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“To the uninitiated, the much talked about Paleo diet — a nutritional regimen centered around pasture-raised meat, eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables, and nuts, in the spirit of our cave-dwelling forebears — may seem like another low-carb fad, the South Beach diet dressed up in a mammoth hide. But the time has passed when it could be written off as a fringe movement of shaggy-haired Luddites with an outsize taste for wild boar meatloaf.

Lately, Paleo has charged toward the mainstream, not only as a hugely popular diet (it was most-searched diet of 2013, according to the Google Trends Zeitgeist list), but also as a cave-man-inspired lifestyle that has spawned a fast-growing industry.”

Source: The Paleo Lifestyle: The Way, Way, Way Back – NYTimes.com

Australian Aborigine in Swamp Darwin

Kerin O’Dea (School of Population Health, U. of South Australia) performed one of the first clinical studies utilizing the paleo diet for treatment of type 2 diabetes. I discuss it in my Paleobetic Diet book and here.

O’Dea recently wrote:

“The most important lesson that can be drawn from this study is that metabolic control in type 2 diabetes can be greatly improved with healthy lifestyle interventions. The diet in the 1982 study was rich in very lean meat from wild animals: its high protein content aided satiety despite low energy intake [1,200 cal/day]. The carbohydrate was mostly high fibre and slowly digested. The fat content was low, but relatively rich in long chain highly polyunsaturated fats (omega-3 and omega-6). Recent research has demonstrated  that ectopic fat is a driver of both defects of type 2 diabetes: insulin resistance when in the liver, and impaired insulin secretion when in the pancreas. Both are potentially reversible by healthy diets instituted early in the disease process. However, current population trends to increased obeisty are driven by the powerful transnational food industry. Preventive interventions will therefor be very challenging.”

Source: Pathology (2016), 48(S1), Abstract Supplement

Free-range bluefin tuna

I thought “langostino” was Spanish for lobster…Guess I’m wrong.

Click the link below for details.

“Unless your go-to sushi joint is Masa or Nobu, you’re not getting the sushi you ordered, ever, anywhere, and that includes your regular sushi restaurant where you can’t imagine them doing such a thing, Olmsted says. Your salmon is probably fake and so is your red snapper. Your white tuna is something else altogether, probably escolar — known to experts as “the Ex-Lax fish” for the gastrointestinal havoc it wreaks.

Source: Everything we love to eat is a scam | New York Post

Diabetes types 1 and 2 along with gestational diabetes are addressed in this diaTribe interview. For example:

“According to Dr. Jovanovič, it is important to make sure family members understand the importance of reducing carb intake for blood sugar management during pregnancy. She said that grandmas in particular “often think a pregnant lady needs to eat all the time and not only eat all the time, but eat tortillas and rice and pasta. The grandma often cooks and thickens food with starch, puts a lot of noodles in it, etc. Then of course the young woman doesn’t want to disappoint her grandma, and it can be a difficult situation.” Clear communication can help a supportive family provide medically sound support, in line with the mutually desired outcome – a healthy mom and baby!”

Source: Diabetes and Pregnancy: Expert Advice from Pregnancy Guru Dr. Lois Jovanovič | diaTribe

From the Whole Health Source blog:

“You’ve heard the story before: when you eat carbohydrate-rich foods that digest quickly, it sends your blood sugar and insulin levels soaring, then your blood sugar level comes crashing back down and you feel hungry and cranky.  You reach for more carbohydrate, perpetuating the cycle of crashes, overeating, and fat gain.

It sounds pretty reasonable– in fact, so reasonable that it’s commonly stated as fact in popular media and in casual conversation.  This idea is so deeply ingrained in the popular psyche that people often say “I have low blood sugar” instead of “I’m hungry” or “I’m tired”.  But this hypothesis has a big problem: despite extensive research, it hasn’t been clearly supported.  I’ve written about this issue before.

A new study offers a straightforward test of the hypothesis, and once again finds it lacking.”

Source: Whole Health Source: Do Blood Glucose Levels Affect Hunger and Satiety?

The study at hand involved 15 healthy young men. Results may not apply to overweight post-menopausal women with T2 diabetes, but I bet they do.

Steve Parker, M.D.

Good thing she had a spear with her

“Do not adjust your set. And no, it isn’t April 1st.  The New Zealand Heart Foundation dietitians and nutritionists are giving Paleo a go.

It what sees me channeling the ghost of That Paleo Guy, I feel compelled to write a bit of a critique about their experiment, and their assumptions and starting points.  But to be clear before anything else, I do applaud the openness of the Heart Foundation to be giving this a go.

My first post to this blog outlined my reasons for largely divorcing myself from the term “Paleo” as a heuristic for how to navigate the very messy and confusing food environments we are faced with in our modern societies.  Subsequent posts have touched on why the paradigm made sense in the first place, and on some of the things we have taken issue with as the concept has grown in the public consciousness.”

Read the whole thing.