Is Paleo diet a good thing?
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Is Paleo diet a good thing? It is a diet that is intended to resemble the diet of paleolithic man.
Paleo diet is a good thing
[edit | edit source]Arguments for
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Pro Human organism was finetuned for a certain diet. The adaptations, via variation and elimination, were for that diet. The changed modern diet does not match that diet adapted to. The human body may still work well enough with the modern diet, but is unlikely to work optimally. Thus, there is a potential for improved health.
Objection There is some plausibility to it, but is too speculative. Direct empirical evidence of health effects is much preferable to abstract considerations like this.
- Objection Direct empirical evidence in nutrition science is hard to obtain; that "science" is notoriously unreliable. An abstract self-proving argument is much more credible than hard to independently verify latest theory of nutritional science.
Arguments against
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Con Paleo diet's emphasis on meat consumption makes it environmentally unfriendly: it takes more resources, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions to produce meat than equivalent non-meat diet.
- Objection Vegetarian (plants, eggs, milk) Paleo-like diet can be considered. It will not be completely Paleo (it will have milk), but it can reduce amount of processed food, for instance. And without milk but with eggs, it will bolster its Paleo character; eggs are 100% Paleo.
- Objection What is described is not sufficiently matching definitions and understanding of what "paleo" diets refer to. They characteristically contain a lot of meat.
- Con Studies indicate if not show that many prehistoric humans ate many plants and could well have been vegetarians. The modern "paleo" diets are now thought to be based on a myth.[1]
