Go Paleo? by Eve Gilmore

Author:Eve Gilmore [Eve Gilmore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781610480
Publisher: Hammersmith Books Limited
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Pseud’s corner

In their search for a grain substitute, many turn to alternatives like amarynth and quinoa as they are not technically classified as grains. However, the distinction is more linguistic than scientific. Grains are defined as the seeds of grasses belonging to the Poaceae family.1 ‘A rose by any other name is still a rose,’ as Juliet said to Romeo, and this is why seeds such as chia, buckwheat, quinoa and amarynth are almost identical to cereals both in what they contain and how they behave in the body.

Dr Cordain talks of the ‘food foraging theory’, which has been used by anthropologists to evaluate energy expenditure versus calorific return when studying hunter-gatherer diets.2 In other words, how much ‘bang for your buck’ do you get from different foods? Large animals come top of the list, followed by small animals, birds and fish, with cereals coming in last, immediately below nuts and seeds. This means that a nut-, seed- and grain-based diet requires the most preparation and is therefore high in energy and time expenditure but delivers the lowest nutritional return. There is evidence that some hunter-gatherers ate nuts and seeds, but only if their preferred food (meat) was not available, a fact that was confirmed by a study in 2000 of 229 hunter-gatherer diets.3 Furthermore, since seeds are only available for a few months or weeks per year, their contribution to Paleo nutrition would have been minimal. Compare this to the modern diet in which grass seeds have graduated to prime position, making grains our most commonly eaten food.

Plants don’t produce seeds as some sort of philanthropic sacrifice to feed other species. As Dr Cordain points out,4 were they to do so they would rapidly become extinct. Plants produce seeds as a means of procreation and have therefore evolved a number of strategies to ensure their survival if eaten by predators. Anti-nutrients are a popular method of protection, as we have already seen. They may alternatively house the seed in a hard shell – otherwise known as a nut, or surround it by a soft fruit such as a peach or plum, or they may grow thorns. Fruits that contain stones tend to be high in polysaccharides, a type of sugar that people with irritable bowel syndrome often find difficult to digest and absorb.

Amarynth, quinoa, buckwheat and some other seeds are known as ‘pseudo grains’, getting off on a technicality since the only difference between them and a cereal is the family to which they belong. Like grains, they have a high loading of anti-nutrients and substandard nutritional content. However, occasional consumption would mimic the way they would have been eaten in Stone Age times. The problem today5 is that foods are available all year round. Seasonal availability and changes in location meant that foods would traditionally have been eaten on a rotational basis. Today the same foods may be eaten daily, and in quantities that could expose us to levels of anti-nutrients sufficient to induce low-level, chronic inflammation and increase our susceptibility to allergies and autoimmune disease.

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