Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Bogus news article on "Caveman diet"

I seen this story on "Caveman diet's" today, from May 12th.

The story says that nothing can really be gleaned from the results because the study was not controlled. That is absolutely true, but what they fail to mention is that a controlled study of a paleolithic diet WAS performed AFTER the study that they mention in the story. I linked to this study on this very blog

Another criticism of the study was the low calcium intake. However, this only looks at the input side of the equation. Whenever you eat a food, it reports to the kidney's as either a acid or alkaline load. If you have a high acid load diet then body needs to buffer this acidity. How does it do that? One way is by leeching calcium from your bones because it is one of the bodies biggest stores of base/alkaline. So, while a paleolithic diet may not have much by way of the input side of the bone density equation, it makes up for it by not losing any. Furthermore, studies of the fossils of our ancestors show that they had very dense and strong bones BEFORE humanity started consuming milk. After humanity started consuming milk our bones became WEAKER. This was due to the fact that we had started consuming grains as well. Grains, along with dairy, meat, and legumes, are acid producing foods. Vegetables and fruits are the only base producing.

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