Paleo Versus Vegan Diet, Which Is Healthier?

that was so lovely thank you so much Steven thank you so much for having me here and thank you all for coming this evening I know it’s it’s a long day so to come out in the evening as well I really appreciate you being here and I hope that you you get something out of this presentation and and just to give you a little bit of a you know of a foreword to this presentation I can remember must have been eight or nine years ago I was at my gym and people the buzz was paleo everybody was talking about it my fitness instructors all my favorite and fitness instructors were on the Paleo diet they were talking about where to get you know coconut bread and all of these things and and it worried me because I knew what they were eating that they were eating just truckloads of meat and it worried me because of course I’m very concerned about what’s going on in terms of environment and animals and of course health and I thought you know really care about these people and I don’t want them to be facing cancer in in a few years by eating what they’re eating and I thought you know I don’t know a lot about the Paleo diet and I thought I need to be able to speak to this whole movement with some knowledge and so I I started my my search for what the Paleo diet really is and what this movement is really all about

and of course it doesn’t really matter whether you call it paleo or primal or caveman or Stone Age or whatever we are seeing truly a new reverence for our you know ancestral style diets and the basic premise of the Paleo diet is what humans ate in pre-agricultural times is the diet that’s really best suited to our genetic make it’s the same as with any animal what they ate in the wild is what they are meant to eat and it’s the same with human so that’s their their premise and they believe that the shift from a hunting-gathering diet that was rich in wild meat and wild plants to an agricultural diet rich in grains and legumes gave rise to our obesity and chronic disease epidemics so that’s kind of their tagline

I don’t know if you’ve heard of David Katz dr. David Katz he’s one of the most respected voices in nutrition in certainly North America and perhaps the world and he was the founding director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center and is a medical school professor he’s also the past president of the American College of lifestyle medicine and this is what he had to say he said well it makes sense that our native diet is apt to be healthful we can’t conclude that a diet best suited to a two to four decade life which is how long people in Paleolithic times lived is just as good for an eighth decade life regardless for the sake of the argument let’s just say it is a good idea to eat like our ancestors what would be the first question you would want to ask what did our ancestors eat right we need to know what they actually ate

and in truth there was no one Paleolithic diet pre-agricultural people you know this was a long period of time so they ate a mix of wild plants wild animals fish insects whatever they could get but the balance of these foods varied with the time frame within the Paleolithic period their location how close they were to the equator the season their gathering and hunting skills which of course evolved over time the tools they have had access to their culture and so on and so on and there were very significant changes over time during the first 80% of the Paleolithic period humans were predominantly vegetarian probably 98% vegetarian during the last 20% of the Paleolithic period humans ate more of an omnivorous hunter-gatherer diet so a lot of people say well I wonder if they were mostly hunter-gatherers are mostly gather hunters and of course it depended on where they were if they were closer to the equator they were usually more gather hunters if they lived further north they were more hunter-gatherers and the estimates of how much plants versus how much animals were if they were closer to the equator they ate you know one-third animals two-thirds plants if they were higher up it might have been as much as two-thirds animals one-third plants

so what didn’t they eat well they certainly didn’t eat anything from a box or a bag they didn’t eat any deep fried foods or fast foods they didn’t eat refined oils fats sugar salt they didn’t eat or drink the milk of other mammals or any products made from that milk they certainly didn’t eat bacon ham salami sausage or any other processed meats and they didn’t drink alcohol they didn’t have access to any of these things

so what is the Paleo diet well the Paleo diet is a pattern of eating that attempts to mimic the diet of our Paleolithic ancestors and the slogan that you often hear is if a caveman couldn’t eat it that neither should you and this is what one of there are several Paleolithic sort or paleo food guides and this is one of the the common ones and you can see that the Paleo pyramid is about half meat and then fruits vegetables nuts and berries and at the bottom you can see here that there’s a you know no grain so bread corn rice etc there’s no legumes and there’s no dairy products and there are certain paleo superfood so paleo enthusiasts choose beef over beans eggs over ODEs they love organ meat bone broth and coconut oil these are all hailed as super foods

so the big question that I asked myself was I wonder if these new paleo diets have any really bear any true resemblance to a true Paleolithic diet so I decided to take a look at nutritional anthropology and in fact I came across two studies that provided very very detailed estimates of what Paleolithic man actually consumed and the first was done in 1997 by Boyd Eaton and Melvin Conner and Boyd Eaton is a very famous name he’s these are fathers of the paleo movement if you will then in 2010 Melvin Conner and and Boyd Eaton came up with a revised version of their original estimates and and what this revision was really all about was allowing for a greater range of intakes at different time periods and if when people were you know whether they were close to the equator further away etc but in this paper they say the following early ancestral diets were overwhelmingly plant-based with some insects and very small amounts of animal flesh reliance on meat increased in later ancestral diets as hunting skills improved however much proof points to continued significant if not predominant dependence on plant foods so that’s very important

so what did their research show well on the left here you see the DRI this is sort of the recommended intake of macronutrients to the right of that you see the true Paleo estimates from 1997 and then the revised estimates from 2010 and so they estimated in 1997 average energy intakes were about three thousand calories a day the estimated protein intake sat around twenty five to thirty percent of calories they estimated carbohydrate in takes their original estimates were forty five to fifty percent of calories they changed that to 35 to 65 again allowing the greater range of intakes 35 for people eating mostly meat 65 for people eating mostly plant fat they originally estimated total fat intake at 20 percent of calories they upped that to 20 to 35 percent of calories in 2010 saturated fat they estimated originally at 6 percent of calories they upped it to seven point five to twelve percent in 2010 cholesterol around 500 milligrams omega-3 to omega-6 fat omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids around the two-to-one and fiber around originally they estimated a hundred and four grams a day later 70 to 150 plus grams a day

so is there anything that jumps out at you from those numbers anybody fiber like holy smokes the average vegan gets fifty or sixty grams of fiber a day if you’re on a really good Whole Foods diet it might be 70 or 80 if you’re lucky but they were eating a hundred two and and you know possibly more than a hundred and fifty grams of fiber a day so my you know little spidey senses went off and I went there’s no way no newfangled paleo follower is eating anywhere close to this amount of fiber and then the other thing that kind of stuck out at me was this originally when they were looking at a total fat intake of 20% they estimated saturated fat at 6 now all of a sudden they’re estimating at 7 point 5 to 12 even though the low end is still 20% so why shouldn’t it be 6 to 12 instead of 7 point 5 if we’re still at 20% total fat so I call I I email dr. Connor Melvyn Connor who was the senior author on that paper and I said why did the estimate for saturated fat increase from six to seven point five percent of calories in a diet with 20% of calories from fat and this is what he wrote back he said this is an extremely insightful question and goes to the heart of a long-standing disagreement between Boyd Eaton and me are really between Loren Cordain anybody that knows anything about ileal movement he’s another one of the kings of the paleo movement and Boyd versus me in my opinion coordinate al gave too much weight to the Arctic and Antarctic hunters mounted hunters and forest hunters which really had extraordinarily high levels of meat and fat but Melvin Conner put more weight on the plant eaters so there was some disagreement there they ended up with the hut with a higher number but still didn’t really answer my question why the six to the seven point five percent

so what about micronutrients well I’m not going to go through them all but I’m gonna tell you what really stuck out vitamin C five to six hundred milligrams calcium one to two thousand milligrams potassium seven to ten thousand five hundred milligrams is what they were estimating if you know anything about nutrition well what where does vitamin C come from fruits and vegetables now what does the average vegan get maybe two or three hundred milligrams calcium well they weren’t drinking any milk so they certainly weren’t getting it from cow’s milk where were they getting it from green leafy vegetables how much were they eating well they originally estimated almost two thousand milligrams lowered it to one to fifteen hundred potassium originally ten thousand five hundred down to seven thousand the the the DRI you know the sort of acceptable intake forty seven hundred milligrams I can tell you it is tough to design a plant-based diet even with that much potassium it’s a challenge so imagine they were getting almost double act so I again thought all of this just tells me planets plants plant

so I thought to myself I wonder what really comes closer to a true Paleolithic diet a paleo diet or a vegan diet and so what I did was I went to the most popular paleo website on the internet that I could find and they actually had menus took three days of their menus I they had all the recipes so I analyzed all the recipes analyzed the entire menu and calculated how much of what they were getting so I could actually compare it to true Paleolithic intakes then I did the same thing with a recommended vegan menu calculated everything so I could compare the two and here you have what I did was was I I actually um made sure that it sort of they were isocaloric or all right I adjusted to make sure that the calories were three thousand for each menu so we could fairly compare them with a true Paleolithic diet so you see the new paleo diet is is that has the red heading and then the true paleo in the middle and then on the right and the green is the vegan

so let’s take a look at the nutrients in these menus compared to a true Paleolithic diet so protein well there’s actually more the the new Paleo diet was closer to a true Paleolithic diet in terms of the amount of protein so you can see 32 percent for the for the new paleo about 25 to 30 percent for the true paleo and about 15 percent for vegan carbohydrates were closer on a vegan diet at 57 percent the the true paleo at 35 to 65 and look at this the new paleo they’re getting about 15 percent of calories from carbohydrates then for fat closer on a vegan diet 20 to 35 percent of calories from fat for the real Paleolithic diet 29 for the vegan diet look at this 53 percent of calories from fat on this recommended Paleo diet saturated fat well again the vegan diet was closer at 6 percent and as you recall they’re they’re estimating somewhere six or seven point five to twelve and in the the new Paleo diet 19 percent of calories from saturated fat what’s recommended to remember the ACC the American College cardiology and the American Heart Association recommend no more than five to six percent of calories from saturated fat these guys are getting nineteen percent from this particular menu cholesterol well it’s zero in a vegan diet so I kind of gave it to the paleo because they’re eating some cholesterol but look at this they’re eating thirteen hundred and eight milligrams of cholesterol and it was about five hundred in Paleolithic times at least estimated to be that actually even the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 was closer on a vegan diet at four to one it was eleven to one on it with this Paleo menu and fiber well needless to say it was much closer on a vegan diet which came in at 70 grams of fiber they were at about 31 for the for the Paleo diet

so let’s look at the micronutrients we’ll go through very quickly riboflavin was closer on a vegan diet thiamine was closer on a vegan diet vitamin C closer on a vegan diet vitamin A was closer on the Paleo diet vitamin E was closer on the vegan diet iron was actually closer on the vegan diet zinc was closer on the Paleo diet a calcium closer on the vegan diet sodium closer on the vegan diet and potassium way closer on the vegan diet surprised surprised

so in summary what we’re seeing is the Paleo diet came closer to a true Paleolithic diet for the following nutrients protein cholesterol zinc and vitamin A the vegan diet came closer to a true Paleolithic diet for the following nutrients carbohydrate total fat saturated fat essential fatty acid ratio fiber riboflavin thiamine vitamin C any iron calcium sodium and potassium which one comes closer to a true Paleolithic diet yeah bottom line is a new Paleo diet is nothing like a true Paleolithic diet compared to a true Paleolithic diet the typical new paleo menu contains about the same amount of protein and significantly different levels of most other nutrients and why the preference for protein will the focus with the new paleo folks is achieving the protein intakes of Paleolithic people they don’t have any concern about matching other nutrients obviously hence the emphasis on meat as opposed to plant foods that would be necessary to achieve 70 to 150 grams plus a fiber right

so if you look at macronutrient discrepancies like there’s some huge difference between this you know new paleo diet versus the Paleolithic the total fat in the new Paleo diet was about double the estimated intakes saturated fat two to three times higher cholesterol two and a half times higher carbohydrates were only a quarter to a half of true Paleolithic intakes fiber about a third if you look at micronutrient discrepancies vitamins thiamine they got about 69% of the thiamine true paleo Paleolithic people ate about 40% of the riboflavin 64% of the vitamin A 45% of the vitamin C 73 percent of the vitamin E and minerals iron was far lower zinc lower calcium lower sodium was the only thing that was way higher potassium about 68 percent

so why the difference why such a huge discrepancy between you know what it when you think about it Palio’s meat and veggies right meat and non starchy vegetarian li if that’s the case well meat was the primary staple in the menus analyzed meat is not necessarily the primary staple of our ancestors and meat and vegetables consumed today were not available in Paleolithic times and bear very little resemblance to those eaten by pre agricultural populations and of course they used oil and salt and the recipes which of course people didn’t do in Paleolithic times

if you look at wild meat versus domestic meat meat from wild animals is much lower in fat than from domesticated animals it’s about 6 to 16 percent of calories from from fat versus 30 to 60 percent in farmed animals it’s much much lower in saturated fat and much higher in omega-3 fatty acids meat from wild animals it’s also wild animals are free of hormones and antibiotics and of course in Paleolithic times also free of environmental contaminants

so what about wild versus domestic plants here’s a bit of a surprise cultivated vegetables and fruits have been bred for appearance palatability transportability digestibility and yield wild plants deliver over three times the fiber fiber of commercial plant foods that’s how we explain the discrepancy in the in the fiber really because they would have had to be eating truckloads of food to be able to get 150 plus grams of fiber but because the food was you know of a third lower in in fiber or the food is a third lower in fiber today that explains that difference they are also more concentrated wild plants in vitamins minerals and protein and they’re much lower in sugar

so all of that having been said paleo and plant-based health advocates agree on a number of things we agree that highly processed fried and fast foods are best eliminated from the diet or at least drastically reduced there are primary sources of refined carbohydrates trans fats heated fats damaged fats added salt artificial sweeteners colors flavors food additives all of those things we also agree that dairy is not necessary for humans we agree that alcohol is harmful especially in excess we agree that processed meat and meat from factory farmed animals are best removed from the menu even though a lot of paleo types don’t do that generally the the leaders of the paleo movement would advocate that we also agree that vegetables and fruits should take center stage nuts and seeds are healthful foods organic local and fresh our best we agree on all of those things

so where do we diverge well paleo diets exclude legumes and grains they are featured staples in plant-based diets in a lot of plant-based diets whereas paleo diets feature meat poultry fish and eggs as staples and they are excluded or minimized in plant-based diets