I have gotten this question posed to me from nearly every single person I have introduced the Paleo diet to; "But aren't whole grains and legumes good for you? They are full of fiber, vitamins and minerals!" I have tried to answer this question but I thought I would take an abbreviated explanation straight from "The Paleo Diet" by Dr. Loren Cordain for those who haven't read the book. Now remember, this is only an abbreviated explanation. He goes into more detail throughout the book, and he shares studies that have been done, as well as explains what blood sugar spikes, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, loss of muscle mass and bone demineralization, acid imbalance, etc. are and how they effect you.
Too Much of the Wrong Carbohydrates
The U.S. Food Pyramid is based on carbohydrates; we're a nation of starch and sugar eaters. Carbohydrates make u about half of the typical Western diet - a considerable difference from the Paleo Diet. For our ancient ancestors, carbohydrates accounted for 22 to 40 percent of the daily calories - but these were good carbohydrates, from wild fruits and vegetables. These low-glycemic foods- which don't cause blood sugar to spike- are digested and absorbed slowly.
With nonstarchy fruits and vegetables, it's very hard to get more thatn about 35 percent of your calories as carbohydrate. For example: There are 26 calories in the average tomato. To get 35 percent of your daily calories as carbohydrate from tomatoes only, you'd have to eat thirty tomatoes. And this is why, with the Paleo Diet, you can indulge yourself by eating all the nonstarchy fruits and vegetables you want. When you eat the right foods, getting too many carbohydrates- or eating too many high-glycemic carbohydrates, which can cause a dangerous rise in your blood sugar and insulin levels- is simply not something you have to worry about. The average carbohydrate content of fruits in only about 13 percent per 100 grams, about 4 percent for nonstarchy vegetables- and zero for lean meats, fish and seafood. In stark contrast, the average carbohydrate content of cereal grains is 72 percent per 100 grams.
Why are many carbohydrates bad? Many whole grains and legumes don't have a lot of vitamins and minerals. They're poor dietary sources of these important nutrients. So a diet that's tilted too heavily toward grains and legumes - at the expense of lean meats, fruits and vegetables - can lead to vitamin and mineral deficiencies. This is why so many of your breads and cereals are fortified with extra nutrients. Food shouldn't need to be supplemented with vitamins, and if you're getting the right balance of lean meats, fruits, and vegetables, neither should you.
Worse, cereal grains and legumes even contain "antinutrients" - chemicals that actually
prevent you body from absorbing the proper nutrients and can damage the gastrointestinal and immune systems. Too many grains and legumes can disrupt the acid balance in the kidney as well, and can contribute to the loss of muscle mass and bone mineral content with aging.
Finally, if you eat more carbohydrates, you're eating less protein. Protein is the dieter's friend: It reduces your appetite and increases your metabolism- and this translates rapidly into weight loss.
One of the great dietary myths in the Western world is that whole grains and legumes are healthful. The truth is that these foods are marginal at best. But what about the "health-food" breads? At best, they are
less bad than the overprocessed, super-refined white breads you could be buying. But they're still not part of the Paleo Diet. Formerly (before "progress" brought refined milling technology to bread making), almost all cereal grains either were eaten whole or were so crudely milled that nearly the entire grain -bran, germ, and fiber- remained intact, and flour was much less refined than the kind we buy today. Our great-great-grandparents ate cracked wheat breads and baked goods with a moderate glycemic index - which meant a more moderate rise in blood sugar level.
Does this mean that whole grains are good for you? Not necessarily. It just means that an extra bad characteristic-a high glycemic index- wasn't incorporated in them yet. That unfortunate addition happened about 120 years ago, when steel roller mills came on the flour-making scene. They smashed all the fiber out of grains and left the wimpy white, high-glycemic powder most of us think of as flour. Today, almost all baked goods made with this stuff frequently cause the blood sugar level to rise excessively.
Even "whole wheat" bread made from flour ground by these steel roller mills does the same thing to your blood sugar, because the flour particle size is uniformly small - so it's virtually do different from white flour. About 80 percent of all the cereal products Americans eat- as they follow the directions of the U.S. Food Pyramid- come from refined white flour with a high glycemic index.
