Step 3: Focus on Proteins and Fats Derived from Animal Sources

Paleo Consumption of Meat

Up to this point, we have focused on the first two steps of the Beginner Paleo diet – eliminating sugar and eliminate grains from your diet. Now we get to the fun part – focusing on the foods that you should eat. Step 3 involves introducing delicious and filling food into your diet.

We know that our paleo ancestors ate little to know sugar and absolutely no grains – processed or otherwise. So what did we evolve to eat? Meat and fat! And lots of it. This is contrary to what the USDA and other diets would have you believe to eat for proper health and weight loss. However, a large portion of your diet should be from meat and eggs – preferably from organic and grassfed sources.

According to recent research, meat is a more efficient source of protein than plants.[1] From an evolutionary perspective, eating meat allowed our Paleo ancestors to spend less energy on digestion and more energy on building bigger brains.[2] Research on fossils from 2.3 million years ago revealed that the increase in the size of our bodies and brains was a direct reflection of our increased consumption of meat and wild game. To our ancestors, meat was a fundamentally better and richer source of calories and actually helped us to become smarter and evolve to our current state.[3] Meat is packed with lots of calories from fat which was essential to our ability to fuel the primitive brain. All told, our brains require about 20 times as much energy as the equivalent about of muscle. Other sources of fuel like root vegetables and tubers were less efficient in delivering calories. Meat consumption, especially when cooked, allowed us to become smarter and evolve significantly as a human species.

Meat and eggs do not make up a significant portion of the current dietary recommendations from the US government. According to the 2010 dietary recommendations from the USDA, we are told that we “should consume protein foods in amounts recommended for their nutrient and calorie needs.”[4] Protein foods are classified as all meat (beef, pork or lamb), poultry, seafood, eggs, nuts, seeds, and processed soy products and also include beans and peas. The recommendations further suggest that any meat and poultry should be lean or low-fat.[5] So for a person consuming a 2,000 per day calorie diet, this amounts to a recommendation of 1.8 ounces of meat, 1.5 ounces of poultry, 1.2 ounces of seafood, 0.4 ounces of eggs and half an ounce of nuts and seeds. Did you get all that? In sum, “protein foods” should total 5.5 ounces per day for a person consuming a 2,000 calorie diet.

Regardless of these complicated guidelines from the government (can you eat 0.4 ounces of an egg?), studies suggest that a person on the Modern American Diet consumes right around 6 to 8.5 ounces of meat per day, depending on which research source you choose to believe.[6] Even at the high end of this spectrum, this accounts for only around 15% to 20% of the average person’s total dietary calorie intake. And meat consumption has been on the rise since the 1950’s, although this increase can almost entirely be attributed to a threefold increase in consumption of poultry. Can you say boneless skinless chicken breast anyone?

Most researchers agree that our Paleo ancestors derived a significantly higher portion of their overall food intake from meat sources. Studies suggest that 45% to 65% of their total calorie intake came from wild sources of meat and game.[7] If our 2,000 calorie per day Modern American Dieter ate the same percentage of calories as their Paleo bretheren, then he or she could aim to eat around 5 ounces of steak, 5 eggs and 1.5 chicken thighs in a given day.

A Brief History of Dietary Recommendations Regarding Meats

But if meat was essential to our very existence and evolution AND meat was also the primary source of calories for our ancestors, then how did we get to this point where we are simply told to reduce calories and avoid meat for optimum health? A short review of the history behind dietary guidelines reveals the move away from “unhealthy” meats and eggs toward a “healthy” diet consisting primarily of carbohydrates.

Most recommendations against consuming meat (especially red meat) and eggs stem from the lipid hypothesis that heavily influenced the first government nutrition recommendations that set us on the course for a striking increase in the number of overweight and obese individuals. In its most simple form, the lipid hypothesis suggests that the consumption of a diet high in saturated fat causes high cholesterol which in turn causes heart disease.

In the early 1940s, near the end of the second world war, a doctor by the name of Ancel Keys decided to conduct a study that has now become to be known as “The Minnesota Starvation Experiment.” He recruited 36 male volunteers and under lock and key at the University of Minnesota, fed them a “typical” American diet for 12 weeks. This diet consisted of around 3,200 calories per day. For the next 24 weeks, the participants were put on a “starvation” diet consisting of approximately 1500 calories per day and consisted of 25% protein, 17% fat and 57% carbohydrate. At the end of the study, the participants lost an average of 25% of their starting weight and many reported substantial psychological and emotional problems from the experience.[8]

Dr. Keys went on to publish this study in the 1950s and it had a significant impact on the dietary recommendations that influence the Modern American Diet to this day. More importantly, Dr. Keys played a significant role in forming the lipid hypothesis and linking the consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol to heart disease. In a subsequent paper he published titled “The Seven Countries Study,” Dr. Keys found that the more fat the population of a country consumed, the more that heart disease was prevalent. However, this was a bit of trickery on his part – when you examined several other countries that were not included in his study, the results were in fact the opposite. For some populations that consumed a high fat diet, the instance of cardiovascular disease was strikingly low. Disregarding the countries that contradicted his finding and based on his study, Dr. Keys recommended that people restrict their intake of meat and saturated fat while focusing on an increase of vegetable oils and grains.[9]

Combined with Dr. Keys tenuous conclusion that more fat equals more heart disease, the United States government in 1977 settled on a recommendation that American’s reduce their intake of foods that contain a high amount of fat.[10] Meat and eggs, which had been moderately consumed by the public up until that time with little restriction, both contain a high amount of saturated fat and cholesterol. Therefore, it made sense to direct the public to consume more carbohydrates, in the form of grains, and less fat and cholesterol.

In sum, the 1977 guidelines recommended that people “consume less fat and cholesterol and more carbohydrates.” More specifically, it encouraged the public to increase carbohydrate to 60 percent of total calories and decrease dietary fat intake to no more than 30 percent of calories, with a focus on the reduction of saturated fat. These guidelines were set forth by the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, led by Senator George McGovern.[11]

The results of these recommendations were nothing less than staggering on the waistline of Americans. A 1997 study published in American Journal of Medicine showed that from 1976 to 1991, total calorie intake decreased by 4% from 1,854 calories per day to 1,785 calories and average fat intake, adjusted for total calories, dropped from 41.0% to 36.6%, an 11% decrease. The public adjusted well to these recommendations, dropping their total calories and reducing their fat intake. Since total calorie intake and total fat intake dropped substantially, it would have been fair to assume that the prevalence of obesity and overweight individuals would also decrease. As you know by now, this was not the case. The same study found that the prevalence of individuals who were considered overweight rose 31%.[12] A separate study that used results from the 2007–2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found that obesity rose 128% from 1976 on and the number of individuals with extreme obesity rose more than 300% over the same time period.[13]

What is important to recognize from all of the statistics is that the consumption of grains and carbohydrate containing foods increased significantly following the release of the dietary guidelines in 1977. Recall in the earlier chapter about nutrition basics that fat contains 9 calories per gram and carbohydrates contain 4 calories. Less fat in our diet resulted in fewer calories consumed. If the calories in versus calories out equation was correct, then eliminating the fat and reducing total calories should have resulted in a corresponding decrease in the number of overweight and obese individuals. Reducing our overall fat consumption, as we did from 1976 to 1991, did not result in a decrease in the number of overweight and obese individuals. In fact, the exact opposite was true.

All of the foregoing history on how we came to villanize the consumption of animal food sources that contain a relatively high amount of fat is presented here to show you how got to where we are today. It is simple to tell people to eat less fat (because fat causes you to get fat) than to explain the relatively complex way that the human body works.

Unfortunately, there are still those in the media and in the health and fitness industry that embrace the idea of a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet as the only scientifically proven way to lose weight. But the statistics do not lie. America got fatter as consumption of carbohydrates increased and meat consumption decreased. Even today, very few experts questioned the recommendations or thought to look closer at the fact that carbohydrates drive insulin which drives hunger and fat storage. By adhering to the Beginner Paleo Diet you can break free of this cycle and achieve optimum health and weight loss.

The Basics of Fat

Fats in foods come in two basic varieties: saturated and unsaturated. A fat becomes saturated because, on a fundamental level, the carbon atoms are fully “saturated” with hydrogen atoms. Saturated fat is the kind that you will find in most animal products like meat and dairy; it is generally solid at room temperature. Unsaturated fats only have one (“mono-“) or multiple (“poly-“) carbon atoms attached to a hydrogen atom. Polyunsaturated fat is primarily in plant based foods and oils. One specific type of polyunsaturated fats are Omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to have beneficial effects. Monunsaturated fats are found in a variety of foods such as meat, nuts, olives and avocados.

The Basics of Protein

How much protein do I need?

Protein also has a hidden benefit; your body expends a large portion of calories processing it. After you eat a meal, your metabolic rate increases and your body produces heat when processing food. This is called the thermic effect of food, and it is the caloric cost of digesting and processing different macronutrients. Most studies show that your body expends 20 – 25% of calories consumed to burn protein, 5 – 15% of calories to process carbohydrates and 0 – 5% to process fats.[14] To put that in perspective, if a person eats a meal consisting of 600 calories of equal parts protein, carbohydrates and fats, he will burn 40 – 50 calories processing the protein portion, 10 – 30 calories processing the carbohydrate portion and 0 – 10 calories processing the fat portion. Bottom line, you burn more calories just by eating protein.

However, cholesterol is an important component of the human body; approximately 25% of the total amount of the cholesterol present in humans is localized in the brain.[15] More intuitively, is that no one thought to ask how humans could have survived, evolved and even thrived for more than two million years on a diet that was made up by more than double the amount of fat calories that were being recommended as “healthy.”[16]

[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/06/25/155588094/we-evolved-to-eat-meat-but-how-much-is-too-much

[2] http://www.npr.org/2012/06/24/155506989/the-time-travelers-cookbook-meat-lovers-edition

[3] http://www.npr.org/2010/08/02/128849908/food-for-thought-meat-based-diet-made-us-smarter

[4] http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/DietaryGuidelines/2010/PolicyDoc/Chapter4.pdf

[5] http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/DietaryGuidelines/2010/PolicyDoc/Chapter5.pdf

[6] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045642/ or http://www.meatami.com/ht/d/sp/i/47465/pid/47465 or http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.pdf

[7] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/71/3/682.full and http://www.marksdailyapple.com/did-grok-really-eat-that-much-meat/#axzz2ePOhYM4k

[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment and http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/02/25/the-science-of-fat-loss-why-a-calorie-isnt-always-a-calorie/

[9] Wolf, Robb (2011-03-27). The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet (p. 103). Victory Belt Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[10] For an in-depth review of this subject, read Anthony Colpo’s “The Great Cholesterol Con.”

[11] http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/report/HTML/G5_History.htm

[12] http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(96)00456-1/abstract