I get that people have jobs and families and schedules and live in cities and all that, and within those confines (though ultimately voluntary) it’s necessary to make some compromises. I get it; I really do. But that ain’t me (babe). If what I was looking for (babe) is out there, I couldn’t find it. I quit searching for the perfect thing a while ago.

I have a problem: if I can’t find what I’m looking for, I assume that I’m not the only one. Sometimes, if it’s something I care about, that drives me to build something. I don’t wake up trying to think of new projects to spend a ton of time on. I wake up trying to stop myself from doing all of the project ideas I have. It’s not a lifestyle choice, it’s a compulsion. Anyway, when it comes to fitness/training, I couldn’t bury the compulsion any longer, and I started building stuff.

What follows may be a little jargony, overly stream-of-consciousness, and completely unreferenced. It probably won’t make complete sense, but it would take a book to make the full case.

Actual content starts here: I started getting into paleo and the training systems it comes into contact with shortly after moving aboard a sailboat. The only gym I had within a 2 hour radius was your standard fare of treadmills, ellipticals, machines, and some free weights. Moving the free weights was largely frowned upon as the noise detracted from Fox News and {insert name of show really old people watch while giving a treadmill what for on the lowest speed}. “They were the best of times, they…”

For a while, I made do with Crossfit Endurance. One of those 24-hour card-entry gyms had opened up and despite the backlash against actually using weights, I could go after 4pm when the place cleared out for blue plate special hour. The only approximation to a squat rack was a Smith machine shoved in with so many other benches that there was no room to put a bar on the floor. If nobody was looking, I’d shove aside the equipment that wasn’t bolted down and do claustrophobic deadlifts with my face nearly leaving streaks on the ubiquitous wall mirror to avoid my ass smacking into steel plates. But whatever, I swapped in pistol squats and dumbbell versions of CFE S&C WODs, then headed outdoors for the run/cycle/swim sessions. Then CFE got all main-site and weird and I bailed for an even more DIY approach.

Impetus Ingredient 1: Frustration

Long story longer, “training” is somewhat paradoxically (and mostly by socialized expectations of training) more difficult in an environment with more access to nature. I’d already been on a path to changing my relationship with the industrialized spectacle, and had already immersed myself in the application of evolutionary theory to human psychology. My increasing exposure to “paleo” made me think about applying the same evolutionary principles to physical activity. For some reason, it seemed (and still does seem) that diet had been placed into the “massively aided by evolutionary theory” box, but physical activity was mostly placed into the “modern methods are better” box, and mostly disassociated from the evolutionary framework. And generally speaking, that’s likely to be useful in some cases, but I think the center of that debate is way too far to the modern end of the spectrum. I couldn’t get this simple thought out of my head:

Hunter-gatherers don’t train.

That’s almost self-evidently true without having to invoke debates about the thrifty gene hypothesis. As wild animals, human hunter-gatherers do work necessary to acquire the food necessary to sustain themselves. The time leftover varies widely by resources in any given environment, but when the work is done, they aren’t shy about two things: 1) playing 2) NOT working. The concept of laziness exists, and humans are highly attuned to it, but it is in reference to the need for immediate work, and not a socioeconomic tool used to motivate the sheep to enrich the shepherds masters. The protestant work ethic, and its non-euro-centric cousins are agrarian developments.

This is the same across the animal kingdoms. According to the protestant work ethic, Jesus would totally hate lions and tigers and bears. Animals go to great lengths to avoid work. This is so important that communication has evolved between predator and prey to increase efficiency and reduce waste.

So at this point, I had two ideas lodged in my brain:

1. Evolution is just as important for training and movement as it is for psychology and diet.
2. Hunter-gatherers don’t train.

In contemplating the topic as a whole, “Think like a geek. Eat like a hunter. Train like a fighter. Look like a model.” seemed to be something approximating a distillation of what I was thinking. I posted it on facebook, and it was immediately well received. It definitely taps into something — whether it’s a zeitgeist thing or something more fundamental I’m not sure.

Think Like a Geek.

Intelligence is sexy. It confers both survival and reproductive advantage, and was certainly selected for in our paleolithic ancestors. It’s woven throughout so many levels of our evolutionary past that it’s hard to reduce it to one thing. In this context, it carries the implication of the very word paleolithic itself — the reference to tools. Thinking like a geek helps us choose tools and develop tools.

Eat Like a Hunter.

The fuel we provide to our biological systems has effects that ripple through every aspect of our individual life. From mental acuity to mood to structure to disease, our choice of fuels is crucial. Thinking about food from the angle of a paleolithic hunter quickly provides answers to questions science is unable to efficiently adjudicate. This is not about pure carnivory, but a nod to optimal foraging theory. Once we understand something about the strategies of a paleolithic hunter we can begin to merge our ancient food system with our modern food system. If we lose either perspective, we will quickly go astray.

Train Like a Fighter.

This gets into a mess of words and concepts. Ignoring the “hunter-gatherers don’t train” bit for a moment… This is about training as a fighter fights, and not training to be a fighter per se. It is also about adopting modern tools with the intent of unlocking parts of our DNA that lay dormant within sedentary humans anesthetized by economically abstracted violence. Humans fought their own battles prior to the rise of agriculture. Being able to pay for violence to be conducted on our behalf appears to be a moral and physical benefit, but the signals and interaction between our genes and our environment are not easily faked and not easily replaced. Our physical and mental potential as individuals is not always aligned with those of industrial agricultural civilization.

Look Like a Model.

Because “look” embodies multiple tenses in the English language, this one is open to much ambiguity. My meaning is primarily in a passive sense. If you think like a geek, eat like a hunter, and train like a fighter, then you will [more or less] automatically “look like a model” in terms of phenotypic expression. It is also important to note that “model” means many things. There are many inputs for advertisers deciding on models, but I’m specifically not talking about three types of models. 1) Men as advertised in men’s magazines. 2) Women as advertised in women’s magazines. 3) Fashion models of either sex. Without going into too much detail today, it has been shown that men pictured in men’s magazines tend to be more muscular than the ideal women find attractive, and women in women’s magazines tend to be thinner than men find attractive. Advertisers manipulate us according to evolved heuristic biases.

I use “model” to imply something closer to an ideal attractiveness influenced by Darwinian sexual selection (inter-sexual). The intent is to get at things that are relatively generally attractive to the opposite sex. This is contrasted to the use by advertisers of intra-sexual selection… or… competition with others of the same sex. Our brains do not analyze these questions in a rational way, but in a way that tracks markers of health in the context of evolutionary time. “Look good naked” is a great goal. Unfortunately, our intuitive self-assessments of looking good are likely biased to the point of being counterproductive.

Common Threads

All of the above are related to the ecological context of us as individuals. The interaction between our genes and our environment is implied in each level. The association with gyms and training with the active physical components of health is similar to synthetic and isolated components being packaged and sold to us as “food”. Real food is not enough. We need real life as well.

The impact on our psychology is entwined in each of these concepts as well. We know that points of attractiveness shift depending on the ecological context of the beholder. Some use this as a refutation of attractiveness as an evolved psychological component. However, this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of human ethology. I am not interested in mimicking the optimal attractiveness ratings of people influenced by sub-optimal (resource depleted, etc.) environments. A better question is this: What is optimal for humans in an optimal environment? We need to answer other questions to say what environments are optimal, and they are not easy questions. They are also not so difficult that we should be flummoxed by those who descend into relativist or quasi-relativist arguments representative of myopia.

Hyperlithic

I’ve been working on these concepts specifically for months, generally, for my entire life. I’ll soon be launching hyperlithic.com, a website that seeks to relentlessly answer all of the questions raised above. It will be too awesome and fun to be free.

If “paleolithic” roughly means old-stone age, “hyperlithic” roughly means beyond stone age. There’s a nod to the old, and a hint at a modern update.

This is just the tip of the conceptual iceberg. More to come on all of this!

I know, it’s a scary thought: What if, by the sheer stroke of fate, life somehow happens to you? For goodness sake let’s hope it doesn’t, but be prepared just in case.

I mean, perish the thought, but honestly, what happens if you lose your Williams-Sonoma Rösle potato masher and have to prep for a dinner party in just two hours? How could you face the guys at the country club after locking your keys out of the Porsche Cayenne and are forced to walk home from Home Depot? This is a harsh world, and we need to train for the remote possibility that life will happen to us.

Okay okay okay… I give. I give. I hear you… It’s not really about training for infinitesimally trivial yuppie emergencies. It’s functional! I’m with you. The world is a scary place. People’s families absolutely do get kidnapped by ninjas, and karate lessons are more tolerable for those who can do 15 rounds of Cindy (for the non-Fran friendly among us, that’s an [unsanctioned] Crossfit double entendre). And yes, I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes your crack commando unit gets sent to prison by a military court for a crime they you didn’t commit, and to promptly escape from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground, you have to move the one obstacle between you and the sweet taste of freedom. What are you gonna do then, call one of your fraternity brothers who’s been doing curls all day!? Bahahahaha. Sure, let’s see him bench press his way to freedom. Amiright.

Okay, for realz this time. It’s not actually for really real about all of those imaginary scenarios. Those are just straw men created as a literary device — you nailed me. When the rubber hits the road, it’s about something much much more serious than all that:

“CrossFit prepares us for anything and everything that we may encounter in life…  A lot of boxes post the ‘Workout of the Day’. But in order to truly train for the unknown, most days you will come to [some Crossfit affiliate] with no idea what the daily WOD will be. We like it that way.” – an actual Crossfit affiliate

Truth, Crossfit Nowheresville. Truth! Our monotonous lives are so scripted and predictable that the only thing we can possibly come up with that’s unknown or unknowable is the &@#$ing WOD!? I guess there’s always the weather:

“All [the unknown and the unknowable] joking aside, we really aren’t sure as to whether we’ll be open for classes tomorrow or not [because of the hurricane].” – another actual Crossfit affiliate

Deeeet deeet deeeeeet deet deeeeeeeeeet… “This just in: Ferocious Hurricane Prevents Local Man from Going to the Gym. Also at 11: Cats! Are they really plotting to take over Fort Knox with their laser technology? Tune-in for a news hour your life, AND your gold, may depend on.”

This whole “unknown and the unknowable” business is a canard — playing on our shared human desire to experience an unscripted life. Of-fracking-course… Surprises happen. Bad things even happen. But training for the repressed hope of connection with the natural world while self-isolating in the anesthetizing cocoon of workaday refuge is a betrayal of the human experience.

Do you pay someone to be your owner? Do you live in a crib, work in a cube, and play in a box? Welcome to the full realization of agricultural industrialization. All the time saved by the promise of progress and technology somehow eludes your grasp.

“Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation entails the risk of dying of boredom?”

Stop training for a life that maybe might someday happen. Passivity doesn’t suit you and Cages are for bad movies. Actively seek the unknown and the unknowable. Live. Get dirty. Play. Go. Now.

Kisses,
Andrew

(It’s inevitable that some are going to read this and think I’m saying “don’t do Crossfit”. So before I get a bunch of hate mail… I’m *not* saying that. That interpretation would miss my point.)

It was exactly one year ago today that I first uttered the phrase, “paleo is a logical framework applied to modern humans, not a historical reenactment.” That idea seemed pretty straightforward to me, and it was well-received to the point of being quoted in a real life book (you should buy it, but not just for that reason). And sure, Robb and Andy misattributed it to somebody else in a podcast in the distant past, but I already forgave them for that. So here I am, still beating the drum of the paleo framework despite internal and external attempts to refute it, supersede it, minimize it, water it down, or exact (Exacto?) its death by a thousand cuts. Well folks, it still works. But really, this should come as no surprise…

“This guy is irritatingly correct, time and time again, even when he has limited evidence.” – E. O. Wilson on Charles Darwin

Maybe the blogs I read and the people I talk and listen to aren’t representative of the paleo community, and maybe I’m just imagining things, but the paleo zeitgeist has seemed rather buddy buddy with the white devils of late. Of course, I refer here to rice and the [non-sweet] potato. Support seems to come along the lines of, “potatoes/rice are starches. starch is good for you. therefore potatoes/rice are good for you”; “sure, raw potatoes/rice might have saponins or glycoalkaloids or lectins or phytates, but those compounds aren’t always bad, and they’re destroyed by cooking anyway”‘; “sure, rice is a grain, but what about population X and population Y who eat rice and don’t drop dead from these supposedly ‘toxic’ substances”; and commonly included with one of the first two, “I love potatoes/rice” or “potatoes/rice are good”. Even setting aside the restless and ubiquitous specter of The Self-Justification Diet, there are significant problems with these arguments. I’m not going to deconstruct them at length here, but suffice it to say that they’re all logical fallacies of one stripe or another.

Even if I convince you that the individual arguments are flawed, the endeavor still wouldn’t tell you the paleo framework was correct or useful. So rather than that, I’ll introduce recent research that those looking at things from a microscopic perspective have been missing all along. Not surprisingly, the research demonstrates proximate effects that were effectively predictable with the paleo framework.

The two relevant components of the basic paleo framework are:

1. Humans are probabilistically less likely to be adapted to foods introduced more recently into the human diet. This applies to the potato, which is indigenous to South America, and was not available to humans in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, or myriad island populations, until the Spanish brought them back to Europe in the late 16th century. All of those populations have been consuming potatoes for only 300-400 (I’m being generous with that second number) years.
2. Because they can’t run away or fight back like animals, many plants have evolved chemical defense mechanisms. Because the ultimate goal of evolution is reproduction, and not survival, we can predict that chemical defense mechanisms are likely to be concentrated in the reproductive parts of plants. In many cases, this is the seed. Rice is a seed of a plant, and is therefore probabilistically likely to have chemical defense mechanisms.

The Meat

Why miRNAs are important

As a wise man once said, “Reprogram your genes for effortless weight loss, vibrant health, and boundless energy.” Without delving into genetics, let’s just agree that gene expression is a proven concept. Roughly, your genome consists of a lot of conditional statements that result in the production of proteins which have wildly varied effects. Our genetic code is shaped by the environment in which we evolved. By matching the inputs of our environment to the conditions ‘expected’ by our genes, we may optimize the expression of our genes. Please know that this is a vast oversimplification, but is useful for thinking about our individual health and well-being.

For now, let’s just say that RNA relates to gene expression, and miRNA is short for “micro RNA”, which is just a subset of RNA.

“…the rapidly developing new field of miRNA, which plays an important role in modulating virtually all biological processes (e.g., cell proliferation, development, differentiation, adhesion, migration, interaction, and apoptosis) through its fine tuning of gene regulation.” (Sun, et al. 2010)

“miRNAs have been widely shown to modulate various critical biological processes, including differentiation, apoptosis, proliferation, the immune response, and the maintenance of cell and tissue identity. Dysregulation of miRNAs has been linked to cancer and other diseases.” (Zhang, et al. 2011)

 The study

This study was recently published in the journal Nature (September 2011). It contains novel findings that miRNA from plants remains stable after cooking and digestion by humans. This plant miRNA has been found in significant quantities in human blood and tissue. Further, it has been demonstrated to interfere with human miRNA by mimicking it and binding to the receptors, then influencing gene expression in ways different from the miRNA produced naturally by our bodies.

Unless otherwise noted, all following quotations refer to Zhang, et al. 2011. Emphasis has been added by me.

 Abstract
Our previous studies have demonstrated that stable microRNAs (miRNAs) in mammalian serum and plasma are actively secreted from tissues and cells and can serve as a novel class of biomarkers for diseases, and act as signaling molecules in intercellular communication. Here, we report the surprising finding that exogenous plant miRNAs are present in the sera and tissues of various animals and that these exogenous plant miRNAs are primarily acquired orally, through food intake. MIR168a is abundant in rice and is one of the most highly enriched exogenous plant miRNAs in the sera of Chinese subjects. Functional studies in vitro and in vivo demonstrated that MIR168a could bind to the human/mouse low-density lipoprotein receptor adapter protein 1 (LDLRAP1) mRNA, inhibit LDLRAP1 expression in liver, and consequently decrease LDL removal from mouse plasma. These findings demonstrate that exogenous plant miRNAs in food can regulate the expression of target genes in mammals.

This wasn’t a gender thing:

” Upon investigation of the global miRNA expression profile in human serum, we found that exogenous plant miRNAs were consistently present in the serum of healthy… men and women.”

This effect was not tiny. Significant amounts of plant miRNA were found in humans:

“the tested plant miRNAs were clearly present in sera from humans, mice, and calves… when compared to the endogenous mammalian miRNAs known to be stably present in animal serum, these plant miRNAs were relatively lower, but in a similar concentration range.”

The following quote demonstrates that not all plant miRNA is digested. Some is digested more than others, and some is not digested at all:

“the levels of MIR168a and MIR156a, the two plant miRNAs with the highest levels in the sera of [human] subjects, and MIR166a, a plant miRNA with modest level, were assessed… MIR161, whose expression level was undetectable, served as a negative control.”

The three plant miRNAs found were present in different levels in different plants. Note that cooking influenced the miRNA content differently by specific miRNA and by plant. While levels in rice decreased dramatically with cooking, levels in wheat increased with cooking. After cooking, all MIR156a levels remained significantly high.

It is worth noting that these three plant miRNAs, MIR168a, MIR156a, and MIR166a, were detected in [rice and] other foods, including Chinese cabbage (Brassica rapa pekinensis), wheat (Triticum aestivum), and potato (Solanum tuberosum).

“Interestingly, plant miRNAs were stable in cooked foods.”

It is important to note the following context. Much of the study was centered around MIR168a in rice. This was not because rice or MIR168a have better or worse effects in humans, but because the effect of each miRNA across each gene locus is unknown at this time. The effects of MIR156a are unknown, so we cannot draw the same conclusions about wheat or potatoes as we can about rice. It is known that plant miRNAs have a tendency to interfere with gene expression, but that precise expression remains a question as large as the numbers of gene expressions that can be interfered with against the number or miRNAs we might ingest from all over the plant kingdom.

“most plant miRNAs can act like RNA interference… [W]e performed bioinformatic analysis to identify any sequences in the human, mouse, or rat genome with perfect or near-perfect match to MIR168a. Approximately 50 putative target genes were identified as the target genes of MIR168a”

This known mechanism is why this study focused on MIR168a and rice:

“LDL is the major cholesterol-carrying lipoprotein of human plasma and plays an essential role in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. Downregulation of LDLRAP1 in the liver causes decreased endocytosis of LDL by liver cells and impairs the removal of LDL from plasma… Concomitant with a significant elevation in MIR168a levels in the livers of mice after 1 day of fresh rice feeding , LDLRAP1 expression dramatically decreased in the group of fresh rice-fed mice. In these experiments… LDL levels in mouse plasma were significantly elevated on days 3 and 7 after fresh rice feeding… the level of liver LDLRAP1 was not related to the levels of plasma cholesterol or triglycerides… the elevation of fresh rice-derived MIR168a… specifically decreased liver LDLRAP1 expression and thus caused an elevated LDL level in… plasma.”

Plant miRNAs mimic endogenous mammalian miRNA, bind to their receptors, and inhibit protein expression:

“Plant miRNAs execute their function in mammalian cells… in a fashion of mammalian miRNA…the results that MIR168a was also able to target the artificially expressed LDLRAP1 protein in 293T cells (Figure 3I-3K) strongly demonstrate that plant MIR168a could bind to its binding site located in exon 4 of mammalian LDLRAP1 gene, and then inhibit LDLRAP1 protein expression.”

Why the focus on disruptive plant foods, and not animal foods?

This was one of the biggest questions I had before and after reading the study. Unless I missed it, no specific mention is made of what happens when humans or other mammals ingest mammalian miRNA. This leaves the question open as to the scope of miRNA influence we may obtain through food. Upon closer examination, I did find one point of entry into further inquiry on this question. It seems that there is a difference across the board between mammalian miRNA and plant miRNA. This does not mean that all plants are bad to eat or that all mammals are good to eat. Nor does it mean that all plants are good to eat or that all mammals are bad to eat. It’s likely still true that there is no such thing as food and that everything we might ingest simply exists on a multi-dimensional spectrum of healthful to toxic.

“Plant miRNAs are 2′-O-methyl modified on their terminal nucleotide, which renders them resistant to periodate. In contrast, mammalian miRNAs with free 2′ and 3′ hydroxyls are sensitive to periodate… Indeed, as shown in Figure 1E, most mammalian miRNAs in human serum, such as miR-423-5p, miR-320a, miR-483-5p, miR-16, and miR-221, had an unmodified 2′, 3′ hydroxyls and were therefore oxidized… In contrast, MIR156a, MIR168a, and MIR166a in human serum remained unchanged…”

Whether mammalian miRNAs found in human serum were exogenous or endogenous is not specified. If we knew that they were exogenous, and they were oxidized, we would have a significant difference in mechanism between plant and mammal miRNA. If we assume that the mammalian miRNAs mentioned are all endogenous, we can still see a significant difference, but the question remains open as to whether ingested mammalian miRNAs remain stable after ingestion, are oxidized in the digestion process, or are metabolized via another mechanism.

Still a lot of unknowns

At this point, we can’t definitively say a lot about the effects of plant miRNAs (or mammalian for that matter). Is it possible that the cooking-stable, digestion-stable MIR168a found in rice is the only plant miRNA that interferes with human gene expression? Sure. But is that probable? Nope.

Is it possible that there is an unknown benefit to gene expressions altered by miRNA? Sure. From an evolutionary standpoint, it’s possible that humans have adapted to use plant miRNAs as a cellular signaling mechanism to activate conditional clauses wherein different genes are expressed in order to optimize phenotypic adaptation to a plant-rich environment. What is the probability of this? It is not improbable that an organism would adapt to such a signaling mechanism given sufficient evolutionary pressure, genetic variance, and time. However, there are issues with this line of reasoning. First, in non-agricultural phases of human evolution, the plants would be engaged in an evolutionary arms race to continue to evolve their chemical defense mechanisms as humans adapted to them. Second, it currently appears that this effect does not exert acute deleterious effects on individual humans that would effect survival and reproduction enough to provide significantly strong selection pressure. Third, while time is less important than selection pressure in evolution, it remains true that a few hundred years is indeed very short in evolutionary time, and this period of time is not unknown to history. Had this sort of selection taken place, we wouldn’t have stories of the Irish potato famine (too few calories), we’d have stories of the Irish potato poisoning, in which thousands upon thousands would have died from eating potatoes (too many toxins).

There are many other unknowns. Perhaps you’ll share some in the comments.

Commonly questioned practices this study got right

There are often complaints that studies on mice cannot be extrapolated to humans. This can be a fair criticism, but is not likely to be used to mount a successful challenge to this study. Wherever ethically acceptable, humans were tested.

In particular, actual human blood and tissue samples were taken. These samples convincingly demonstrated the presence of plant miRNA in human blood and tissue in levels relatively equal to miRNA produced naturally by humans.

Further, these levels were compared against mice and calves. An example of the data is shown to the left. Note that the mice tended to demonstrate the lowest relative levels of miRNA. Humans represent the highest levels for the most relevant miRNA. Therefore, it is more reasonable to expect the effects measured in mice would be more pronounced in humans if we could control humans’ diets enough to conduct this experiment.

What conventional medicine should be saying about this study

It seems pretty simple: Rice elevates MIR168a in humans. Elevated MIR168a impairs the liver’s removal of LDL, or “bad cholesterol”. Increased LDL cholesterol causes atherosclerosis which leads to cardiovascular disease. Rice increases LDL cholesterol, and therefore, eating rice causes cardiovascular disease.
Now, I don’t completely buy into this narrative — particularly because there’s no mention of LDL particle size in this study. However, this article was published in Nature, one of the most prestigious journals on the planet, and there’s no uproar. If this study had concluded that eating red meat interferes with the liver in a way that raises “bad cholesterol”, would it not be the cover story everywhere?

How this study might fit with a paleo diet framework.

It’s hard to say anything definitive about this study beyond the convincing proof that rice miRNAs interfere with human gene expression. That said, we can use the paleo framework to make some predictions. We can predict that miRNAs that are evolutionarily novel are more likely to be deleterious to human health than beneficial. We can also suppose that even if the bulk of miRNAs are deleterious to humans, there may be a minority that are beneficial to most humans, and a few might be beneficial to humans with particular alleles.

The view that known individual components are not always harmful, and therefore shouldn’t be totally avoided, still leaves big gaps in our knowledge, and makes our daily decisions about what to eat susceptible to the undiscovered.
Paleo is bigger than lectins and phytates and saponins.

We’ve been presented with many past arguments about rice and potatoes being fine, but too high in carbohydrates to recommend for everyone.
The paleo framework is bigger than metabolic syndrome.

The more we learn about wheat, the more nefarious compounds we find.
Paleo is bigger than gluten free.

Although I personally think bok choy sucks based on taste, I never had a health reason for disliking it…
Paleo doesn’t know everything.

Potatoes and rice, still not paleo.

What I’m doing differently in light of this study

• Less likely to deviate from sashimi at sushi restaurants.
• Downgrading potatoes and rice from “neutral nutrient-poor waste of time” to “sneaky untrustworthy bastards”.
• Downgrading wheat from “probably a bad idea for everyone” to “all the shitty stuff about wheat plus the shitty stuff about soy”.
• Downgrading bok choy from “Hey, I’m not going to eat this, would you like it?” to “I’m not making out with you if you eat that”.

What I’m doing the same in light of this study

• Preferentially consuming animal foods.
• Scaling carbohydrate/starches daily in relation to activity levels
• Eating carrots and sweet potatoes when I want to ingest subterranean plant storage organs (because orange is sexier than white).
• Remaining skeptical of the applicability of populations isolated by geography like islands (Kitavans) and other extremes (Inuit) to humans in general.
• Aping Darwin while recognizing that Science provides us with limited evidence for us to use in our everyday lives, yet trying to be irritatingly correct anyway.

<sarcasm>Eat your vegetables folks, particularly if you want your gene expression impaired by the plant kingdom.</sarcasm>
Final thought: Think like a geek. Eat like a hunter. Train like a fighter. Look like a model. (Play and live like you don’t live in a zoo is always implied)

References
Sun, W., Julie Li, Y.-S., Huang, H.-D., Shyy, J. Y.-J., & Chien, S. (2010). microRNA: A Master Regulator of Cellular Processes for Bioengineering Systems. Annual review of biomedical engineering, 12, 1-27. [full-text PDF]

Zhang, L., Hou, D., Chen, X., Li, D., Zhu, L., Zhang, Y., Li, J., et al. (2011). Exogenous plant MIR168a specifically targets mammalian LDLRAP1: evidence of cross-kingdom regulation by microRNA. Cell Research, 1-20

And just a personal note: I met a zillion amazing people while at AHS – from people I draw information and inspiration from to Evolvify readers. I definitely didn’t get to spend enough time with everyone, and my friends are already tired of me name-dropping y’all, but oh well.

While I had the good fortune to have talked with other attendees about various talks right after seeing them in person, this collection isn’t meant to be some sort of barometer on the consensus of attendees. The list is my subjective list of areas of inquiry in the evolutionary health and fitness realm that I feel have the most room for exploration and application. That isn’t to say that these talks necessarily contained the most important information of the Ancestral Health Symposium. Oh and… this definitely isn’t a pure “Best Of” list because I still haven’t had a chance to watch all the talks.

AHS 2011 Awards

Best Tip of the Economics Iceberg

“Sustainability of paleo diets” by Matt Metzgar, PhD
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27926609 w=640&h=480]
Comments
This topic is so massive that it’s impossible to cover it in a < 50 minute talk. Dr. Metzgar lays out a framework for quantifying and analyzing paleo in terms of sustainability and economics. The talk is both oversimplified in terms of economics and overly detailed in terms of systemization, and will probably lose some people. However, the project is ambitious and important. This should be viewed as what it is: a work in progress that has plenty of room to progress and find broad application by synthetic thinkers.

Extending the Idea

• The feasibility of a Paleolithic diet for low-income consumers [full-text PDF]

Best Obvious Sounding Title that Applies to Depths of Life You Don’t Yet Realize

“The Lost Art of Play” by Mark Sisson
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27648777 w=640&h=480]
Comments
Yeah, “play more”,  it sounds so simple. The implications of play lost to the regimentation and systemization of agriculture and industrialization are many. This isn’t just a touchy feely concept, but something that influences our individual psychology and social interactions in ways nobody fully understands.

Extending the Idea

• Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga
• Play as a Foundation for Hunter-Gatherer Social Existence [full-text PDF]

Best Primatology Informs Anthropology

“Great Apes and the Evolution of Human Diet” by Craig Stanford, PhD

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27678635 w=640&h=480]
Comments
Since we don’t have video footage from the Paleolithic, sometimes the best we can do is attempt to triangulate truth from whatever data points we do have available. The morphology and behavior of our closest relatives is one of the best avenues to pursue knowledge about our evolutionary past. I would have liked to replace a few of the speakers who talked about sugar/carbs with more applied evolutionary theory and anthropology.

Extending the Idea

• The Evolution of Hominin Diets
• Dr. Craig B. Stanford’s books on Amazon 

Best Stealth Introduction to the Best Academic Field You’ve Never Heard of: Ethology

“Wild animals, zoos, and you: The influence of habitat on health” by John Durant

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27935632 w=640&h=480]

“Ethology is a combination of laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to certain other disciplines such as neuroanatomy, ecology, and evolution. Ethologists are typically interested in a behavioral process rather than in a particular animal group, and often study one type of behavior (e.g. aggression) in a number of unrelated animals.” –Wikipedia

Comments
For anyone who’s into applying evolutionary theory, but happens to be afraid of evolutionary psychology, ethology is a fruitful alternative. For those who are into evolutionary psychology, ethology can help clarify ideas and incite new lines of thought. In other words, ethology is powerful for anyone who desires to level-up their understanding of evolution as it pertains to behavior.

I don’t remember John explicitly mentioning ethology, but it’s an implicit bridge between his talk and Erwan’s “zoo humans” concept. Rats in cages have smaller brains than rats in “enhanced environments” which have smaller brains than rats in the wild. It’s infinitely naive to think our modern environment doesn’t impact us in very real ways (beyond diet) as well.

Extending the Idea

• Journal of Ethology
• Human Ethology by Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt

Best Potential to Leverage the Paleo Health & Fitness Message in the Business World

“Resilliency: Human-Friendly Pathways to Optimal Physical and Mental Health” by Emily Deans, MD and Jamie Scott

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27669824 w=640&h=480]
Comments
Institutional interfaces with health and fitness practitioners is much more prevalent and has much more impact than many of us realize. Because of the efficiency of paleo concepts, this may be the next level in increasing global health through better engagement with the paleo community.

Best “I Wish I Had Tucker’s Research Notes So I Could Get to the Bottom of the Psychology of This” and Ascertain its Myriad Implications

*Talk starts at 21:35
“From cave to cage: Mixed martial arts in ancestral health” by Tucker Max

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27930992 w=640&h=480]
Comments
One of the emergent properties of modern civilization can loosely be characterized as “status ambiguity”. Hunter-gatherers tended to always know where they stood with respect to individuals in their lives. Our conceptions of self are largely influenced by indirect comparisons to abstracted archetypes of humans at the extreme long-tails of the further abstracted economic spectrum. Further, our “real” interactions are also in relation to a disproportionate number of strangers who also exist in a state of their own status ambiguity. The multiple, nested levels of abstraction result in a reality in which has very intersection of the real as it pertains to what our genes expect. Physical training and combat provide a channel to a different reality than our world tends to provide otherwise.

Best Integration of Applied Evolutionary Health, Fitness, and Science

“Body by science” by Doug McGuff, MD

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27962168 w=640&h=480]
Comment
There are moments at which I think Dr. McGuff is totally wrong, and moments I’m totally wrong about him being wrong. A lot of his stuff makes sense on a level that likely dovetails with the concepts in Tucker’s talk and Mark’s talk (both above). I’m not sure the pieces are fully connected, but my brain can’t help but weave the concepts together.

Extending the Idea

• Body by Science book by Doug McGuff

Miscellaneous Important Ideas

As I said, the above videos don’t necessarily contain all of the important topics. There were a lot of ideas that are much more important to people who aren’t me. For the most part, the talks hammering the fringes and overlap between carbs and obesity and disease are mostly lost on me… as are the general talks about paleo that seek to convince newbies or fence-sitters that all of this is a good idea. As such, I’ve unfairly left out a lot of great talks.

Talk that I Already Pretty Much Agree with and Therefore Wished Was More Philosophical

“MovNat: evolutionarily natural fitness” by Erwan LeCorre
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27930009 w=640&h=480]
Comments
Erwan’s talk is a nice introduction to MovNat. It kind of felt like a promo video for something I’m already sold on. That isn’t meant to be a slight at all. I’m just pretty confident that there’s a lot of interesting conceptual underpinning bouncing around in Erwan’s head that the world (and I, in particular) would appreciate. This reference won’t have the gravity it needs without an explanation deeper than I have time to present here, but there’s value in Simon Sinek’s (TED Talk) “Start With Why” (Book) concept that’s overlooked in the talk. It’s not a matter of quality (there’s plenty), but of resonance.

Talk that I Didn’t Watch Because I Know I Already Pretty Much Agree with It, But Think Is Still Super-Important

“The Trouble with Fructose: a Darwinian Perspective” by Robert Lustig, MD
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27563465 w=640&h=480]
Comments
Much like lactose intolerance, it’s surprising to me that so many people are quick to rubber stamp consumption of fructose. Especially when some regional populations have 14%+ rates of fructose malabsorption. Clearly there are individual differences, and qualifiers such as delivery vehicle. Primates lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C because of excessive fruit intake, it’s possible that populations lost the ability to readily metabolize fructose because of minimal fruit intake… and the biochemistry provides some support for this concern.

Talk Other than Mat Lalonde’s that I’m Most Conflicted About

“Self-experimentation: the best science” by Richard Nikoley
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/27798705 w=640&h=480]
Comments
Okay, I’m not really conflicted about Richard’s talk, but I’m conflicted about the concept of self-experimentation and the whole n=1 “meme”. The conflict is simple: It’s a brilliant and important concept, but I don’t think most people are capable of executing it in a meaningful way. I too often see people talking about self-experimentation in terms of how they “feel” after doing something or changing something, or whatever. Unless the measure is objective (time, distance, etc.), it’s likely so influenced by cognitive bias that it’s either totally useless, or counter-productive. This is particularly true when talking about dietary compounds that have a short-term psychoactive effect on the brain (neurotransmitters, etc.), in longer durations that introduce stealth and unexpected confounds, or otherwise decouple inputs from outputs or experience. Poorly executed, then continuously recited, N=1 experimentation is an endless fountain of misleading anecdotes that are assigned more value than they warrant.

In other words, watch the talk and practice self-experimentation. But if, and ONLY IF, you pay close attention to the parts about scientific method, and are religious about using only [more or less] objective measures. Even if you manage that, you’re still exposed to a range of biases and need to temper and discount the reliability of your findings more than you’ll want to.

Example of almost totally useless “objective” measure… weight. Throw away your damned scale. You’re better off with a digital camera.

Uncategorized

There are three talks that I really appreciated, but don’t really have much to add to, and are proving hard to categorize along the same metrics as the above videos, so… just watch ’em:

• “Heart Disease and Molecular Degeneration” by Chris Masterjohn
• “Clues from the colon: How this organ illuminates our digestive evolution and microniche” by Melissa McEwen
• “Primal mind: nutrition & mental health—improving the way you feel & function & cultivating an ageless mind” by Nora Gedgaudas

What were your favorite talks? What kind of speakers and topics do you hope to see at AHS 2012 next August at Harvard?

I’m not exactly sure how I’d answer that, but I have a vision of some sort of mega applied evolutionary theory conference. Something between the Ancestral Health Symposium‘s focus on health and fitness, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference, and the Applied Evolutionary Psychology Society‘s conference. Since that framework doesn’t exist, I do wonder to what extent the behavioral/psychological research from evolutionary theory would integrate with future AHS events.

Skin Color and Beauty

Tanning seems like an obvious case for the social constructivists to prove, once and for all, that our conceptions of beauty are products of immersive socialization. We hear the arguments about pasty skin being attractive in times when the bourgeoisie lounged indoors counting money and adjusting powdered wigs while the proletariat labored in the fields. The story goes that having a tan was a dead giveaway that one was a low-status individual. Of course, we’ll momentarily ignore that this narrative tends to leave out the part that darker skin also carries varying racist overtones. In any case, the social constructivist points to modern society in which very few people know farmers, let alone have ever labored on a farm.

Since the cultural milieu has shifted away from an agrarian dominated context, the stigma of sun-induced dark skin has lifted. With the swing in culture, the attractiveness pendulum has swung the other way as well. This is evidenced by the widespread obsession for the “healthy glow” gained from spending time in the sun. The narrative has subsumed this observation and explained that, in fact, tans are now a signal of bourgeois status because, clearly, proletarian office drones don’t have expendable leisure time to spend laying around on the beach. Doesn’t the story fit together so nice and commonsensically!?

The Color Theory of Tanning

Design nerds, get out of CMYK, RGB, or HSV mode for a second. Scientists working with human visual perception use the (aptly named) Lab color space to most accurately replicate the way our eyes process inputs. For non-uber design geeks, Lab represents a 3-axis color system represented by L, a, and b. The L-axis describes the spectrum from Lightness-darkness. The a-axis describes the spectrum from red-green. The b-axis describes the spectrum from yellow-blue. I’ll try to just use “red-green”, et cetera when possible, but the shorthand is woven into all of the charts and quotes from the papers.

Sun tanning primarily changes values along two axes, the L (lightness) and b (yelowness). The increased melanin resulting from tanning results in a decrease in lightness and an increase in yellowness (Stamatas, et al. 2004). Therefore, we can make the simple prediction that if people indeed prefer tans resulting from the sun, we should see a preference for relatively darker skin and relatively yellower skin.

Though tanning has now been popular in Western culture for decades (Melia & Bulman. 1995), studies haven’t isolated the color variables necessary to test the “tan is beautiful” hypothesis until now. Ian Stephen, PhD and colleagues presented research in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior that address this question. Their study involved a group of white UK-based students who rated white faces, and a group of black South African students who rated black faces. The data from both groups was similar, and both are shown below…

South African rater’s adjustments of black face and similar results of Scottish rater’s of white face

The picture on the left is an example of the extremes available in the adjustment along both axes for the black faces. Note that the UK raters were rating a different face (not shown here).

Both cohorts show a strong grouping to the same quadrant. However, the quadrant selected was not what we’d expect if the “tan is beautiful” hypothesis was true. We should expect to see both groupings shifted to the top-left quadrant. It turned out that yellowness was perceived as a positive indicator of health, but relative lightness was preferred over darkness. Based on these data, we must conclude that the “tan is beautiful” hypothesis is incorrect.

The social constructivist narrative is also refuted by these findings. Since tanning behaviors are heavily influenced by socialization, we would expect to see a preference in the data for darker relative skin tones. Further, a constructivist explanation seeking to simultaneously explain pro-darker skin tanning in white individuals AND pro-lighter skin attitudes in black individuals would require the data to show the South African data to be in a different quadrant than the UK data. These data refute the existence of a culturally imparted ideal of beauty or health that can be plotted on the spectrum from lightness-darkness.

Since the “tan is beautiful” hypothesis and social constructivist arguments both fail, what explanations are we left with?

The Pasty Veg*ns Are Sexier than Sun-Bathed Carnivores Hypothesis

Enter the carotenoid. Sun exposure isn’t the only thing that affects skin color. Significant consumption of [carotenoid-containing] plant matter also impacts coloration. Stephen, et al conducted a study (results in the same paper) measuring the relationship in fruit and vegetable intake with skin color and the change in skin color resulting from carotenoid supplementation. They found that both supplementation and fruit and vegetable intake correlated with, and increased skin yellowness as measured by spectrophotometer. Further, the measured colorations were inconsistent with coloration changes from melanin (sun tan) and hemoglobin. The carotenoid coloration data fit with the results above; namely, an increase in yellowness without an decrease in lightness. This lead to another study (also reported in the same paper).

This time, rather than isolate the axes for lightness and yellowness, they provided raters with the ability to optimize for health along one axis corresponding to melanin coloration and another corresponding to carotenoid coloration. The results…

Scottish raters’ adjustments of Caucasian face. Melanin on the vertical axis. Carotenoid on the horizontal.

In a post about the same study on his blog Primal Wisdom, Don Maetz provides a heading “Carotenoid Complexion and Sun Tan Not Mutually Exclusive”. While that is literally true, it is also possible that the perception of health signaled by carotenoids and sun tans are mutually exclusive. In fact, that is what the cumulative data in Stephen, et al seems to indicate.

As the preceding image shows, when given the option to specifically optimize the appearance of health for melanin and/or carotenoids, raters unanimously preferred higher levels of carotenoid, but were almost equally mixed in preferences for melanin coloration. This adds support to the refutation of the “tan is beautiful” hypothesis, and opens the door for the “pasty veg*ns are hot” hypothesis.

Methodology

The usability of data in similar previous studies has been questioned on the grounds that giving raters the choice between two options on each axis, then asking them to choose between them, is prone to errors. Stephen, et al first narrowed the image samples to ranges that might be seen in normal populations, then allowed 13 variance points along each axis. Rather than showing all at once, raters were asked to adjust the spectrum up or down to optimize the appearance of health. When plotted across both axes, this results in 39 possible selections. This seems sufficient, but I’m not sure why they didn’t allow infinite adjustments along each axis.

Other criticisms have been made that the use of Photoshop® does not provide an image representative of real-world faces. However, it’s difficult to provide a wide range of skin tones for one individual with photographic accuracy. Surely, using different individuals with different skin tones would introduce myriad variables that would render coloration assessments useless. So while there is some validity to this line of criticism, I find it rather thin.

Criticisms/Improvements

• I’m not sure that South Africa’s history makes it the best choice for disentangling variables concerning race-based perceptions. So while I do think the method employed limits cultural influence somewhat, I’d like to see the study done where the two countries involved weren’t formerly linked via colonization. Also, the level to which South African college students are subject to “Westernization” is difficult to know.
• Since individuals’ colorations were tested before and after carotenoid supplementation, it would have been nice to see ratings of photos of this cohort before and after. Many other variables have the potential to spoil the results, but the hard parts of that experiment were mostly done by default.
• I don’t like celery.

Tanning Obsession: Evolutionary Misfire

Based on this research, I would suggest that visually perceivable results of carotenoid consumption were a reliable signal of health, and that preference is a serious candidate for positive selection that continues to influence our perceptions of health and beauty today. It is difficult to disentangle how much of this selection pressure may have been influenced by direct benefits to health and reproduction, and how it may also be an indirect signal of resource gathering ability. The data support the former…

“Carotenoids are associated with immunocompetence anddisease resistance in humans. Supplementation beneficiallyaffects thymus gland growth in children and increases T-lymphocyte number andactivity in healthy adults. Carotenoid levels become reduced in individuals with HIV and malaria, and in individuals with elevated levels ofserum α1-antichymotrypsin.”

…but the indirect role in sexual selection is a question for another day. For now, chalking up the motivation toward sun tans as an evolutionary misfire seems reasonable. When given the option, raters prefer carotenoid pigmentation to melanin. However, when not given a choice…

“In the single-pigment transforms, all faces were increasedin carotenoid and melanin color to improve healthy appearance. No effects of face sex or participant sex, or theirinteraction were found. Participants increased melanin and carotenoid color more in faces that were initially low in b*. Initial L* and a* values had smaller effects. Participants increased carotenoid more than melanin coloration.”

This demonstrates that the yellow gained through tans somewhat outweighs the darkening that comes along with it. Thus, “yellower is better” and “lighter is better” do not appear to be equal in heuristic value and could signal other things not considered here.

Application

My current interpretation of the health implications is that a veg*n diet is inferior to a paleo diet in important categories. At the same time, strictly carnivore interpretations and/or meat & potatoes interpretations of the paleo diet seem to be inferior to veg*n diets with respect to healthy carotenoid levels. For me, that means taking the best of the veg*n and paleo approaches and eliminating the worst of both approaches. Sure, you paleo-leaning veg*ns out there can disagree, but the meat & plant paleo camp will have better looking bodies. Sure, you anti-plant-matter-leaning paleos out there can disagree, but the veg*n-leaning paleos will have better looking skin. So… do you want to be right, or do you want to be healthy and hot?

Sun exposure appears to be best used as a tool for optimal levels of vitamin D and secosteroids, not a shortcut to health or hotness. Don’t argue with me, take it up with the data. You should definitely get some sun, but you probably can’t use color as an indicator that you’ve reached an optimal level.

Summary (Just Do This)

• If health is your goal, eat a ton of carotenoid-dense fruits and vegetables.
• If looking healthy is your goal, eat a ton of carotenoid-dense fruits and vegetables.
• Get sun for the vitamin D and the secosteroids.
• Don’t get sun just for the color.
• Oh, you should probably subscribe so you don’t miss adding another dimension to the equation with the findings from this study: “Who is the fairest of them all? Race, attractiveness and skin color sexual dimorphism“

References
Glenn, E. N. (2008). Yearning for lightness: transnational circuits in the marketing and consumption of skin lighteners. Gender & Society, 22, 281–302. *also appears as a chapter in The Kaleidoscope of Gender: Prisms, Patterns, and Possibilities‘  (2010).

Melia, J., & Bulman, A. (1995). Sunburn and tanning in a British population. Journal of Public Health Medicine, 17, 223–229.

Stamatas, G. N., Zmudzka, B. Z., Kollias, N., & Beer, J. Z. (2004). Non-invasivemeasurements of skin pigmentation in situ. Pigment Cell Research, 17, 618–626.

Stephen, Ian D., Vinet Coetzee, and David I. Perrett. “Carotenoid and melanin pigment coloration affect perceived human health.” Evolution and Human Behavior 32, no. 3 (May 2011): 216-227. [full-text pdf]

The Disconnect

In the paleosphere, there’s a sometimes explicit, otherwise tacit, understanding that the SAD flourishes because of evolved human proclivities for sugar, salt, and fat. Our modern system of hunting and gathering from well-lit aisles and laminated menus hijacks the prehistoric nutrition plan delivered by our instincts. This narrative certainly isn’t limited to the pop-evolutionary biology that’s bantered about the pop-paleo community; it’s recited in a variety of contexts…

I haven’t heard anyone challenge the instinctual human drive for fat, salt, and sugar. Until further notice, I’ll assume it’s a generally accepted principle among the paleo community participants who believe the paleolithic was an actual period of time, before Adam and Eve, during which the genus Homo evolved.

It’s on this foundational assumption that the paleo logical framework is formed – the very framework that provides an ultimate explanation for why our instincts aren’t to be trusted regarding food choices in our mismatched grocery store and restaurant culture. It is this logical framework that underpins the large constituent of paleo proponents who minimize fruit consumption in outright defiance of the fact that fruit consumption in our evolutionary past was high enough to allow our genes that coded for vitamin C synthesis to be deactivated.

When it comes to fat, a rejection of the shoddy research of Ancel Keys seems to be all that’s needed to make the logical leap to also rejecting the “lean game meat” conception of paleo forwarded by the likes of Loren Cordain, PhD. and Arthur De Vany, PhD. On the basis of the paleo logical framework, it’s incongruent to reject the unrestricted consumption of fruit and also advocate the unrestricted consumption of fat. For that matter, it’s similarly incongruent to reject grain consumption based on the paleo logical framework whilst recommending the unrestricted consumption of fat. If you like fat (and you do), fine. Eat whatever you want. But… keep in mind that there is almost certainly a limit to the amount of healthy fat consumption, and our heuristic “eat more fat” instinct will push some across the line into rationalization in service of self-justification.

“But… but… the science, Andrew… what about the science?”

Positivist Paleo

The [paleo] positivist has little-to-no use for logical frameworks. In the grasp of positivism, logic is little more than a cutesy anecdote that may be useful for the generation of hypotheses. In this world of orthodox empiricism, claims cannot be made absent positive verification by way of controlled experimentation and commensurate data.

Unpacking this concept of paleo positivism reveals something. At its most fundamental core, paleo (whether we’re relating it to diet or mind) is nothing more than logical framework. Perhaps strangely, this is true regardless of the depth of insight archaeology or anthropology may impart upon us with respect to any given question. Even if we knew exactly what a common ancestral population consumed across their lifetimes, it would remain necessary to invoke a (Darwinian) logical framework to begin to make prescriptive assumptions about what we should eat in the modern world. In its requisite minimization of the importance of the logical framework of paleo, positivist paleo renders itself an oxymoron – by definition. Despite that slight problem, it is still possible to act as a paleo positivist. The underlying truth is that the paleo positivist may as well simply be called a positivist.

The sure way to escape the positivist program is to recognize the value of paleo logic prima facie, or… as the null hypothesis. If that stance isn’t taken, ‘paleo’ is little more than a rather hollow moniker.

Some may erroneously take the preceding paragraphs as an affront to science. That certainly is not my intent. Rather, my ardent rejection of positivist paleo is based on the sober recognition that science is likely to fall far short of definitively answering many important questions in our lifetimes. It’s in these areas of incomplete research that our instinctual drives to consume are insidiously (read: unconsciously) blurred and obscured most acutely. To my mind, building a bridge from rejecting Ancel Keys (and/or the lipid hypothesis) to rejecting Dr. Cordain and Dr. De Vany is an area fraught with risk of this bias. Just as the modern apple and banana have been shaped by the sweet-tooth of H. sapiens, the modern meat supply has been shaped by our inherent lipid love – grass-fed included. Rather than adjudicating based on sparse data that appears to maybe kinda point one direction, I’m comfortable starting with the assumption that paleo logic provides valuable insight. And I’m not going to hold my breath while the science community plays the endless games of grants and funding and ethics panels and various other political wrangling.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I found a new source of butter in the local grocery store. For some reason, they hid it in the cheese section.

Granted, this sort of self-analysis is fraught with potential errors, but I don’t think the argument I’m about to make is easy to dispute.

To my mind “meat”, or the idea thereof, came to be signified as a mere proxy for protein. Secondarily, the significant component of “meat” was “fat”. Conversely, fruit and vegetables were not associated with a macronutrient sign, but a proxy for vitamins and minerals. Starches, grains, et cetera were signs for the other macronutrient, “carbs”.

With my mind employing these shortcuts in concert with dietary guidelines (most notably, the demonization of fats), I tended to eat small amounts of meat. I ate meat because I enjoyed eating meat, but with a hint of fear that the fats would get me. Also, I thought that protein could be sourced from soy, black beans, nuts, et cetera so I didn’t really need meat.

All in all, my cultural imprinting lead me to assign labels of “unhealthy” or “superfluous protein” to meat categorically. At the same time, I assigned labels like “nutritious” and “healthy” to the fruit and vegetable category. Thus, it seems as though culture would have me become a vegetarian. While this wasn’t powerful enough to override my enjoyment of meat, it was powerful enough to consciously limit my meat intake and consciously favor fruits and vegetables. In that light, I have to call shenanigans on the veg*n “culture makes you eat meat” argument.

Without further ado, here are some learning aids that I’m employing to rid my mind of the flawed  semiotic value of meat as a concept reduced to protein and fat. Meat isn’t about fat and protein! Let the propaganda reversal begin…

Commence Deprogramming…

Behold the massive amounts of vitamins and minerals!

Edit: The data are from http://nutritiondata.self.com/ after finding them through a search. The serving sizes are whatever the defaults were as the results of the search. While serving sizes are helpful and interesting for certain purposes, the point of the article wasn’t comparison or a basis for implementation in portion sizing (as the RDV are suspect to begin with), but simply to plant the idea of meat as a source of vitamins and minerals without reference to fat and protein.

*Skip to below the videos if you don’t care about an aside about doctors.

I almost feel bad focusing this piece on one article in particular. I’ve been squinting skeptically at the talk surrounding epigenetics for months now. Because of that, much of what follows is directed at pop science journalism as much as anything.

I can’t bring myself to actually feel all that bad because Dr. Hyman is a doctor. Not only is he a doctor, but he brings up his doctoryness pretty much everywhere. And that’s fine, but training to be a medical doctor doesn’t necessarily provide special training in nutrition, exercise physiology, et cetera. It’s a problem because people respect doctors. It seems to me that people also tend to respect medical doctors (Dr. Hyman’s flavor) more than PhDs. Unfortunately for reality, the converse should often be true. The brief training medical doctors get in nutrition and exercise physiology has a higher probability of being dated (however slightly) when it comes in the form of chapters of generalized books and/or when it is taught by non-specialists. It’s certainly true that some medical doctors have stepped up their game and are exempt from this criticism, and that isn’t the point. It’s a problem of automatically granted authority where none should be granted. A recent exchange between Deepak Chopra (and M.D.) and Sam Harris (Ph.D. in neuroscience) illustrates this somewhat.

Scientific claims by Deepak Chopra

Response by Sam Harris (rewind to beginning for a funny moment: Michael Shermer calls Deepak “woo woo”)

Hilarious: Leanord Mlodinow (theoretical physicist, co-authored 2 books with Stephen Hawking) pwns Deepak

The Meat of It

“Science is now proving what we all knew intuitively—that how we live, the quality of our relationships, the food we eat, how we use our bodies, and the environment that washes over us and determines much more than our genes ever will.”

Propaganda 101: The False Dichotomy

The above (and below) quote is from a blog post, ‘Secrets to Health are in Diet and Lifestyle Not Human Genome: The Failure of Decoding the Human Genome and the Future of Medicine‘ [it actually starts with “Secretes”, but I assume that’s a typo], by Dr. Mark Hyman. There is some value here, but when I’m being offered “secrets to health” and instead given fluffy science, appeals to intuitive folk psychology, and hyperbole, I have a hard time recommending you endeavor to dig for nuggets of truth. The way the article is framed is misleading, and… well… wrong. It’s not wrong to say that epigenomics is real and important, but it is wrong to dismiss genetics in favor of epigenomics. That approach is not only a logical fallacy, but an advertising/propaganda tactic. Claims along these lines are madness when we consider that all epigenomics can ever do – by its own definition – is influence the expression of genes. Knowing this simple fact refutes the sensationalist claim that, “Science is now proving [that] the environment… determines much more than our genes ever will.” [emphasis mine]

So at first I was put off by the article. But that was before I remembered that I’ve recently been working on a theory proposing that, while beneficial to plants via chlorophyll, our yellow sun presents a contra-optimal environmental input to epidermal vitamin D synthesis. If we were able to find suitable habitat on a planet orbiting a red sun, the spectrum phase-shift would cause a hormone balance reconstituentialization switching the protein cascade of certain genes to unlock the potential for conscious human negation of both gravity and friction. Failing that, I have high hopes for the venom of radioactive spiders.

Now… if I actually believed in the Superman or Spiderman hypotheses, statements similar to those made by Dr. Hyman would enable their theoretic viability.

The Epigenome: Bypassing Darwin and Evolution

More important than our collection of genes, it now appears, is how those genes are controlled by both internal and external factors—our thoughts, stress, social connections, what we eat, our level of physical and mental activity, and our exposure to microbes and environmental toxins. These factors are switches that turn genes on and off and determine which proteins are expressed. The expressed proteins, in turn, trigger signals of disease or health.

In the context of this article, the claim that epigenomics bypasses Darwin and evolution seems to be more of a political hope than a scientifically defensible position. Now everybody, in your best Beach Boys harmony:

Wouldn’t it be nice if genes were over
‘Cause selling magic-bullets never would be wrong
And wouldn’t it be nice to live forever
In worlds where supra-malleable human beings belong

No, I am not saying Dr. Hyman made this argument explicitly. Yes, I am saying the implication of the argument unlocks false hope in a world in which epigenomic influences wield supreme power. Invoking the concept of control by external factors is problematic. It implies that, if only we can find the right environmental factor(s), we can positively or negatively bend genetic expression to overcome any malady or limitation. If genes and/or evolution don’t matter, nothing can stop us, comrades!

Yes folks, I regret to inform you that it’s the “nurture trumps nature” argument all over again. Not only is the mind a blank slate (as others claim) in this warm and fuzzy world,  but now the body is as well. Bla bla fracking bla.

It could be rightly said that I’m attributing more weight to Dr. Hyman’s mention of epigenomics than is appropriate. However, the other factors he discusses (exposomics, nutrigenomics and microbiomics, and toxigenomics) fall under my same criticism asserting an interactionist framework. In fact, while trumpeting the “failure” of genomics, he simultaneously admits “the dynamic interplay of the environment” and genes. Nutrients, microbes, toxins, and (catch-all term) exposomes all collide with the human genotype and phenotype in ways that can’t accurately be cast in a binary light in which genomics has been deemed a failure. And despite the equivocations and qualifications invoked to temper his message to be mostly accurate-ish, there’s no hope of escaping Darwin and evolution in Dr. Hyman’s position.

Three neo-Darwinist points about epigenetic switches

*Note the switch from “epigenomics” to “epigenetics”. For our purposes, epigenomics can sufficiently be thought of as a macro view of epigenetics.

As is always the case in the “nature vs. nurture debate”, there is no “nature vs. nurture debate”. The false dichotomy only exists in the polemical propaganda of the nurture Nazis (think Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi”, not reductio ad Hitlerum). No, there is no versus, there is only synthesis amidst a continuum. The 3 points below are from Oana Carja‘s excellent answer to the question, “Is it time to revise evolutionary biology textbooks to reconcile Darwin with Lamarck?” They have been edited, but the two quoted paragraphs that follow appear in their original form:

1. A property of the DNA sequence itself is the ability to switch epigenetic state, and is therefore subject to natural selection on conventional mutations.

2. Natural selection will  eliminate switches with maladaptive effects but perpetuate, and refine, those with adaptive effects.

3. The additional ‘information’ represented by a  DNA sequence’s particular epigenetic state is repeatedly being reset.

Thus, epigenetic switches do not involve cumulative, open-ended evolutionary change. Switches are wonderful tools that increase the options available to  DNA sequences but, in themselves, should not challenge the beliefs of a neo-Darwinist. The high rate of epigenetic change is also important because the level of achievable adaptive precision is limited by the  fidelity of replication. Adaptation is constantly being degraded by copying  errors and the higher the rate of errors, the larger the selective advantage that is required to maintain previous adaptation. Thus, small selective advantages are  unable to be maintained in the presence of low-fidelity replication.

Therefore,  significant adaptations are expected to be encoded genetically rather than  epigenetically. Modern neo-Darwinists do not deny that epigenetic mechanisms play an important role during development nor do they deny that these mechanisms  enable a variety of adaptive responses to the environment. Recurrent,  predictable changes of epigenetic state provide a useful set of switches that allow genetically identical cells to acquire differentiated functions and allow facultative responses of a genotype to environmental changes (provided that  ‘similar’ changes have occurred repeatedly in the past). However, most neo-Darwinists would claim that the ability to adaptively switch epigenetic state is a property of the DNA sequence (in the sense that alternative  sequences would show different switching behavior) and that any increase of adaptedness in the system has come about by a process of natural selection.

In other words, epigenetic switches themselves are subject to evolution. Thus, I must sincerely apologize for my current inability to christen epigenetics as the long-awaited mechanism to bring the DC vs. Marvel debate into the scientific realm.

The astute among us may have realized by now that my criticism of Dr. Hyman’s article relies almost entirely on just four of his words. If “failure” wasn’t in the title, and “control” wasn’t used in reference to extra-genomic influence, and “bypassed” didn’t precede Darwin and evolution,  and “determines” wasn’t attributed to epigenetic influence, I may not have been forced to write this. In actuality, those four little words poison an otherwise interesting article in a way that misleads casual readers. I’ll just put aside the problems with the use of “much more” in the lead quote unless someone raises further concern in the comments.

Epigenetics is interesting. Epigenetics is useful. However, epigenetic influence remains confined by genetic potential and Darwinian selection. Let us not make it out to be the panacea it is not. Beyond that, I believe we’re at, or even beyond, the point at which there needs to be some push-back on pop science framings of epigenetics as something that somehow undermines neo-Darwinian evolution. From a strategic perspective, misconstrued epigenetics can be taken out of context far too conveniently by the Creationist and/or Intelligent Design programs.

Oh, and for those of the paleo persuasion… Dr. Hyman’s prescription for gut health? “Eat whole unprocessed foods with plenty of fiber… beans… and whole grains.” Beans and whole grains for gut health!? I don’t feel bad about picking on this article for four words after all. Please don’t take that as ad hominem; it supports the thoughts in the preface.

What follows is a list of a few things ranging from totally not paleo to totally paleo that strike me as distractions from an “Is it paleo?” perspective. This list is by no means exhaustive, and I hope you’ll add your favorites in the comments below.

After a sometimes exhausting year trying to learn about the most important period of human development with way less data than we’d like, I think it’s time for a mini-salute to modernity.

“Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth.” – F.T. Marinetti, ‘The Futurist Manifesto’, 1909

Happy New Year!

10. Creationists Glasses/Sunglasses

ZZ Top is totally paleo by the distributive power of “beards are rad”, and they wouldn’t be the same without sunglasses. I’ll leave it to you to sort out that logic. Another cool thing about sunglasses: polarization. I’m a fan of polarization as a magical coating that cuts down on glare, and in the establishment of false dichotomies and other propaganda tools. If you were a hunter-gatherer who couldn’t see, you’d probably kill for a pair of vision correcting lenses. And don’t mess with Marcello Mastrioanni.

Exception: Implicit in one version of the cover of Guy Debord’s masterwork, ‘The Society of the Spectacle‘, wearing 3-D glasses makes you a mindless automaton that’s been recuperated by the spectacle. Oh, and colored contacts aren’t fair in assessing mate value.

9. Vegans Beer

Hey, don’t question me. It’s written on the sign, and thus, totally out of my hands.

Exception: None. I mean… I could probably make a case for Hefeweizen, what with it’s gluten-bomb wheat base rather than barley. I’d rather make a case against beer with fruit in it, but if I say anything bad about fruit, the president’s vegan personal trainer might get all preachy again.

8. Birth Control

It’s just that it used to be called infanticide and infant mortality. Unless you’re a pope or other form of deviant, we’re much better off with modernity.

Exception: Trojan Condoms’ slogan, “Feels like nothing’s there.” That’s what she said?

7. Coffee

I recently heard someone sincerely say that “coffee is paleo.” Until someone establishes the Homo sapiens “Out of Seattle” hypothesis, I’m going to have to go ahead and reject that coffee is historically or logically paleo. And… I don’t care that it’s not… not even a little.

Exception: Frappuccinos. And no, getting the coconut version doesn’t make it paleo either.

6. Bicycles!

A huge number of people don’t use bikes as a substitute for other forms of exercise, but as a substitute for lazy ass planes, trains, and automobiles. That’s right, Kevin! Having the same birthday as me isn’t going to make me forget your post asking if bikes are faileo. Besides, there’s an entire blog dedicated to paleo cycling, so… game, set, and match.

Exception: None. Not even road bike weenies.

5. Computers {electricity, light bulbs, et cetera}

“You eat paleo, but you’re using a computer!?” Shut up. Seriously. Just. Shut. Up.

“…the chimpanzees I work with are keen on computerized testing: the easiest way to get them to enter our testing facility is to show them the cart with the computer on top.” –Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved

Exception: Macs clearly aren’t paleo because of the high fructose content of apples.

4. Running {and endurance training in general}

Sure, I hate the pain sometimes too, but… it would be a strange evolutionary coincidence that bipedalism is the most mechanically efficient method of distance running, and only humans do it, AND it wasn’t a huge part of our evolution – ostensibly because CrossFit was the hominin fitness program of choice throughout the Pleistocene.

Exception: Clunky running shoes and endurance “sports” based on internal combustion engines.

3. Carbs

If only to shut up critics of paleo that keep saying paleo is dead because 10 Homo sapiens and 3 Homo neanderthalensis fossils show signs of starch consumption. Paleo isn’t anti-carbs! Paleo is anti-carbs in the massive quantity easily and cheaply acquired at Krispy Kreme and everywhere else in grocery store culture.

Exception: Refined sugars and mega-concentrated extracts like agave syrup. Oh, and wheat and corn and rice and all other grains and… (but the latter isn’t a carb thing)

2. Socialism

Sorry comrades. As a bourgeois capitalist, I didn’t want to believe it either. But… the predominant political organization of hunter-gatherer bands seems to be socialist anarchism, libertarian socialism, social anarchism, anarcho-socialism, or some other flavor of social organization that rejects private property and emphasizes communitarian forms cooperation. Objectivism runs into problems (not least because Rand didn’t really believe in evolution… more on that in an upcoming post), and libertarianism relies on a blatantly agrarian conception of property rights.

Exceptions: Authoritarianism, Marxism, State-Socialism

1. Evolutionary Psychology

“Neck-down Darwinism” ain’t cool. If you’ve noticed the difference in personality between golden retrievers and cats, you already understand what evolutionary psychology looks like. Denying that it applies to humans is evolutionarily unjustifiable anthropocentrism. If you still reject it, I hereby sentence you to a lifetime of riding zebras (which I’m told is not unlike herding cats).

Exception: Evolved cognitive biases are real, but I don’t like them.

Your turn! Favorite non-paleo things? Non-paleo things you’re sick of hearing about? Whatcha got?

Without further ado, it is with extreme excitement that I release my contribution to this discussion by way of an alternative hypothesis. It is currently in-press for the Journal of Applied Paleonthropological Hyperbole.

Abstract

The nature and causes of the disappearance of Neanderthals and their apparent replacement by modern humans are subjects of considerable debate. Many researchers have proposed biologically or technologically mediated dietary differences between the two groups as one of the fundamental causes of Neanderthal disappearance. Some scenarios have focused on the apparent lack of plant foods in Neanderthal diets. Here we report direct evidence for Neanderthal consumption of a variety of plant foods, in the form of phytoliths and starch grains recovered from dental calculus of Neanderthal skeletons. Some of the plants are typical of recent modern human diets, including legumes, and grass seeds (Triticeae), whereas others are known to be edible but are not heavily used today. Many of the grass seed starches showed damage that is a distinctive marker of cooking. Our results indicate that in both warm eastern Mediterranean and cold northwestern European climates, and across their latitudinal range, Neanderthals made use of the diverse plant foods available in their local environment and transformed them into more easily digestible foodstuffs in part through cooking them, suggesting that the extinction of Homo neanderthalensis may have been caused by introduction of food sources sufficiently deleterious to individual health.

The obvious question then becomes: How long do we have to wait before proclaiming Neanderthals were vegans? Why would Neanderthals continue to eat substances that were toxic?

For that, we need look no further than modern humans. When ingested items provide an observable short-term benefit in terms of calories, they are assumed to be beneficial. When the negative effects of toxic inputs are cumulative over a period of weeks, months, or years, individuals are incapable of isolating the confounding variables. This is further complicated by not being limited to dietary inputs, but also those of microbial, genetic, or other environmental factors such as shortages or overages of vitamins, minerals, and myriad chemical compounds. This problem has not been solved with modern scientific methods, and it is reasonable to assume that Neanderthals were less capable of determining cause and effect during the Pleistocene.

When the introduction of toxins does not manifest with sufficiently deleterious symptoms for a duration in excess of nine months in females, and nine seconds in males, significant adaptive pressure may not be placed on reproduction for that individual. Thus, the combination of an inability to disambiguate dietary toxins across a relevant period of time with the lack of strong selection pressure in delayed onset cumulative symptoms may result in both poor health and reproductive success, especially in the short-term. However, over time, the inability to recognize the delayed onset cumulative symptoms of the introduction of dietary toxins may lead to an increase in the consumption of the toxic sources. While a disconnect in the causal relationship between dietary input and its negative health outcomes persists, we may see a paradoxical increase in the consumption of such toxins which are believed to be beneficial. As consumption spreads through a population, the negative health consequences would come earlier in life, and with more frequency. Since we have no reason to assume adaptation in all cases (to the contrary, we must assume non-adaptation as the null hypothesis), it is possible that the paradoxical increase in consumption lead to unsustainable population levels within the species.

We are certain of two points: Neanderthals ate grains, and Neanderthals are extinct. To date, there is a complete lack of evidentiary support for hypotheses involving any benefits to the introduction of grains into the Neanderthal diet. Thus, we find all hypotheses of our colleagues that indicate grain consumption provided any survival or reproductive benefits to Neanderthals to be strange and unfounded. Since Homo neanderthalensis is extinct, and the deleterious effects of grain consumption can still be seen in the modern Homo lineage, it is more reasonable to conclude that increased consumption of grains in the Neanderthal diet played a role in their extinction.

Discussion

Grain consumption may result in death and subsequent fossilization of you and your species. Further research is required.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by evolvify.com in connection with the upcoming book, ‘The Extinction Diet: How to Lose Weight and Save the Planet Through Individual Death and Species Extinction’.