I’m sure you know someone who is on the Paleo Diet. Maybe you even tried it for yourself (Uma Thurman and Megan Fox have). The idea behind it—an attempt to get back to the diet of the Paleolithic Age—seems pretty silly. I mean, what was their life expectancy? Additionally, the Paleo Diet is based on misconceptions about what Paleolithic people were actually like. For example, they most likely ate grains, which is a big no-no on the Paleo Diet.
I am not bashing the diet itself. I’m sure it can help people lose weight or be healthier, just like any diet in which you are conscious of what you are eating. Cutting out junk food the way Paleo does is a great thing.
The appeal of this particular diet, however, seems to be its “natural” origins—this is the way our ancestors ate so we should eat that way too. Words like “natural” denote good and valuable things while “artificial” means bad and unhealthy. “Natural” sounds good, right?
But it’s not – at least not always. For example, sugar is natural, and yet diabetes—caused in part by over-consumption of sugar—is a leading cause of death in the U.S. Contrast this with supposedly dastardly artificial sweeteners—substances for which there is virtually no evidence of health implications.
The effect of this “natural” way of thinking manifests itself in two ways. First, let’s talk about food. Two restaurant chains, Panera and Chipotle, have embraced an “all-natural” approach to their food. Chipotle is doing away with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and Panera is getting rid of certain chemicals in its food (water is a chemical, by the way). The problem is that this marketing ploy tricks people into thinking they are being healthy.
Sure, maybe those beans aren’t genetically modified, but don’t delude yourself into thinking that your thousand-calorie meal (with E. coli, no less) is healthy. As a side note, there is no evidence that GMOs pose a health risk, but that’s another issue. Panera says, “If the ingredients in your food are unpronounceable, we believe they shouldn’t be in your food.” Well, I can pronounce the words “sugar” and “fat” pretty easily. And overconsumption of those chemicals leads to heart disease and diabetes, the number 1 and 7 causes of death, respectively. The other things might sound scary, but they are not the things actually making your meal unhealthy.
The second way this focus on the “natural” affects our health is through the growing use of “natural” supplements, a multi-billion dollar industry in the U.S. Since supplements are not medication, the FDA does not regulate them. Back in February, the New York State attorney general’s office found that 80 percent of the supplements they tested from major stores like GNC and Walgreens did not contain the ingredients listed on the bottle.
Besides just wasting your money, however, supplements can cause serious health problems. A recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that 23,005 emergency room visits every year are the result of dietary supplements. The most affected age group? People ages 20-34. The most common supplements precipitating these emergencies were those for energy and weight-loss. As the authors point out, cardiac symptoms (palpitations, chest pain, etc.) were almost twice as common in emergency room visits due to these supplements compared to pharmaceutical stimulants (23 percent for pharmaceuticals vs. 43 and 46 percent for weight loss and energy supplements, respectively).
In this case, the “all-natural alternative” is much more likely to hurt you than artificial drugs. If you insist on using supplements, make sure that they are either USP certified or from Europe or Australia. These regions have regulations to make sure that the bottle actually contains what is advertised on the label. It is also prudent to talk to your doctor about any supplements you use. It doesn’t matter if it is “natural;” any supplement can have serious side effects or create harmful interactions with other medications you may be taking.
Natural things can be poisonous. Artificial foods and additives can be harmless. It is time to stop using these misleading terms and start basing our decisions on nutritional content for food and evidence of efficacy for supplements. So go ahead and embrace that Paleo lifestyle, but remember, if you want “clean” food, wash it. If you think everything “natural” is automatically healthy, think again.
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