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taw comments on Rational Health Optimization - Less Wrong
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Paleo is based on assumption that diets of agricultural era and modern diets are anything alike - they're not!
Agricultural era diets were based on around cereals, potatoes, etc., and we had thousands of years to adapt to them.
Modern diet are based on vegetable oil and sugar, and they're destroying everyone's health. I mean it by vegetable oil and sugar - these two categories account for 35.5% of all calories in an average American's diet, while cereals provided only 21.44%.
There's no good database of high quality data going back to 19th century and earlier (piecemal data exists, but it takes a lot of effort to gather), but FAO data from 1961 is really good. Countries that were poor back in 1961 are especially instructive. Like Japan where in 1961 cereals accounted for 60.34% of all calories, while 10.72% was vegetable oil+sugar. In 2005 this changed to 38.68% and 22.22% - still some way to go before reaching American values.
If anything, I'd recommend more bread, potatoes, cereals, and rice - we're not eating enough of them, and they're far richer in proteins and micronutrient rich than what people really consume these days.
Thousands of years is not much in evolutionary terms.
Though still long enough to adapt to a shift in diet.
Paleo dietary recommendations are in complete alignment with mainstream dietary advice on the value of reducing sugar intake and caloric intake from (most) vegetable oils. Where they differ is in what the better choice is to replace them as calorie sources. They are also in agreement about eating lots of fresh vegetables and fruit so really the major difference is whether to substitute grains or animal fats for the calories lost by cutting out sugar and vegetable oils.
All paleo I've seen bundled together post-agricultural food like sugar and vegetable oil with agricultural food like potatoes and cereals as if there was no difference.
It's difficult to be more wrong than that. Oh, and I've seen paleo advocating "healthy" vegetable oils, as if we didn't had too much of them already.
A more pragmatic reason is that it's nearly impossible to go paleo these days, while it's entirely straightforward to shift back to agricultural era eating patterns (replace sugary drinks with milk, beer, and water; replace margarine and vegetable oil with butter; stop avoiding bread, rice, and potatoes; check pre-made food you purchase for excess vegetable oil and sugar added).
Not that paleo diets as recommended have really much factual basis.
You must have been looking at some very abbreviated summaries or second hand information then.
Not all vegetable based oils are created equal. Lumping them all together ignores a lot of relevant nutritional information and research findings on health effects.
I assure you it is not.
I'd definitely lump them together, ignore any distinctions, and strongly recommend avoiding all of them.
People eat such ridiculous amounts of vegetable oil now compared with any time in the past, that until it gets reduced to reasonable level such fine distinctions are only distracting.
Effects of unrefined sugar differ somewhat from effects of refined sugar too - still, the only sensible thing is to cut both.
I mostly do but I'll sometimes use olive oil for salad dressings or low temperature sauteing and coconut oil for higher temperature frying. I prefer butter or lard for low / high temperature frying respectively though.
Yeah, sugar's pretty bad in most of its forms. I don't worry too much about sugar intake in the form of raw fruits and berries (which I eat a lot of) though.
I took time to calculate how much Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Industrial is eaten in every country, and how it is changing, enjoy.
I doubt these sane uses would account for even 20% of amount of vegetable oil people consume these days. And there's nothing terribly wrong with using small amounts of sugar of any kind - it's the ridiculous amounts of it that are the main issue.