Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Mat Lalonde on The Science Behind the Paleolithic Diet

I stumbled across this video a few days ago and thought it was superb:


Mat explains why many of the arguments used by paleo advocates are false and then provides real scientific explanations why the paleo diet is a useful tool for constructing a healthy diet. He also addresses common misconceptions about macronutrient ratios. I like that after beating us over the head with some heavy science, he concludes with one of the most succinct, practical ways I've heard of starting a paleo diet: "Eat meat, vegetables and tubers." I wish Mat had more material available on the web. His deep knowledge gives the paleo world a much needed reality check that is sorely needed to maintain credibility.

4 comments:

  1. awesome video - thanks for the heads up on Evelyn's site - much appreciated!

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    1. My pleasure. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a note.

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  2. great video.what is your(or matt,s)take on fruit consumption?from the video it seams as if he is against fruit.

    cj

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  3. Good question. I hadn't thought much about it before because I don't care much for fruit. I looked through the transcript of Mat's interview with Chris Kresser and several times he groups all of them together: "meat, vegetables, tubers and fruit". As far as I can tell, he's totally fine with them.

    Just out of curiosity, I plugged bananas into my Fitbit account to see how the calories break down. I picked bananas because low carbers often recoil in horror because there's 29 grams of sugar in a single banana.

    Well, in order to get to 2,000 calories, I would have to consume 5 lbs of bananas. Five POUNDS. I can't fathom ingesting that much food on a daily basis without intentionally overriding my satiety signals. So, from just a calorie standpoint, I think it would be difficult to get fat on a diet of whole fruit and see no problem including it in a diet composed of whole foods.

    Now, if you take five pounds of fruit, juice it and drink all those calories instead, you're eliminating all the fiber that would actually be satiating. Once you crunch the numbers, it keeps boiling down to eating real food with minimal processing.

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