The Paleo Diet - Loren Cordain [29]
To calculate the glycemic load, multiply the glycemic index by the carbohydrate content
High-Fructose Corn Syrup: A Really Bad Idea
The steady increase in table sugar use was an unfortunate development in the carbohydrate content of our diet. But in the 1970s, the food-processing industry made a discovery: high-fructose corn syrup could save them a lot of money. Because fructose is so much sweeter than sucrose, less of it is needed to sweeten any processed food. Today corn syrup is the food-processing industry’s sweetener of choice. Imagine the financial incentive here: with fructose, millions of tons of sugar are saved each year.
What does this mean to average Americans? It means we are getting grossly disproportionate amounts of sweetener in our diets. There are about 10 teaspoons of high-fructose corn syrup in a single 12-ounce can of soda. The average American now eats 66 pounds of corn syrup a year, plus 64 pounds of sucrose, and an appalling total of 131 pounds of refined sugars. When you begin the Paleo Diet and gradually wean yourself off processed foods, your daily sugar intake will drastically shrink—and, better still, the sugar you get will come from healthful fruits and vegetables.
3. Not Enough Fiber
Fiber intake began to go down the day our ancient ancestors started harvesting cereal grains. How can this be? Don’t whole grains equal fiber? When our doctors tell us to add more fiber to our diet, don’t they mean for us to eat more oatmeal? The truth is that calorie for calorie, whole grains can’t hold a candle to fruits and vegetables. Fruits on average contain almost twice as much fiber as whole grains. Compared to whole grains, nonstarchy vegetables have eight times more fiber. Sugars have absolutely no fiber.
And yet we know that dietary fiber is absolutely essential for good health. Not having enough fiber raises our risk of developing scores of diseases and health problems. A comprehensive medical text edited by Drs. Hugh Trowell, Denis Burkitt, and Kenneth Heaton has implicated low dietary fiber in the following diseases and health problems: constipation, diverticulitis, colon cancer, appendicitis, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, duodenal ulcer, hiatal hernia, gastroesophageal reflux, obesity, type 2 diabetes, gallstones, high blood cholesterol, varicose veins, hemorrhoids, deep vein thrombosis, and kidney stones.
4. Too Much Fat and Too Many Bad Fats
Cut the fat! If the nutritional experts have had an overriding message over the last decades, this is it.
The thing is, this dictum is flat-out wrong. We now know that it’s not how much fat you eat that raises your blood cholesterol levels and increases your risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes—it’s the kind of fat you eat. We consume too many omega 6 polyunsaturated fats at the expense of the healthful omega 3 kind. And we get plenty of those cholesterol-raising, artery-clogging trans-fatty acids found in margarine, shortening, and many processed foods. Finally, we eat excessive amounts of palmitic acid, a blood cholesterol-raising saturated fat found in cheeses, baked goods, and fatty processed meats, such as hot dogs, bacon, bologna, and salami.
All of those kinds of fat are bad and need to go. But in removing all fats from our diet, we are doing more harm than good. This problem is easy to solve: With the Paleo Diet—which contains healthful fats—you will automatically reestablish the proper balance of fats in your diet. You’ll also lower your blood cholesterol and reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer, and other chronic illnesses.
From our analyses of the fats in wild animals, my research team and I have found that even though ancient humans