Paleo diet is too expensive and causes diarrhea

Posted on August 27, 2016 | 2 Comments

“The Paleolithic diet has been receiving media coverage in Australia and claims to improve overall health. The diet removes grains and dairy, whilst encouraging consumption of fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs and nuts. Our aim was to compare the diet to the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating (AGHE) in terms of compliance, palatability and feasibility.”

Source: Compliance, Palatability and Feasibility of PALEOLITHIC and Australian Guide to Healthy Eating Diets in Healthy Women: A 4-Week Dietary Intervention. – PubMed – NCBI

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2 responses to “Paleo diet is too expensive and causes diarrhea”

  1. Frank | August 27, 2016 at 3:18 pm |

    Three comments

    1. The sample size was laughable. No meaningful conclusions could be drawn from it and even the authors admit that when they say that further studies are necessary. So why bother with the survey? I guess because they want to discredit the Paleo Diet

    2. The study was highly subjective and again the authors acknowledge that. The questionnaire relied on people telling the truth and when it comes to food consumption truth is often the first casualty 🙂 A famous study some time ago had people write a food diary of what they consumed. Unknonw to the participants and cam corder was trained on their fridge doors. Afterwards the researchers noted significant discrepancies between what people wrote in their diaries and what they actually ate. The participants seemed genuinely surprised when confronted with this evidence so it would seem that part of our brains does not record everything related to food.

    3. It’s not unusual for diarrhoea to occur when people change diets. Most times it disappears once the person gets used to the new diet.

    4. It’s impossible to make any meaningful assessment of this study without access to the raw data and without knowledge of what the questions in the survey actually were.

    Studies like this imo bring the medical industry into disrepute. Note I said “industry” and not “profession”. Medicine as a profession died some time ago.

    • Steve Parker, M.D. | August 28, 2016 at 6:34 am |

      Good points, Frank.
      From an anecdotal viewpoint, I don’t hear of diarrhea being a problem with the paleo diet.
      I do note that Frasetto’s group at UCSF (University of California San Francisco), in their published studies, “phase in” their version of paleo over several weeks, as if the body needs time to adjust.

      -Steve