Disclaimer
• Your life and health are your own responsibility.
• Your decisions to act (or not act) based on information or advice anyone provides you—including me—are your own responsibility.
Remember back when “Are white potatoes paleo?” was the biggest question facing the paleo community? Now we’re seeing perfectly respectable paleo bloggers advocating butter and heavy cream…and some are even experimenting with white rice.
What sort of caveman diet is that?
And just what is the “paleo diet”, anyway? Is the term becoming diluted because we just can’t stop eating delicious cheat foods—or is it still a valid concept?
First, we need to define the paleo diet. Here’s one attempt, which I’ve chosen because it’s typical:
“With readily available modern foods, The Paleo Diet mimics the types of foods every single person on the planet ate prior to the Agricultural Revolution (a mere 500 generations ago).” -Dr. Loren Cordain, “The Paleo Diet”
This is a simple and concise definition, and it avoids the common pitfall of “eat only what cavemen ate”: we hunted mammoths, mastodons, gomphotheres, glyptodonts, wisents, and most other megafauna to extinction, so “what cavemen ate” is no longer an option. And the fruits and vegetables found in a supermarket have little to do with ancestral, wild varieties: they’re products of agricultural domestication. Paleolithic humans didn’t wander around the African savanna picking Paleolithic broccoli.
They probably tasted delicious, too: otherwise we wouldn't have hunted them to extinction.
Unfortunately, this definition is also misleading. “Every single person on the planet” didn’t eat the same diet during the more recent times (Upper Paleolithic, 10,000-40,000 years ago) for which we have good evidence—and during earlier times (Lower/Middle Paleolithic, 2.6 million-140,000 years ago), the direct evidence is too sparse to make specific recommendations.
Clearly we must do better.
Surviving Lean Times Is What Defines Us
The ability to survive lean times is what defines a long-lived, slowly-reproducing species like humans. It doesn’t matter how successful we are during good times if bad times kill everyone off.
Even if we thrived during “normal” years, but 90% of us died off during each 100-year drought, we would have gone extinct long ago—because hunter-foragers don’t reproduce quickly enough to grow their population ten-fold in 100 years. Even a terrible disaster that happens once every thousand years is basically a continual condition on the scale of millions of years of hominid evolution.
Nomadic hunter-foragers are hard-pressed to have more than one child every four years or so. Lacking blenders and convenient jars of pablum, hunter-forager children are typically breastfed for years; it’s very difficult to care for a second child until the first is big enough to keep up with the tribe on foot; and it takes a long time for the mother to build her nutritional reserves back up.
In contrast, one mosquito can lay thousands of eggs in just a few weeks, and bacterial generations are often measured in minutes.
Humans can’t depend purely on genetic selection to adapt us to droughts, floods, volcanic eruptions, hard winters, prey dieoffs, and other dramatic, short-term crises: each of us, as individuals, must change our behavior to survive the situation.
Adaptability: Why Intelligence And Omnivory Are Both Important
I’ve made the point before that general-purpose intelligence is selected for during times of change, which basically defines the entire Pleistocene…a repeating cycle of glaciation and warming that caused sea levels to fluctuate by over 150 feet and pushed ice sheets down to what is now southern Illinois. The combination of tool-using and general-purpose intelligence has allowed hominids to adapt to a bewildering variety of ecological niches, from the high Arctic to the jungles of Central America to the deserts of Arabia to the endless grasslands of the Great Plains.
However, intelligence does no good without the ability to digest and metabolize a variety of food sources. If mountain lions could speak, they still couldn’t live off of bamboo or eucalyptus leaves. If wildebeest could reason and make Gravettian stone tools, they still couldn’t live off of hunted meat.
Our Ancestral Diet: Just Because We Can And Did, Doesn’t Mean We Should
This poses an interesting question: which of our dietary adaptations simply allowed us to struggle through bad times, and which are our “ancestral diet”? To choose a modern example, humans can clearly survive and reproduce on a diet of donuts, Taco Bell, and Red Bull—but we all know such a diet isn’t optimal for health or long life.
To answer this, we need to ask a question: “How continual was this source of food during our evolutionary history?” If we only needed to eat something mildly poisonous (but not fatal) during the driest seasons of 500-year droughts, resistance to the poison might only have been weakly selected for—whereas tolerance to something we ate regularly would have been strongly selected for.
To choose one example, this is why a few thousand years of agriculture have only weakly and incompletely selected us for gluten tolerance: intolerance won’t kill you outright, and even celiac kills you very slowly.
Therefore, humans are likely to be well-adapted to dietary patterns for which we have frequent and robust evidence over a long span of evolutionary time.
The case for infrequent and weak evidence is less clear, because there are several possibilities. One, of course, is that we’ve simply not found very many such sites yet. Another, however, is that we’ve found evidence of crisis behavior: foods eaten only in extreme periods of hunger, and to which we’re not well adapted.
Try going without food for two days—if you can—and take a walk through the woods or your local park. I guarantee you’ll start wondering whether tree bark is edible, and if you can really catch those squirrels. Anyone living in a First World nation, and reading this article on their computer, is extremely unlikely to have a meaningful conception of hunger.
Then imagine what would happen if you had to fast for another day, or an entire week, and still maintain all your regular responsibilities. (Going on a retreat and sitting on a beach doesn’t count…and “juice fasts” aren’t fasting at all.) You’re going to eat anything that will fit in your mouth and doesn’t immediately kill you.
Another possibility is medicinal use: modern hunter-foragers collect a variety of plants that are never eaten, and which are only used occasionally in small quantities. And there is a final, more disturbing possibility: not every ancient group of hominids survived, and not all experiments are successful. Infrequently eaten foods could have been the last-ditch survival effort of a tribe that starved to death and left no descendants, or a failed experiment that slowly poisoned the tribe that depended on it. Human population was small, thinly distributed, and most branches of the hominid line went extinct. There’s no way, from looking at one single archaeological site, of knowing whether the remains came from successful or unsuccessful tribes or cultures.
For instance, sorghum residue in one cave, found 70,000 years previous to any other evidence of regular seed processing, could be a trace of a thriving culture of grass-eaters; it could be a temporary response to a drought or a crash in prey population; or it could be the final meals of a starving family. (“Early homo sapiens relied on grass seeds” is, in my opinion, a transparently silly assertion to make from such limited evidence.) And as Dr. Cordain points out in his response, there’s no evidence of all the other technologies necessary to make sorghum edible to humans. (Original paper, Dr. Cordain’s response.)
For some perspective on life in the wild during hard times, see the incredible National Geographic documentary “Last Feast of the Crocodiles”. It’s in four parts: here’s Part 1.
(I’ve linked you to Youtube because NatGeo has never released it on DVD, let alone released a downloadable or streamable version. If they ever make it available for sale again, I’m glad to link to that.)
Dietary Conclusions From Archaeology: Not As Robust As We Might Hope
In order to claim that archaeological evidence represents typical human behavior, or that its remains are representative of an ancestral diet to which we are well adapted, we need robust evidence throughout the time when selection pressure was shaping hominids into anatomically modern humans, but before we spread out from Africa—approximately 2.6 Mya to 65 Kya.
Stone tools are found in profusion, all throughout the Paleolithic: first the Oldowan industry, which are just round, easily grippable rocks with an edge smashed into one side. Then came the Acheulean biface industry, which lasted for well over a million years. Then the Mousterian and Aurignacian industries, and the microlithic technologies that allowed hunting with spears and projectiles…
…and from their earliest traces 2.6 million years ago, at Bouri and Gona, through to the present, they have been frequently associated with cutmarked animal bones, and frequently feature wear patterns consistent with skinning and butchering of game.
So the evidence for consumption of meat (and its associated fat) is robust. The evidence for eating anything else is relatively indirect, since plant matter doesn’t tend to fossilize, and we’re generally limited to inference based on things like tooth shape, jaw musculature, estimations of local weather and climate, and unambiguous evidence of controlled fire and hearths. Furthermore, evidence of any kind is extremely thin the farther we go back in time: entire ancestral hominid species are implied by a few reassembled bone and skull fragments.
Click for an article by the redoubtable John Hawks about these skeletons.
In conclusion: archaeology tells us that the ancestral hominid diet involved cutting meat off of bones and eating it. Beyond that, we’re a bit foggy on the details until we get into the Upper Paleolithic, where we can perform isotopic analysis of proteins, analyze plant residues, and run DNA analyses that connect the sites to modern populations of which we have historical knowledge.
And during the Upper Paleolithic, humans expanded to inhabit such a wide range of environments, from Siberia to the African rainforest, that the concept of “what Paleolithic humans ate” is dismayingly broad.
Direct Evidence: The Takeaway
Beyond meat, we don’t know that much about what Lower and Middle Paleolithic humans really ate from day to day. Direct archaeological evidence is extremely thin until perhaps 140,000 years ago.
The evidence in the Upper Paleolithic (40,000 years ago and newer), and from the few remaining Neolithic hunter-foragers, doesn’t point to a single “paleo diet”: it only allows us to speak of “a paleo diet”.
It’s impossible to recreate historical paleo diets anyway, because most of the meat animals are extinct, and the plants commonly available to us have all been domesticated.
Fun fact: Herd animals were domesticated long before cabbage was bred into its modern forms. Therefore, humans have been drinking milk for longer than we’ve been eating broccoli!
In short, it’s clear that the concept of “paleo re-enactment” has just been triangle-choked into unconsciousness.
Why Call It Paleo, Then?
We call it “paleo” for the same reason that we call it “Latin”, even though we have absolutely no idea how it was spoken. Just as Latin scholars attempt to maintain something syntactically analogous to written Latin, paleo dieters attempt to maintain something nutritionally analogous to an ancestral human diet.
This is where we have to start using science to draw tentative conclusions from the evidence we have. And while it’s tempting to get into speculative arguments about human prehistory, at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves: What is the biochemistry of humans? How does human metabolism work, today, right now?
So it is absolutely valid to question whether strictly Neolithic foods, such as butter or rice, have a place in the paleo diet. Eating butter because it’s nutritionally similar to animal fat is no different than wearing clothes you bought at the store because they’re functionally similar to animal skins.
That is why the paleo community is asking all these questions about clearly neolithic foods. Should we eat butter or cream? Should we eat white potatoes or white rice? And do snow peas really count as a legume?
This Is Not N=1/”Whatever Works For You”
There is an important difference between “We don’t know all the answers yet” and “Do what feels right, man.”These questions have answers, because humans have biochemistry, and we should do our best to find them and live by the results. Oreos are delicious, but there’s no contingency by which they’re even remotely paleo.
Wrapping It Up: Is There A Definition Of The Paleo Diet?
Here is my best attempt at a definition. If you can improve it or think of a better one, leave a comment!
Eating foods that best support the biochemistry of human animals with a multi-million year history of hunting and foraging, primarily on the African savanna.
Avoiding foods, such as grains, grain oils, and refined sweeteners, that actively disrupt the biochemistry of these human animals.
“A fantastic read.”
“Packs more thought-provoking ideas and emotion-wrenching fun into its brief pages than many novels five times as long.”
“Funny, Provocative, Entertaining, Fun, Insightful”
“Thank you so much for writing this utterly amazing, mind opening, and fantastically beautiful book.” “The short review is this – Just read it.”
-reviews of The Gnoll Credo
Postscript: As several commenters have noted, there’s a useful intermediate step that involves only the second part of my definition, “avoiding foods … that actively disrupt the biochemistry of these animals”. Usually this means going gluten-free, sugar and HFCS-free, and eliminating heavily processed snack foods, i.e. Sean Croxton’s JERF. Often it’s softened to “minimizing foods …”: an example would be the WAPF, which advocates sprouting grains and beans to reduce their toxin and antinutrient load.
“First, they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.”
The paleo movement grew slowly for many years in the obscurity of Stage 1, and spent perhaps a year in Stage 2 being mocked as the “caveman diet”. Now, after several years of exponential growth and a stubborn refusal to be co-opted, we have finally achieved Stage 3, “Then they fight you.”
The latest example, of course, is the dismissive baloney pushed by the “experts” hired by US News and World Report, which ranks paleo dead last among 20 different diets—behind such food-free nutritional gimmicks as Slim-Fast and the Volumetrics Diet.
Also, the reader votes for “Did this diet work for you?” show that paleo is by far the most successful of the diets, with several thousand “Yes” votes and under 100 “No” votes. The only other diets to win more “Yes” than “No” votes were Weight Watchers and Atkins!
Update: The above is no longer true, as the Birdseed Brigade has apparently decided not only to upvote vegan and vegetarian diets en masse…they’ve decided to downvote all the meat-based diets, including Paleo, Atkins, South Beach, and Zone! (Thus illustrating the difference between our communities: we don’t attempt to silence or censor those who disagree with us.)
Previous to that, we’ve seen the repeated hatchet jobs on grass-fed beef by John Stossel (one in print and one on video), both of which use as their sole source non-peer-reviewed “research” from a scientist sponsored entirely by Elanco—a subsidiary of Eli Lilly that manufactures antibiotics and hormonal growth promoters for feedlot cattle, pigs, and chickens! President Obama’s personal trainer, in a breathtakingly stupid article, has called paleo “the newest nutritional fad”. (Solid rebuttal here.) And the avalanche of anti-paleo articles by “qualified experts” has justbegun.
We might expect this sort of offensive from the American Dietetic Association and the American Diabetic Association, because anyone eating any variation on the paleo diet is essentially telling them “All of you have been completely wrong for decades, and your bad advice is killing millions of people each year.” And we might expect this sort of offensive from the PCRM, because they’re just a front for vegans and animal rights activists.
But why such hostility from the mainstream press? The paleo movement doesn’t have the anti-establishment politics of, say, the vegan movement—or, as far as I can tell, any clear politics at all. If anything, it tends towards a casual sort of conservative libertarianism, but that’s probably just because so many paleo bloggers are semi-retired techies. It seems unlikely that “going paleo” is the cause of anyone’s political beliefs.
The answer, of course, lies in the age-old admonition:
“Follow the money.”
Adding Value: The Foundation Of Functional Economies
An economy based entirely on selling the same things back and forth to each other for ever-increasing amounts of money is doomed to eventual collapse. As we found out just a couple years ago, flipping houses isn’t the same as having a manufacturing base and a world that wants to buy what we make.
Stated more generally, an economy is only sustainable to the degree that its participants add value by their actions. Factory workers add value by turning raw materials into clothes and cars and electronics; farmers turn seeds and soil and sunlight into crops; ranchers turn calves and grass into beef; engineers turn ideas into buildable products; truckers move things from where they are to where they’re wanted; cashiers and stockers and managers and janitors turn a locked building full of things into a system by which you can find what you want and exchange money for it; and so on. Added value – cost of design – cost of production = profit.
This is not to be confused with the labor theory of value, which claims that labor has intrinsic value, and indeed, is the only ‘fair’ measure of value. This is hogwash. It’s easy to spend years of effort and not add a single penny of value—because value is determined by the buyer, not the seller. It doesn’t matter how much time I’ve spent making a coat rack if it’s ugly and no one wants to buy it!
Moving ahead: the more value we can add, the more profit we can make. It should be obvious that one way to add value is to transform cheap raw materials into an expensive finished product.
Adding Value: Why Grains (And Soy) Are Profitable
There’s one big reason that industrial food manufacturers like Kraft (Nabisco, Snackwells, General Foods, many more), Con-Agra (Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, Healthy Choice, many more), Pepsico (Frito-Lay, Quaker), Kellogg’s (Kashi, Morningstar Farms, Nutrigrain, more) are huge and profitable.
It’s because grains are cheap, but the “foods” made from them aren’t.
One reason grains are so cheap in the USA, of course, is gigantic subsidies for commodity agriculture that, while advertised as helping farmers, go mostly to agribusinesses like Archer Daniels Midland ($62 billion in sales), Cargill ($108 billion), ConAgra ($12 billion), and Monsanto ($11 billion)—and result in a corn surplus so large that we are forced to turn corn into ethanol and feed it to our cars, at a net energy loss!
“There isn’t one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians. People who are not in the Midwest do not understand that this is a socialist country.”
-Dwayne Andreas, then-CEO of Archer Daniels Midland
“At least 43 percent of ADM’s annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM’s corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10.” (Source.)
That cheapness, however, doesn’t translate to profits for farmers or cheap food at the supermarket. Let’s do some math!
(Note: these are regular prices from the CBOT and my local supermarket, as of today. Supermarket prices will be somewhat cheaper on sale or at Costco.)
A bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds and costs $6.85. That’s 12.2 cents per pound. A bag of Tostitos contains about 10 cents worth of corn, and costs $4.00.
That’s a 4000% increase.
A bushel of wheat weighs 60 pounds and costs $7.62. That’s 12.7 cents per pound. A loaf of Wonder Bread contains about 16 cents worth of wheat, and sells for $4.40.
That’s a 2700% increase.
A bushel of soybeans weighs 60 pounds and costs $13.64. That’s 22.7 cents per pound. A box of “Silk” soy milk contains about 4.5 cents worth of soybeans, and sells for $2.90.
That’s a 6400% increase.
In other words, it’s highly profitable to turn the products of industrial agriculture—cereal grains and soybeans—into highly processed “food”.
It’s not the snack aisle, the cereal aisle, or even the bread aisle...it’s the profit aisle.
Note that the profit for the processors and middlemen comes out of the pockets of the producer and the consumer. Farmers are squeezed by the 12 cents per pound, and consumers are squeezed by the $4.40 per loaf.
In contrast, pork bellies cost $1.20 per pound today. A pound of bacon costs about $5.
That’s a 400% increase…
…which looks like a lot until you compare it with 2700%-6400% for grains. Also, unlike grain products, bacon must be stored, shipped, and sold under continuous refrigeration—and it has a much shorter shelf life.
It’s clear that it’s far more profitable to sell us processed grain products than meat, eggs, and vegetables…which leaves a lot of money available to spend on persuading us to buy them.Are you starting to understand why grains are encased in colorful packaging, pushed on us as “heart-healthy” by the government, and advertised continually in all forms of media?
And when we purchase grass-fed beef directly from the rancher, eggs from the farmer, and produce from the grower, we are bypassing the entire monumentally profitable system of industrial agriculture—the railroads, grain elevators, antibiotics, growth hormones, plows, combines, chemical fertilizers (the Haber process, by which ammonium nitrate fertilizer is made, uses 3-5% of world natural gas production!), processors, inspectors, fortifiers, manufacturers, distributors, and advertisers that profit so handsomely by turning cheap grains into expensive food-like substances.
Conclusion: You Are A Radical (And So Am I)
Simply by eating a paleo diet, we have made ourselves enemies of the establishment, and will be treated henceforth as dangerous radicals.
This is not a conspiracy theory. By eschewing commodity crops and advocating the consumption of grass-fed meat, pastured eggs, and local produce, we are making several very, very powerful enemies.
The medical and nutritional establishments hate paleo, because we’re exposing the fact that they’ve been wrong for decades and have killed millions of people with their bad advice.
The agribusinesses and industrial food processors hate paleo, because we’re hurting their business by not buying their highly profitable grain- and soy-based products.
The mainstream media hates paleo, because they profit handsomely from advertising those grain- and soy-based products.
The government hates paleo, because they’re the enforcement arm of big agribusinesses, industrial food processors, and mainstream media—and because their subsidy programs create mountains of surplus grain that must be consumed somehow.
Is anyone surprised that a government which spends billions of dollars subsidizing the production of corn, soy, and wheat, would issue nutritional recommendations emphasizing the consumption of corn, soy, and wheat?
And this is why, despite all their rhetoric, the vegans end up on the same team as Monsanto and Pepsico: their interests are aligned.
I agree: this does look familiar.
In summary:
Expect more hatchet jobs against “paleo” in the media.
Expect more statistical manipulation marketed as “science”.
Expect outright scientific fraud in support of “hearthealthywholegrains” and in opposition to meat and eggs—particularly grass-fed, pastured, and local meats.
Expect subtle attempts to subvert “paleo” by packaging ancestral varieties of grain (e.g. kamut, spelt, amaranth) and obscure fruit extracts (mostly made of apple and grape juice), and selling them back to us in colorful packaging.
Expect even more regulations and restrictions that destroy local, sustainable farming by forcing their nutritionally superior products into the commodity system, instead of allowing us as individuals to buy them directly—which, in the case of meat, we already can’t. (The regulations have got even worse since Joel Salatin wrote this woefully true article, “Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal.”)
Expect bogus scare stories in the media about the dangers of local meat, eggs, cheese, and produce from small farmers. Expect bogus salmonella scares and fraudulent inspections that claim meaningless or nonexistent bacterial contamination.
Expect school lunches to become even more disgusting and empty of nutrition. If you want your child to grow up healthy, expect to help them pack a lunch every day. Expect to be grilled by suspicious administrators who think you’re damaging your child by feeding them real food.
Expect friends and co-workers to see and believe this propaganda. Expect that you will have to defend your dietary choices against a steadily increasing chorus of suspicion and hostility.
None of this should discourage any of us from continuing to do what’s right for ourselves, our families, our children, and the Earth. We are healthy, we are happy, we are strong, and we will win because everyone else wants to be as healthy as we are.
Be proud of your health and how you’ve attained it. Do not be pushy, but do not apologize for how you eat and live. And, most importantly, be prepared for the storm.
In Part 1 of "The Breakfast Myth", we discussed why the modern “breakfast” is really just snacks and dessert—and why eating it at all might be evolutionarily discordant. Here in Part 2, we explore the scientific evidence for and against breakfast—and what we should do in response.
But first, a short and entertaining detour!
The Shocking Origins Of Breakfast Cereal
We’ve already established that breakfast cereals are the nutritional equivalent of candy—but how were we bamboozled into eating expensive empty calories? Surprisingly, cereal wasn’t originally a cynical marketing ploy to sell sugar to children. Felicity Lawrence, a British journalist, investigates:
“Prepackaged and ready-to-eat breakfast cereals began with the American temperance movement in the 19th century. In the 1830s, the Reverend Sylvester Graham preached the virtues of a vegetarian diet to his congregation, and in particular the importance of wholemeal flour. Meat-eating, he said, excited the carnal passions.“
[…]
“After Jackson’s invention, the Seventh-Day Adventists took up the mission. […] John Harvey Kellogg…set about devising cures for what he believed were the common ills of the day, in particular constipation and masturbation. In Kellogg’s mind, the two were closely linked, the common cause being a lack of fibre, both dietary and moral.
Kellogg experimented in the sanitarium kitchen to produce an easily digested form of cereal. Together with his wife and his younger brother, William Keith, he came up with his own highly profitable Granula, but was promptly sued by Jackson, the original maker of Granula, and had to change the name to Granola.”
And there is hope yet: “Sales of ready-to-eat cereals fell 2.55% in the 52 weeks ending April 17 to $6.41 billion…Sales and units shipped have been lackluster since at least 2007, predating the Global Recession and the recent rise in grain prices. […] Much to the horror of nutritionists, the popularity of egg-based breakfast sandwiches is surging.” –Breakfast Cereals Americans No Longer Love
Our Bodies Already Feed Us In The Morning
Fasting is a high-fat meal…of your own adipose tissue. Remember, every diet is a high-fat diet, because if you’re losing weight, you’re burning your own fat. And fat-burning is most intense in the morning, because we haven’t eaten all night. So when we wake up, we’re already eating a steady diet…of fat.
Furthermore, our bodies give us a shot of cortisol in the morning, as we wake up. Cortisol increases gluconeogenesis (the process by which our liver creates glucose), so that we can maintain normal blood sugar when we’re not eating any. First, it seems unlikely that we’d evolve this metabolic pattern if we usually had access to food right after waking up.
Most importantly, morning cortisol explains why we’re not hungry immediately upon waking: not only are we already burning our own fat for energy, our liver has already gone to work making glucose for us!
Here’s the problem: most of us are in a rush to get to school or work, and we can’t just wait around the house for a few hours until we finally get hungry. But we’re told over and over that breakfast is the most important meal of the day! We’re supposed to eat something…
And that’s why modern “breakfast food” is snacks and sugary junk: it’s all we can force ourselves to eat when we’re not hungry.
Consider “heart-healthy” oatmeal for a moment: do you eat it plain? No, you put sugar in it, and usually fruit.
In other words, it’s a bowl of liquid cookies. Would you eat oatmeal cookies for breakfast?
The Science Of Breakfast: Programming Our Metabolism For The Day
Yes, this is a mouse study…but its conclusions are very, very interesting, and they are consonant with human studies.
“We report that mice fed either low- or high-fat diets in a contiguous manner during the 12 h awake/active period adjust both food intake and energy expenditure appropriately, such that metabolic parameters are maintained within a normal physiologic range.”
In other words, when we feed mice the same diet all day (actually all night…mice are nocturnal), they’re fine.
Note that both the low-fat and the high-fat diets contained 20% protein, which puts them well ahead of our typical “breakfast snack” of cereal, oatmeal, or a bagel. The difference was that calories were swapped between carbohydrate in the form of sucrose (table sugar) and cornstarch, and fat in the form of lard.
Also note that even the “high-fat” diet was 35% carbs, of which fully half was sucrose (table sugar)…not exactly a healthy diet.
“In contrast, fluctuation in dietary composition during the active period (as occurs in human beings) markedly influences whole body metabolic homeostasis. Mice fed a high-fat meal at the beginning of the active period retain metabolic flexibility in response to dietary challenges later in the active period (as revealed by indirect calorimetry).
Conversely, consumption of high-fat meal at the end of the active phase leads to increased weight gain, adiposity, glucose intolerance, hyperinsulinemia, hypertriglyceridemia, and hyperleptinemia (that is cardiometabolic syndrome) in mice. The latter perturbations in energy/metabolic homeostasis are independent of daily total or fat-derived calories.”
To summarize: if the mice ate a high-fat breakfast, it doesn’t matter what they ate for the rest of the day. But if they ate a low-fat breakfast and a high-fat dinner, they were in massive metabolic trouble.
Does this pattern sound familiar to anyone? Low-fat breakfast and high-fat dinner? A quick “heart-healthy” breakfast of oatmeal, Nuts-N-Twigs cereal in skim milk, or a bagel with fat-free cream cheese—and a rich, delicious, long-awaited dinner out, followed by potato chips or a pint of Ben and Jerry’s on the couch?
I’ll quote senior author Martin Young here, from the press release: “This study suggests that if you ate a carbohydrate-rich breakfast it would promote carbohydrate utilization throughout the rest of the day, whereas, if you have a fat-rich breakfast, you have metabolic plasticity to transfer your energy utilization between carbohydrate and fat.”
Remember my article about metabolic flexibility and the respiratory exchange ratio (RER)? The RER graphs from Young et. al. show that mice fed a high-fat breakfast maintained the flexibility to switch back to fat-burning after eating a high-carb, low-fat dinner…whereas mice fed a high-carb, low-fat breakfast were stuck burning carbs all day, even during the fasting period between breakfast and dinner.
The conclusion is clear: how you break your fast programs your metabolism for the rest of the day. If you start your day eating like a predator, you’ll be a predator all day. If you start your day snacking like prey, you’ll be prey all day.
Still feel like eating those “heart-healthy whole grains” for breakfast?
Young et. al. explains how dedicated low-fat dieters manage to lose weight, so long as they keep grazing on low-fat prey foods all day. But for most of us, that low-fat willpower only lasts until dinner…which makes us obese and diabetic.
Better to eat like predators—complete protein and rich, delicious, nutritious animal fat—at every meal.
“But That’s Mice,” You Say.
The authors admit that they need to follow up with the human version of this study—but we can see similar results here.
“Subjects consumed fewer kilocalories after the EGG breakfast compared with the BAGEL breakfast (P< .01). In addition, subjects consumed more kilocalories in the 24-hour period after the BAGEL compared with the EGG breakfast (P < .05). Based on VAS, subjects were hungrier and less satisfied 3 hours after the BAGEL breakfast compared with the EGG breakfast (P < .01).
Participants had higher plasma glucose area under the curve (P < .05) as well as an increased ghrelin and insulin area under the curve with BAGEL (P < .05). These findings suggest that consumption of eggs for breakfast results in less variation of plasma glucose and insulin, a suppressed ghrelin response, and reduced energy intake."
We also see similar results in the exhaustively instrumented study I reference in my previous article How “Heart-Healthy Whole Grains” Make Us Fat. Yes, it’s theoretically possible that the results in Bray et. al. won’t apply to humans…but the evidence so far is that it’s extremely unlikely.
Breakfast Skipping: Should I Eat Breakfast At All?
So we’ve established that it’s much better for weight maintenance, and for our health, to eat a complete, high-fat breakfast than a sugary, low-fat “breakfast snack”. But what about skipping breakfast entirely?
There are several observational studies showing that people who skip breakfast are more likely to be obese. Unfortunately, people usually skip breakfast because they have to be at school or at work very early in the morning and didn’t get enough sleep, not because they’re trying to lose weight…so that doesn’t tell us much other than stress is related to obesity, which we already know. And I know of only one controlled study on breakfast skipping—and it’s calorie-restricted, so it doesn’t tell us much either. (Though it does tell us that obese women who previously ate breakfast but started skipping it lost the most weight…so, if anything, it supports the concept.)
Here’s a recent study that actually provides useful data:
“Reduced breakfast energy intake is associated with lower total daily intake. The influence of the ratio of breakfast to overall energy intake largely depends on the post-breakfast rather than breakfast intake pattern. Therefore, overweight and obese subjects should consider the reduction of breakfast calories as a simple option to improve their daily energy balance.”
In summary: the more you eat for breakfast, the less you’ll eat over the rest of the day…but not enough less to compensate for the calories you ate at breakfast.
There are some other interesting scraps of information hidden in this paper. Obese people were no more likely than normal-weight people to skip breakfast. Calorie intake from beverages remained relatively constant regardless of breakfast size, suggesting that calories from liquids have little or no effect on satiety. And, unsurprisingly, the foods most strongly associated with an increase in breakfast calories were bread and cake.
Figure 2 shows graphs of calories consumed per day, plotted against calories consumed for breakfast, for obese subjects.
We can see that for every 100 additional calories eaten at breakfast by an obese person, daily calorie consumption goes up by about 65 calories.
Figure 4 shows the same graphs, for normal-weight people:
And we can see that for every 100 additional calories eaten at breakfast by a normal-weight person, daily calorie consumption goes up by about 80 calories!
At this point, I can’t resist the urge to interject “If you’re trying to minimize calorie intake, it’s clear that zero is an excellent number of breakfast calories.”
Finally, here’s some breaking news for type 2 diabetics: skipping breakfast helps normalize blood glucose levels. This shouldn’t be a surprise, because fasting increases metabolic flexibility:
Objectives: To evaluate if an improved daily glycemic profile could be achieved in patients with type 2 diabetes by withholding breakfast, but maintaining the same total daily intake of calorie and the same composition of carbohydrates, fat and protein.
Results: The standard deviation based on plasma glucose was 32% higher after the breakfast diet compared with the non-breakfast diet (P<0.0001)
Conclusions: Not all patients with type 2 diabetes may need breakfast. Moreover, a non-breakfast diet reduces glycemic variability.
Is Breakfast A Myth? My Conclusion
The evidence is clear. Whenever we finally do break our fast for the day, we should eat like predators: a complete meal, full of complete protein and delicious, nutritious animal fat. (Coconut oil is fine too.) If we start our day like prey—by grazing on carb-heavy snacks like cereal, bagels, donuts, and oatmeal—we’ll either be stuck eating low-fat snack food all day, or we’ll be doing ourselves terrible metabolic damage.
But should we eat breakfast at all, or skip it and wait for lunch? This is less clear, but it seems silly to stuff yourself with calories when you’re not hungry. My conclusion: unless you know you’re going to be doing lots of manual labor (or aerobic exercise) that day and can’t stop to eat, don’t eat until hunger starts to distract you from your tasks.
Yes, it will seem strange at first to swim against the tide of received wisdom—but as we’ve seen, our body chemistry is primed to start the day without food. And as one of my commenters replied to Part 1:
“I think I asked myself honestly if I was hungry for the first time ever when I woke up this morning. The answer being a resounding no.” -Josh
Here’s a tip: if you feel like you’re hungry but the idea of eating any specific food has no appeal, you may simply be thirsty. Try drinking a glass of water, as we’re usually somewhat dehydrated when we wake up.
Yes, it’s OK if you’re genuinely hungry soon after you wake! When I started weight training, I found myself ravenous when I woke up. (Not that this should be a surprise…my body is trying to build muscle fibers.) And those new to eating like a predator sometimes find that after many years of grain-based malnutrition, they crave real food several times a day in order to refill their nutrient stores and rebuild their bodies.
The Logistics Of A Late Breakfast
The problem with not eating when we wake up is that we’re stuck eating out of vending machines at school or at work—and one excellent dietary rule is to never eat anything that comes out of a vending machine.
My opinion on the subject: if bacteria won’t eat it, we shouldn’t either.
Here are some ideas I have for eating a complete breakfast at work. Please contribute your own in the comments, and I’ll add the best ones to this list!
Remember: a stack of Takealongs or other microwave-safe containers will make your life much easier.
Hard-boiled eggs are the classic portable breakfast.
Bacon! Fry up a pound all at once, keep it in the refrigerator, and bring it with you in a Takealong or other airtight, microwave-safe container.
Roast beef, or meat of any kind. Put it in an airtight container. It won’t go bad in the few hours between leaving your house and eating it.
You can cook a fresh egg in a bowl in the microwave. Just scramble it and nuke it until it’s done.
Potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc. Mashed potatoes, potato pancakes, home fries, even hash browns warm up just fine in the microwave.
So do most leftovers. Just cook some extra dinner, and nuke it for breakfast!
Bring a small electric skillet to work. Warning: delicious cooking smells may distract co-workers.
And, of course, there’s the easiest option: suck it up until 11 AM, when most restaurants and cafeterias open for lunch. As a bonus, they’re usually empty then—so you’ll spend less time waiting in line, and more time eating and relaxing.
Since you’re breaking a very long habit and embarking on a new, unfamiliar way of eating, It’ll most likely take some experimentation to settle into a routine that works for you. But I guarantee you’ll be healthier, sleeker, and more powerful once you ditch the candy and desserts, and start eating like a predator.
Live in freedom, live in beauty.
JS
Postscript: My Readers Speak
I asked about the breakfast habits of my readers in Part 1, and received many classic responses which I feel compelled to share.
My Readers, On The Subject Of Breakfast
“As a general rule we should be suspicious of any food that goes well with chocolate and/or sugar.” –Asclepius
“As a former sugar/carb-aholic breakfast was the hardest to change, but I beat those sugars into submission with bacon and eggs.” -Nax
“Nothin’ says “breakfast” like a hard-boiled egg encased in spicy pork sausage and rolled in almond flour.” –Jan
“That expensive breakfast cereal… I used to eat it for pudding before I wised up to cream, nuts and strawberries… and Scotch.” -kem
“I had homemade granola for breakfast for 30+ years, one of the hardest addictions I had to overcome.” -Bill DeWitt
“My hungry mornings are peaceful and productive – my favorite time of day. Of course, it didn’t used to be this way. Before I discovered the Paleo diet I was an impatient witch in the mornings!” –Peggy
“That might be also a reason for the French paradox. All people here I knew enough to know what breakfast they had, usually had only coffee and a cigarette. […] As for the African breakfast, I can also attest that on Comoros it is only leftovers from the evening.” -gallier2
“Reminds me of that pivotal moment several years ago when I was working to convince my wife that the kids were better off without breakfast if it wasn’t something we cooked, like bacon and eggs. If we were short on time the usual breakfast was pop-tarts.
One morning my wife came in to find them all eating Snickers bars. She was appalled. I said it was breakfast, and then pointed out the nutrition information compared to a pop-tart. Identical calories, but the Snickers was higher in protein.
Now it’s a protein/fat breakfast or none at all.” –Bill Strahan
My Readers, On The Subject Of Not Eating Breakfast
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day – the most important to skip.” -Walter
“Through the week I have a dingo’s breakfast … a scratch, a piss and a look around. Then I get dressed for work and don’t eat until lunchtime.” –Paul Halliday
“It simply makes no sense to believe that a healthy human should be eating when he’s not hungry. We’d be the dumbest animals alive.” -Fmgd
“I think I asked myself honestly if I was hungry for the first time ever when I woke up this morning. The answer being a resounding no.” -Josh
“A few years ago, my mother starting dating and then living with a man who had been single for a while and had never felt hungry in the morning so always skipped breakfast and eaten whatever and whenever he felt like. He was lean when they met, then she started nagging him into ‘healthy’ behaviours such as eating “the most important meal of the day” and “low-fat” foods such as margerine and skim milk.
When I saw them recently, I noticed that he is getting a significant spare tyre around the middle.” -Emma
I’ll close this article with an interesting observation: men are far more likely to skip breakfast entirely, whereas women are most likely to eat a normal or late breakfast. I’ll resist the urge to engage in half-baked evolutionary speculation—but it’s a robust trend, at least among my commenters.
Got some suggestions for a solid breakfast away from home? Want to argue that we’re doing it wrong? Leave a comment, and use the buttons below to tell your friends!
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It costs you nothing, and I get a small spiff. Thanks! -JS
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