Perhaps Cordain’s most ridiculous suggestion of all is to rub flax oil on meat before cooking. Flax oil should never be cooked as it turns rancid and would be toxic and carcinogenic to consume!
His recommendation against grains and all starchy root vegetables (tubers) goes against discoveries of grains in the ashes and pottery of some of the most primitive humans and widespread use of tubers by many Traditional Societies. For example, ancient hunter-gatherers ate oats as confirmed by archaeological evidence.
Finally, his claim that primitive man did not consume salt is just plain baffling. Just because a salt shaker wasn’t on the dinner table doesn’t mean that salt was not consumed via other methods!
Ashes from salt rich marsh grasses were added to food in African tribes. Salt rich blood from hunted game was used in food preparation after being carefully collected.
In the final analysis, there isn’t a whole lot of paleo in The Paleo Diet! Â
With so many misguided recommendations in the book as a whole, embarking down the path of the Paleo Diet is clearly fraught with a clear and present danger to health!
Primal Diet – Traditional But Is It Optimal?
My reasons for not eating Primal, however, are a bit more subtle.
Folks who eat Primal typically base it on the book The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson. The diet excludes all cereal grains and recommends against all conventional dairy although raw dairy is considered acceptable. Saturated fat and natural cholesterol are rightfully embraced as health supporting. Learning how to make bone broth is advised.
The book warns against soy, transfats, phytates, lectins, processed foods, and of course sugar.
In essence, the Primal Diet does indeed recommend a way of life and eating that is in harmony with Traditional Wisdom and following this approach to eating can be a healthy choice for some.
Remember though, that only a few Traditional societies didn’t eat grains. The vast majority did! Hence, unless you are of Eskimo or Masaai heritage who ate a carnivore diet, it is best to be eating your grains.
Primal Eating Blows Out Thyroids?Â
As an example of Primal eating not being a good long term choice, let’s examine the case of the former Fitness Editor for this blog, Paula Jager CSCS, who used to eat Primal for several years. She was even featured on Mark Sisson’s website in 2011 as an example of newly minted 50 year old in amazing physical condition. Indeed, Paula eats extremely well and works out religiously. She’s gorgeous!
However, back in 2015, Paula made the decision to go back to eating traditionally prepared, gluten free grains for health reasons. I know several other women who went back to grains due to failing thyroid health after several years eating Primal or Paleo. Women beware! I have not observed a single woman do well on this type of diet for more than a few years, particularly those with children or those who are perimenopausal or menopausal.
Why is eating traditionally prepared grains ultimately a better approach than Primal?
Not All Traditional Diets Are Created Equal
In Dr. Price’s travels, he noted that some Traditional Societies were healthier and had more excellent physical form than others.
For example, during Dr. Price’s travels in Africa, he examined several five cattle keeping groups: The Maasai of Tanganyika, the Muhima of Uganda, the Chewya of Kenya, the Watusi of Ruanda, and the Neurs tribes on the western side of the Nile near the country of Sudan.
These groups were largely carnivores with their diet consisting primarily of blood, meat and milk. Fish was also eaten by some. The liver was highly priced and was consumed both raw and cooked.
Grains, fruits, and vegetables were consumed in small amounts.
These largely carnivorous tribes were very tall with even the women averaging over 6 feet in height in some tribes. All these tribes had marvelous physiques and perfectly straight, uncrowded teeth. Six tribes had no dental decay whatsoever.
On the other extreme, Dr. Price also examined largely vegetarian tribes such as the Bantu. This agricultural group’s diet consisted primarily of sweet potatoes, corn, beans, bananas, millet and sorghum. A few cattle or goats were kept for meat and milk and frogs, insects, and other small animals were also consumed.
These tribes were dominated by their carnivorous neighbors and they did suffer from low levels of dental decay – about 5-6% of all teeth.
The final African group Dr. Price researched were the Dinkas.  The Dinkas followed a truly mixed diet of whole foods without the tendency toward the extremes of the carnivorous Maasai or the agricultural Bantu.
While not as tall as the primarily carnivorous, cattle herding groups, they were physically better proportioned and had greater strength.
The Dinka diet primarily consisted of nutrient dense, properly prepared whole grains and fish.
Dr. Price’s close study of these African groups convinced him that the best Traditional Diet – one that encourages optimal physical development in children – consisted of a balance of properly prepared whole grains along with animal foods (especially fish), and not tending toward extremes in either direction.
This is surely one of the most important lessons from Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Avoiding of extremes particularly when it comes to the diet of growing children, is the best and most wise approach when their optimal development is the goal.
So while I am not against eliminating grains in the diet particularly when a temporary period of gut healing is called for (such as with the GAPS Diet), the long term optimal way of eating is a balanced one that includes grains as described and noted by Dr. Price.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
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Sources
The Paleo Diet, Thumbs Down Book Review
More Information on Maintaining a Healthy Weight
Dukan Diet
Losing Weight with Coconut Oil
Zoe Harcombe Diet
Fasting with bone broth
Raw milk fasting
Bulletproof Coffee Weight Loss Risks
Hi Sarah – I struggle with the quantity issues -roughly how many calories do you and your children take in on a given day and roughly how much of that equates to meats, grains, vegetables, fruits etc?
I personally do not track calories.
This is the first I’ve heard of the paleo diet endorsing canola oil. That seems like a specific case for one paleo supporter and not something widely accepted.
I switched to full primal about 3 months ago after dabbling in it before. It’s worked extremely well, and I don’t miss or see the need for grains at all. From the research that I’ve done, a lot of the claims of the problems grains have are spot on.
Ultimately, what works for each individual is best. I would have no problem with small amount of grains very occasionally if they were prepared right (i.e. real sourdough), but overall I’ve eliminated them and have no desire to make them a regular part of my diet again.
This post in no way disses Primal. I just give my reasons for not eating this way. If you disagree, that is wonderful.
I’m just so over grains getting slammed left and right. There is nothing wrong with grains and in fact, Dr. Price observed that the cultures that were not to extreme one way or the other in their eating and consumed grains in balance with their animal food intake were the the most physically excellent and strong.
Why is this research so often glossed over? I have no idea, but I find it important and wanted to bring it to light for people who feel “bad” that they don’t cut out grains when in fact it is fine and potentially the most optimal way to eat in the final analysis unless there is a health related reason.
Is this snippishness? I think not.
Many times you say that cereal grains “add much to the diet” for children. Would you please be specific? I am of the opinion that there is not a SINGLE nutrient found in grains that can not be found in abundance elsewhere, and usually in a more digestible food. If you think grains need to be removed when healing, even from something as simple as a cold (and you say you heal FASTER when they are removed), what leads you to believe that they are good, healthy foods for everyday use, when the body is repairing and regenerating all the time? This sounds like dogmatic adherence to WAP’s findings, just as some paleo/primal people obsessively adhere to their chosen diet guru’s advice.
And as far as grains in the “ancestral diet”, I think MOST experts are in agreement that these were hand-harvested, teensy tiny little supplements to the diet. Not meals based on grains or sourdough breads. Another distinction to be made…seed grains like millet, teff and quinoa can NOT be used as a reason to support gluten/wheat consumption in the modern childs diet. Apples and oranges.
Magnesium for one. Cheeseslave wrote an excellent post about this last week about how those who don’t eat grains are at risk for deficiency of this critical nutrient.
Don’t eat grains if you don’t want to. I find Dr. Price’s reasons FOR eating them to be compelling and I trust his keen and thorough observations much more than modern Paleo style diets that are evolving as the authors discover their own errors over time (i.e., one of the Paleo experts now eats white rice and potatoes after years of eschewing them – see comment above). If Paleo evolves – this is evidence of flawed premise to begin with.
Great observation about the evolving paleo diet, Sarah! I think this is a great article with a very honest approach to your personal eating choices. One thing I can’t believe nobody mentions is COST. I went on GAPS for 6 months and I should have stayed on longer, but the sheer money it takes to fill up your family without beans, potatoes, rice, or bread is staggering. I might also mention that, when I went off GAPS on to a traditional diet low in natural sugars and with a reasonable carb intake, I noticed no difference in weight gain or my blood sugar issues or any other factors that affected how I felt on a day to day basis. Conclusion – I do fine on healthy carbs and starches, just like my European ancestors did.
I, for one, appreciate when theories ‘evolve’. Imagine if, as new discoveries were made, we never changed our accepted theories and practices to incorporate those discoveries? Diet isn’t dogma, after all… that’s a good thing.
I get what your point is though – certain foods that were once considered absolute no-go are now considered not so bad, at least for certain people, so the premise that (for example) white potatoes should be avoided across the board was a flawed premise. Certainly, Cordain had several ideas that were inaccurate (and that have since long been dispatched by other researchers in the field, and now by Cordain himself – lots of disagreement in science-based fields, as there should be). Though chucking an overarching idea/theory because a few of the details were not accurate is a baby/bathwater situation.
In the paleo/primal communities around the web now, the overwhelming attitude seems to be one of self-discovery; that diet is highly personal, and depends on your personal needs and physiology. For instance, many people do just fine on properly prepared grains… as a celiac, I don’t. White rice is fine for me, once in a while… too much or too often, and I gain weight and don’t feel that well. Same goes for certain veggies, and for nuts.
What I took from your post (and this may or may not have been your intention) is that people tend to over-identify with labels… “I’m a paleo eater” or “I’m a WAPF’r” or whatever. And, due to that, some may doggedly adhere to certain ways of doing things, despite new evidence and data. Personally, I don’t label my way of eating anymore – I keep up with the latest science/research and it influences my decisions, but ultimately I just eat what works for me. (Whether my great-grandmother could eat it or not… I’m not her!)
I haven’t eaten grains in over 6 years – no deficiency symptoms whatsoever. It’s funny, because in her post she says that if you’re grain-free, or have a leaky/damaged gut, you’re at risk.. but grains GAVE me my damaged, leaky gut in the first place! (I’m celiac). The deficiency symptoms she mentions are interesting – the ones on the list that I once had actually cleared up after I went grain-free. For her, eating grains seems to be helping, which is great. For others like me, eating grains will actually do the opposite. So again – seems to come down to your own personal situation.
I’d be willing to bet you didn’t damage your gut on properly prepared grains…. right?
I love Cheeseslave and read her posts often, she is a smart and informed woman, but I would never site her as my magnesium “expert”. As Tracy mentions below, magnesium deficiency can often be caused by grain consumption, whether leaky gut is present or not. There are plenty of rich plant and animal sources of magnesium besides grains, and we could enhance our utilization of this hard to digest nutrient by correcting our digestion, gently cooking the foods and taking them with fat.
My point is not that everyone should NOT eat grains, but that other factors of health and deficiency should not be overlooked, and that there is absolutely no reason to insist that for a child to be healthy they must. eat. grains.
I just talked to a family of 15 month old twins the other week who were having fits as their children were very unhappy and not thriving with their no grain, traditional diet of raw dairy, meats, veggies etc.. I suggested to them to add in properly prepared, soaked grains such as oatmeal and now the children are happy and gaining weight again.
Healthy children do best when given grains in moderation. Unless there is health reason for doing so .. such as GAPS Diet temporarily or permanently if necessary.
Ummm… how about leafy greens like spinach, several types of nuts, many fish including halibut, to name a few sources of magnesium… sources that don’t require soaking or fermenting to render them somewhat-less-toxic. Frankly, the argument that its cheaper to feed the family grains than fresh veg and pastured meat is much more compelling to me than the claim that one misses out on some key nutrient by skipping grains. I myself include moderate amounts of rice or potatoes sometimes to stretch my food budget, but only for economic reasons, not because I think its nutritionally superior to the alternative.
For the record, you don’t HAVE to justify yourself at all. You want to feed your family grains – when they are physically able to handle it – go right ahead! Your family, your body, your call to make. But if your goal is to hold up your diet as being the “best” or the most “balanced”, you’ll need to do more than point and laugh at outdated Cordain quotes. What does “balanced” even mean? I don’t want to be balanced between being sick or well, for example, I want to be at the upper extreme of good health!
You say diets that evolve are inherently flawed. I say diets that need to pick apart outdated information from other diets in order to feel superior are inherently flawed. If you ever choose to add to this article, I hope it includes less snark and more substantive evidence of why THIS diet works for YOU, not why other diets (that do seem to work for other people, by the way) are silly.
According to the USDA, the top 5 foods highest in magnesium per serving are:
And the tops 5 foods with highest the magnesium per milligram are:
ALL of these foods except the bran cereal are paleo/primal and whole grains don’t even make it into the top 5.
There is nothing weird of extreme about the way we eat now… after several years of a kitchen full of soaking/sprouting grains and legumes, sourdough cultures, bread machines, grinders, dehydrators, bottles of FCLO, waiting days between when I decided we’d eat a food and when it was actually READY to eat, etc., we are finally eating a simplified diet. There was nothing more extreme than WAPF for them and nothing simpler or more natural than paleo now. Do my boys eat grain foods away from home? Absolutely. But the bread they’re gonna eat at a friend’s house or the crust from the local pizza shop isn’t just not paleo, it also isn’t WAPF. Cheeseslave made many similar claims in her anti-paleo rant and the fact is that WAPF proponents calling paleo advocates “extreme” is the pot calling the kettle black.
I liked the article since it makes very good points based on dr Price’s work. There have been several great pioneers like him that have contributed pieces to the puzzle of biochemical individuality and it’s relation to diet and nutrition. And let’s not forget that US is practically now a “big genetic melting pot”; there are individuals that have 2-4 different types of races in their blood..how could you determine their real “ancestral diet”? There are not “good” and “bad” foods (unless they are processed, and then they are all bad) , there are only right or wrong foods for your metabolism. A “balanced” diet is a VERY general term and for everybody it means different things.
@Jill of course there are valid health reasons for pursuing a grain free diet. My post describing the observations of Dr. Price that a more balanced and less extreme approach to eating is more favorable is not for those in that situation. I wish you the best with your son’s health journey! He is lucky to have such an attentive Mother such as yourself.
@Melissa SoHectic I mention in the post that Primal is fine for some but that many especially children would benefit more from a less extreme approach to Traditional Eating.
I do hope that some don’t take this post as an excuse to go hog wild on the grains even if properly prepared. I’ve been wanting to write this post for a LONG time, but always hesitated for this reason. Hopefully the information will be taken and understood within the context it was intended.
I for one would like to see a more nuanced follow-up post on this topic, which clarifies your context in light of the further resources your commenters have provided.
What resources are those? I didn’t see any that impacted the overall message of the post. I also think the context with which I wrote it is clear IF one reads the entire post.
@ Jill Bryant Mitchell – I am working with people that need intensive gut healing and I know how hard it is to reestablish a normal, friendly gut flora. Sometimes gut flora can even be permanently damaged and the person has to follow a life long protocol to maintain a healthy gut. Depends on many factors. But many times this can be addressed and tremendously improved. If I may ask, what kind of protocol are you exactly following for your son’s gut healing ? You can send me a message with more info if you want, maybe I can help.
@ Caroline Boles – there is only one ACCURATE way to determine your metabolic type and that is by filling out a very complex online questionnaire from Healthexcel, designed by William Wolcott. You’d need a Metabolic Typing Advisor to guide you through the whole process and explain the results to you. Metabolic Typing started 35 years ago and it’s the only approach that is able to determine what foods are right for your metabolic individuality. We are all unique on a biochemical level as we are in our fingerprints. This is a premise that is unfortunately often taken out of the equation by the “allopathic nutrition” or “nutrient based nutrition”. Check out my website to find out more about Metabolic Typing -www.guide2health.net
What it really comes down to is that food today is vastly different from what are ancestors consumed. Grains, corn, potatoes, and dairy have all changed drastically due to human tampering and environment. Trying to eat like a “paleo” is not really possible. Heck, grains even have more gluten in them today than they had centuries ago.