<p>The program my husband follows is outlined in Reversing Heart Disease by Dean Ornish. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but for someone who had significant blockage in his arteries, it has been lifesaving. The idea is more than diet, it includes exercise and meditation/and or prayer.</p>
<p>Well, the Paleo is out for me 
although I do try to eat as simply as possible.</p>
<p>I think paleo/low-carb, or any diet, is sustainable if it is working for you and you have the motivation to stay on it and you have broken your carb/sugar addiction. At almost 5’4" and 146 pounds, I was never considered overweight medically and I had lost weight in the past and gained it all back because I didn’t feel one bit better on the diet, just thinner. The low-carb close-to-paleo diet I am on now has gotten rid of so many nagging little symptoms I had that I considered part of aging that I can’t imagine going off of it. The aching in my shoulders that I attributed to carrying around two 6-pound cameras almost completely went away without me putting the cameras down. Now, the diet that worknprogress2’s husband doesn’t sound one bit appealing to me but he definitely has the motivation to stay on it so it is sustainable for him, which it probably would be for me given the consequences of not staying on it. Having grown up as a super skinny person who could eat whatever I wanted has not helped me as I’ve approached my late 40’s because I’ve never had to watch what I ate and exercise to keep thin.</p>
<p>NYMom- re: animal fat and paleo. The nutritional makeup of the animals that hunter gatherer societies ate were quite different from the corn-stuffed, contained in overcrowded conditions factory farmed animals we eat today. These animals were (and grass-fed animals that are allowed to live a natural lifestyle today) had very different ratios of omega 6 to omega 3; and were generally leaner cause they were running around too. Of course every part of the animal from the marrow to the skin was utilized by paleolithic man. You can see and taste the difference in meat and eggs from grass fed animals today. </p>
<p>As for me, I don’t follow a strict paleo diet as I recognize that is not the world I live in; I begin to crave some carb foods if I do so. However, I do my best to follow some general principles, and eat as little processed food as possible. Also regarding grains and dairy: traditional societies knew how to treat grains to make them more edible for human digestion.(e.g. slow cooked steel oats vs. honey nut whatevers). Check out the wonderful westonaprice.org website for some of their philosophy and ideas.</p>
<p>I usually buy grass-fed meat. But I think the paleo diet is ok as long as we don’t have another ice-age :D, that’s one of the reasons why the Neanderthals became extinct.</p>
<p>Whatever its merits for an individual, the paleo-diet would not be very sustainable for the large population of humans that exist on earth today. There are good reasons why the world’s total human population was small and thinly-spread during the paleolithic era. The number a square miles it takes to support a hunter/gatherer society is huge compared to acreage required to support it by agriculture. It was the invention of agriculture and the domestication of farm animals that really allowed populations of nomadic hunter/gatherers to settle down into villages and begin to create what we call civilization.</p>
<p>The amount of farmable land in the world is limited. To feed the billions of people we already have today you are going to have to keep going, in some form, with most of the various highly-efficient, high-intensity agricultural methods now in use - “factory farming” if you will.</p>
<p>We’ll be fine if, like most food fads, the paleo-diet is adopted only by a small slice of the few who can afford such luxuries. But the planet would be in big trouble if all the billions of people on earth decided to eat only free-range grown meat supplemented with a smattering of pseudo-wild berries, fruit, and roots.</p>
<p>I know! We’d also be fighting with the animals in the world for that same game and berries.</p>
<p>Thanks, san-dee - that’s a good point. </p>
<p>coureur, One of the arguments for a plant-based diet is that half of the world’s water usage goes to raising farm animals. In view of this, it would be better if less, not more, meat were eaten.</p>
<p>well, until the mid 20th century, animals were not confined to veritable prisons and mutilated on factory farms. I am not against agriculture; I just am not in favor of unnecessary suffering. Also we should realize the spread of many horrid diseases (e coli poisoning ), eg. is thought to come from unsanitary conditions of animals, not crops.</p>
<p>There is a price for eating unnatural food, fed an unnatural diet. I would rather eat less of animals products, (using them more as a condiment) than eat a de-beaked, too fat to stand turkey.</p>
<p>San-dee - </p>
<p>One of the reasons it was easy for DH to subscribe to the Ornish Program was that he spent time catching chickens as a fundraiser for the Bball team he coached. We live in an area where there are a LOT of chicken farms, where the runoff is a problem, etc. Anyway - his description of going into those buildings, and having to bring out the layers who were past their prime and going to a soup company was colorful to say the least. </p>
<p>Yup, some teams sell candy, others do car washes, my DH’s young men caught chickens.</p>
<p>I’m with abasket - “eating in a way you can live with for an extended period of time” is my motto, too. There is nothing bad with an occasional slice of good bread or a scoop of premium ice cream. :)</p>
<p>san-dee, I agree about modern agriculture, but there are way too many of us on this planet. If every bean eater would stop eating beans (not allowed in the paleo diet), there simply will not be enough protein for all of us.</p>
<p>Have you seen this:</p>
<p>[Theory</a> Doesn’t Hold Water - British Medical Journal Exposes Myth of “Eight Glasses A Day”](<a href=“Theory Doesn't Hold Water - British Medical Journal Exposes Myth of "Eight Glasses A Day" | BioSpace”>Theory Doesn't Hold Water - British Medical Journal Exposes Myth of "Eight Glasses A Day" | BioSpace)</p>
<p>I never subscribed to the 8 glasses a day craze.</p>
<p>^I feel better about drinking less water. I think I don’t drink enough especially at night.</p>
<p>I often drink five to eight glasses of water just for working out.</p>
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<p>I never did either, if for no other reason than I have no desire to pee that much more.</p>
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<p>I certainly agree. But that is a different question than whether the paleo-diet is healthier to eat, or whether the planet can produce enough paleo-food for billions of people to switch to that diet.</p>
<p>hi coureur - yes I agree that the paleo-diet is not fully proven yet, perhaps; but it makes intuitive sense that if humans evolved eating a certain kind of diet, that is what is optimal. Agriculture is only something like 10-12,000 years old? </p>
<p>And anyway, I believe that traditional societies did then and do now know how to treat some agricultural foods (dairy, grains) in ways that make them more digestible. Again, great info on traditional foods is found on the westonaprice website (I am in no way affiliated with them, I just found their info fascinating). </p>
<p>Perhaps it is true that we will have to depend on factory meat and fish and dairy, and newfangled ways of eating grains (highly processed carbs, tons of added white sugar) to feed the planet. However, lets remember that these new ways of eating are only a hundred years old at best! For example, Asian cultures ate fermented foods and brown rice for centuries and seaweed and miso products; that is very different from processed soy fake meat products. European cultures ate butter and cheese made from the milk of free roaming dairy animals. These items are not strictly paleo - but more healthful</p>
<p>I think if we keep these things in mind our own diets/health will be improved. Will it work to feed billions now? I don’t know. I can at best encourage my family and others to explore eating healthier, and what that means in terms of human nutrition, to the best of my knowledge. I am not advocating we all return to roaming the savannah armed with a spear and only eating wild game and berries!</p>
<p>oh - a thought that I find helpful when thinking about food choices - “if your grandmother wouldn’t recognize it as food, don’t it eat” I don’t remember who said it (Michael Pollan?) but I find it very helpful. Also great is the book “Real Food” by Nina Planck.</p>
<p>One thought I had about the paleo diet is the issue of frequency of meat consumption. In the primitive world, people could and would go weeks without eating meat. Hunting was not a guaranteed source of food. When meat was caught, it would be eaten all at once (I imagine) due to lack of methods of storage. Then it would be back to the vegetarian diet for a while. This may have been nature’s way of controlling fat consumption and a reason why our bodies burn sugar before fat. Fat, in a primitive world would equal survival.</p>
<p>Translating that lifestyle t modern day is more difficult because meat is so available to us.</p>
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<p>No, but it sounds like a successful reality show to me :)</p>
<p>This afternoon’s smoothie:
Almond milk
1/2 frozen banana
Nectarine
1/4 c. plain yogurt
Dash of vanilla
Ice</p>
<p>It IS delicious! The frozen banana - it IS crucial!</p>
<p>caloriecount.about.com</p>
<p>It simultaneously lets you keep a record of your calories, weight, and nutrients which is pretty cool. I’ve lost 5 pounds using it so far.</p>
<p>I also highly recommend Active Lifestyle cereal. It’s only 110 calories per cup (150ish with skim milk), full of vitamins, and it basically tastes like frosted flakes.</p>