The last danger of the ‘Paleo Diet’: eating “like a caveman” damages the heart
An increase in cardiovascular risk is now added to the nutritional deficiencies already detected in this restrictive diet.
People who follow the so-called ‘Paleolithic Diet’ or ‘Paleo Diet’, based on their general features in the diet that sustained humans before they ceased to be hunter-gatherers to become farmers, present an amount twice as high as common of a key blood marker linked to heart disease.
This has been revealed by a study on the influence of diet on the gastrointestinal microbiome, or the relationship of beneficial and harmful bacteria that inhabit our stomach and intestines. The study, published in the European Journal of Nutrition, has been carried out by researchers from Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Perth, Australia.
The researchers compared 44 people who followed the ‘paleodiet’ with another 47 who ate the traditional Australian diet. The first advocates consuming red meat, vegetables, nuts and fruit with limitation, excluding grain, vegetables, dairy products, salt, and refined sugar and oil. The second is also abundant in meat, the first Australian import, but also rich in cereals and fruit as well as milk, the productions brought by European settlers.
The last danger of the ‘Paleo Diet’: eating “like a caveman” damages the heart
This has been revealed by a study on the influence of diet on the gastrointestinal microbiome, or the relationship of beneficial and harmful bacteria that inhabit our stomach and intestines. The study, published in the European Journal of Nutrition, has been carried out by researchers from Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Perth, Australia.
The researchers compared 44 people who followed the ‘paleodiet’ with another 47 who ate the traditional Australian diet. The first advocates consuming red meat, vegetables, nuts and fruit with limitation, excluding grain, vegetables, dairy products, salt, and refined sugar and oil. The second is also abundant in meat, the first Australian import, but also rich in cereals and fruit as well as milk, the productions brought by European settlers.
The objective of the work was to measure the levels of trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) in the blood of the participants. If TMAO, an organic compound produced by the gut microbiome, is high, the risk of cardiovascular disease increases. In Australia, the authors point out, one person dies every 12 minutes for this reason; In the European Union, they account for 4.3 million deaths annually, 2.1 million of which could be related to widespread poor nutrition.
As lead researcher Dr. Angela Genoni explains, the growing popularity of the ‘paleodiet’, which has opened a gap between footballers and other elite athletes, justifies the importance of understanding the impact it can have on general health. “Many proponents of the Paleo Diet claim that it is beneficial for the health of the gut microbiome, but our work suggests that when it comes to the production of TMAO in the gut, eating like this could be having an adverse effect on the gut. heart health, “he explains.
Where would the problem be between one mode of feeding or another? “We also found that the populations of beneficial bacteria species were lower in the Paleolithic style groups”, reveals Genoni. “This was associated with a reduction in carbohydrate intake, and may have consequences such as the development of other chronic diseases in the long term.”
On the other hand, the elevated TMAO in the ‘paleodiet’ group was linked to the lack of whole grain consumption in their eating habits. “We discovered that the deficiencies in whole grain were in direct proportion to the levels of the cardiovascular risk marker,” says the researcher. “This may also be related to lower incidences of heart disease among populations that eat high amounts of whole grains.”
These excesses in the cardiovascular risk marker also resulted in an increase in the concentration of the bacteria that produces it in the microbiome of ‘paleo’ eaters. Genoni insists: “They exclude all grains (wheat, corn, rice, oats …) but we know that they are a fantastic source of resistant starches and many other fermentable fibers that are essential to guarantee the health of the microbiome.”
The other problems of the ‘Paleo’
There are other risk factors, adds the researcher. “The Paleo Diet includes higher daily servings of red meat, which in turn provide the precursor compounds that allow TMAO to be produced.” In addition, Genoni indicates, the Palaeolithic-style diet implied consuming twice the recommended amount of saturated fats, also known as “bad fats” which, without being as pernicious as they tend to believe, are “worrisome” according to the doctor. that level.
One of the most common reproaches towards the ‘paleodiet’ is that it can increase the deficiency of calcium, vitamin D and vitamin B. Other deficiencies can be alleviated with ‘allowed’ foods, such as fish, avocado and nuts for unsaturated fats; But although the recommendation to avoid ultra-processed foods is generally positive, the need to always resort to fresh foods raises the cost of eating ‘paleo’ without additional benefits being proven.
Finally, there is a conceptual debate: the fruits and vegetables that we consume today, and even animals, have already been modified by human cultivation and breeding, and some were not tested by our ancestors until the discovery of the New World. . No matter how purist ‘paleo’ you want to be, there is no way – or really reason – to go back in time.
