Does the paleo diet hold the secret to health? | ZOE Dailies with Christopher Gardner

Suggesting cholesterol and saturated fat as being negative is not only the stuff of myth conjured up by big Ag/big pharma and the product of 1970/1980’s propaganda but scientifically unsupported.. Keep up!

I feel like this series on diets could be stronger if instead of effectively saying "here's a hurdle, and that hurdle means it won't work, don't bother trying," instead they said "here's a hurdle, here's how the general principles of the diet can be maintained in the modern food environment." And then "here's what the benefits and drawbacks would be if this was actually followed." 

With paleo, I imagine that a modern interpretation would involve a lot of fruits, nuts, seeds, green vegetables, root vegetables, fish, probably some poultry, and even a bit of honey. For those inclined to hunt (or who know hunters), there's game meats and wildfowl. For those willing to step outside conventional western tastes, insects would probably also be on the menu. I'm fairly confident that you could build a healthy diet out of eating like that. Would it be sustainable? That's entirely on the individual.

I am new to Zoe and was excited to learn from the information they talk about in regards to the microbiome. But this video makes me question how unbiased they really are. I am not and have never been Paleo but i have known people who followed it for periods of time, and it encourages grass fed and unprocessed foods. This guy sounds like he has no real knowledge and was just hired to make an argument for why it's bad without knowing/researching the health of people who follownit is actually affected. I hope this video is the exception, and not the norm. I was really hoping to l3arn valuable information.

I've unknowingly been doing the paleo diet for the last couple months and I've noticed significant improvements with my bowel movements. Been eating a lot of spinach and kale along with high quality cuts of beef.. it's the processed foods that wreck your body so regardless of whatever diet you're on, the key is to eliminate the artificial ingredients and heavily processed foods

I knew nothing of a paleo diet concept before watching this podcast. I'm not impressed by the speaker's description of a paleo diet, our ancestors did not have access to junk food. They would have eaten loads of high fibre vegetables, nuts, seeds and fruits plus occasional meat or fish when they could get it. No dairy. Their microbiomes would have very well adapted to this diet. In theory at least this could be a very healthy diey in modern times. Lamb and venison are available in my local butchers and are not factory farmed.

So Paleo man was too stupid to keep live stock 🤦‍♀️

You can get "paleo" meat, which isn't a term I think is really great. You're talking about game. Deer, Venison, Boar, Rabbit, etc. You can get game meat from local butchers and specialty stores. I live on a farm, so I can go out and harvest a chicken or rabbit. And I'd like to put a little light to the meat you're referencing, processed meat like deli cuts and things are processed. But beef, chicken, pork, foul, or anything that from an actual animal is not "processed" and thus should not be categorized in that same statement. What we eat is a personal choice, the conversation around our beliefs in food can be as dicey as religion or politics. Let's not subtly demonize the choice to eat meat, or omit certain food groups like grains or dairy. There is no one right way to eat.

So to make meat marbled with give cows corn and soy but they are good for humans?

This just in (Jan. 24) from the Guardian: “Conventional wisdom holds that early human economies focused on hunting – an idea that has led to a number of high-protein dietary fads such as the paleo diet,” said Dr Randy Haas, an archeologist at the University of Wyoming and senior author of the paper. “Our analysis shows that the diets were composed of 80% plant matter and 20% meat.”

Not the level of scientific advice I am accustomed to from Zoe. Very superficial story and probably biased. Not a Paleo-adherer myself, but you can’t expect Zoe-listeners who want scientific advice to listen to arguments like ‘you can’t follow this diet, except for taking your buns of your hamburger’. Or this one: ‘cows get fed corn and soy and get fat and unhealthy as a result, given that they did not evolve on that diet’, and not seeing the irony that that he points to the very reason that the current western diet is leading to an epidemic of obesitas, as we humans did not evolve on the stuff we buy in supermarkets. By which he unintentionally makes the perfect pitch for the paleo diet. Without realising it. Next time, invite smart and informed people again. I love listening to them on your shows!

I am sorry, but I don't understand why Christopher Gardner is so sarcastic about Paleo and Carnivore. He is a 'vegan-diet pusher', and doesn't look over the wall. I am 58, diagnosed with Primarely Progressive Multiple Sclerose and the prediction was that I would end up in a wheelchair. I started for my health a carnivore diet. Have been on this since may 2023. And it is remarkable how incredible good I am feeling!!! I am never going back to my prior (vegan!) diet. My walking improved, my energy went up, my spirit lifted, no more tummy-pain, my inflammation in joints disappeared, migraine dissapeared, my gums are healthy and so on... It is almost to good to be true...but it is the full truth!!! So, don't be so narrow minded. And try to help people. You'r not helping them by being sarcastic and make people scared of other diets. These interviews with this professor are not the quality I am used from ZOE.

Do we not have generalist guts? Our stomachs can break down proteins but not bones etc eaten by carnivores, our intestines can adsorb sugars and complex carbohydrates from tubers etc but not regurgitate and ferment cellulose as a specialist vegetarian does. Different populations have different enzymes to utilise different foods eg for digesting seaweed or milk. Our guts are generalist monkey, ie mainly vegetarian with occasional meat (insects, larvae, amphibians and small mammals). The grinding of corn, (ie grass seeds) in querns is pretty stone age. Mixing it with water and cooking it is fairly universal. We are generalists and can find something to eat in most environments, ice to desert.

CORRECTION. Most beef/meat isn't grown on factory farms. In the UK & Ireland the vast majority of beef (and lamb) eat forage. In the summer they graze grasses, clovers etc at pasture. In the winter they are in-housed to escape bad weather when grass isnt growing and fed hay or silage - (pickled grass or maize both of which are cut green and stored anaerobically to preserve them). Some cereal/soya based nutrition known as concentrate is fed to top up the energy, mineral levels of the forage but because it is expensive most farmers use it in moderation & it forms only a small part of the diet. In Britain the pastoral scene of livestock grazing pastures all over the country is much the same as it has been for centuries, something which humans have evolved with in this area of the world

I enjoyed this video but would like to offer some debate. First of all, anyone who is health-conscious would not eat in fast food restaurants so the analogy of taking the bun off of fast food burger and calling it paleo is not realistic. I have not eaten in a fast food restaurant for over 20 years and if I had to would opt for a salad with grilled chicken and no dressing.
Secondly, true paleo steers away from any type of processed foods which includes deli meats. I didn't hear mention of avoiding sugars which is the leading cause of most health issues, gut problems, obesity and inflammation and a big no no on a strict paleo diet.
Also I think it's important to ask the reason why someone would want to follow a paleo (or any other) diet?

15 years ago I had severe IBS, lactose intolerance and leaky gut, I was overweight, had chronic gut pain and diarrhea, there was no magic pill other than to learn and understand I had gut damage and what steps I could take to help heal it. I started with an SCD lifestyle diet to heal my acute pain and gut inflammation and later transitioned to a paleo diet as a long term lifestyle and realistic maintenance plan (based on lots of personal research and what worked for MY body and food sensitivities). I lost 45 lbs and significantly improved my gut pain and symptoms. To this day I still can't eat dairy or grains or legumes and most beans without severe side effects (pain, gut inflammation and diarrhea). I primarily eat nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruit, oily fish and meat, kombucha and a few supplements and probiotics and most of the time my gut remains stable and pain free. I am not perfect and I have occasionally given into a temptation and had a piece of birthday cake...but I always pay for it the next day and ask myself was it really worth it?
My opinion is that diets are not one size fits all - what works for one person doesn't necessarily work the same for everyone. We all have our own unique issues and we need to take responsibility for our own health. We need to seek guidance, self educate, and experiment until we find what works with our own unique body and find what is feasible to maintain.

Garner says modern cows are fat because we fed them corn husks and soy husks, which is bad, but encourages us to eat corn and soy which somehow doesn’t make us fat? 😂

These are supposedly scientists making these straw men arguments and apparently not even recognising the flaws in the logic. Please try to be rigorous!

This doesn't surprise me...education is not fit for purpose...science has been thrown out of the window and replaced by an agenda that supports the NWO

Christopher and Tim seem to disagree on Diary.

Tim keeps mentioning he likes his full fat kefir yoghurt.

Christopher seems to be more against diary.

Obviously not all scientists will agree on everything. Just curious to see people thoughts on this

There is a lot of grass fed and free range options nowadays, or the so called heirloom meats, to crush all the arguments against the Paleo. I'm not doing Paleo nor do I plan to do it. But I would have loved to hear more about what my body is doing with it. Are there any benefits, what benefits, what are the down sides of doing it, aso... Just talking about what people could do wrong, like buying conventional raised meats or buying processed is not cutting the cheese. What nutrients are missing in Paleo? How can they be substituted? C'mon...

This is disappointing. While I consider myself predominantly plant-based, I am better informed about the paleo diet than this nutritionist. All of the paleo people I know intentionally & consciously seek out grass-fed meats, wild caught seafoods, and completely avoid processed meats like cold cuts. The doctor does not seem to be informed about what the paleo diet actually is. His lack of research makes me question his credentials as a so-called expert.

Wasn't the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago??

Why hark back to the Stone age times? while European was in stone age, there was a sophisticated ancient civilization with sophisticated foods that were grains, meat, legumes - Mediterranean foods now. I don't do UPF but we don't want to go back to Stone age foods

NOT A FAIR ANALYSIS
I believe and follow the WFPB lifestyle - it's kept me very healthy - but, here I go, the discussion was a little biased. The vegan community continuously talks about us not being able to hunt down saber tooth tigers and Mastodons... but what about the prehistoric mice, turtles, sloths, fish, 5 lb mosquitos, etc. I don't think that we are meant to eat meat if we want to be at our healthiest, but eating meat was probably not that difficult and at some times, necessary.
Also, we can't solely pick on the added fat in modern meat. As was pointed out, most of the vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds have all undergone major changes, and as such, takes us further from our ancient foods.
I believe that it is much healthier to eat WFPB foods, but lets not totally fool ourselves into thinking that by doing so leads us to 100 percent health - we do the best we can with what we have.
I think that the video's intent was sincere but a little unfairly skewed away from the Paleo diet. That being said, again I say that I am WFPB'd and believe that this is the healthiest way to eat.
Peace and love always...

So why can't paleo include wild peas? They are perfectly edible.
And if paleo tribes had fire why didn't they boil water to cook them after drying them?

Much as I like Christopher Gardner I feel these short videos do a disservice to the topics and to him as they appear superficial and lacking in scientific detail. Give him more time to talk about the science!

People with “gut issues” often do better without grains. Other things eg legumes more individual. Take “plant based” diet, remove grains, increase eg avocados, nuts.

Can't wait for the vegan diet and all the healthy plant foods containing lots of sugars (if they rot the teeth what do they do to the rest of you?) and forget about all the crops sprayed with glyphosate poison and the lack of nutritious vitamins and minerals from overfarming. Don't mention the harm done to the digestive systems of so many people through eating plants such as whole grains (because they are better than refined ones - just as smoking filter tipped cigarettes are better than non-filtered).

Some remarks from my end:
1. For the first time, dr Christopher kind of admits that meat is not useless if it s raised in paleo type conditions.
His only argument against meat, is essentially the fact that 99% of the meat out there is bread and raised in terrible conditions to contain saturated fat etc.
Well, there are some countries like my home country that you can get 100% free range wild goat, beef, sheep etc, captured in places with NO human pollution and on top of that you can get it in affordable prices.
So instead of trying to cancel out meat for your vegan agenda, it would be much more scientifically honest to explain that realistically mass meat production harms us, and if we wanted to have paleo simulated meat in our diet it would be a super luxury non affordable product, that only 1%-5% of the population would afford.
2. Moving on to the tribe example, it means nothing. The fact that this tribe cannot efficiently catch meat often, might be the main reason it s still an uncivilised tried, as their brain might have been left behind due to lack of sufficient protein, comparing to other tribes around that evolutionary had a mutation to become more efficient meat hunter and hence meat eaters.

It is really sad to see such bad scientific rhetoric from such reputable professors.

Paleo people lived only to 40 years old

Does the paleo diet we can eat help. He doesn’t even try to answer.

Why do some people with major health issues get well and off their meds following a keto/paleo diet? Low Carb down under is an excellent look into the other side of diets. Zoe and Will have said many times we are all different microbiome speaking, then why does Zoe do gut analysis to try and make us all the same?

Sadly this talk was just bias and misinformation. Science should be presented in a more neutral way. The research taking place on fat and cholesterol right now is begining to prove the myths of the past.

Aside from the physical danger of chasing your own meat, I suspect the life span of paleo were short -would it be reasonable to assume the short life span relates to limited all round foods that we have today? True we are back to shortening our lifespans with garbage diet but in general intelligent understanding of nutrition is having us increase our lifespans

Good that this is being aired. It needs to be said so people can make informed choices.

I’ve been between 7 and 9 stone all my adult life, my diet, I thought, was always pretty healthy but we had no idea what the food industry was doing to us.. At 80, I found and followed a lot of the nutritional advice from the Zoe podcasts and have never felt healthier. I eat breakfast, lunch and evening meal around 6 - 7 pm. I am fasting between 8pm and 8 am. I normally don’t feel hungry between meals but eat nuts if necessary. I am still 9 stone but my shape has got better. My ‘bloating’ has gone, and my last Annual Doctors review showed my kidneys working amazingly for my age. Thank you Zoe.

Just getting sick of ever researcher/doctor contradicticting each other now. Mostly for financial gains.

Please don’t have this guy back again

There are so many others out there who are learning and applying truth about diet and health. Not this one.
I lost 36 pounds taking the best of those others and after finding what worked for me.

Peace for all of humanity begins on our plate!

Our cellular metabolism and microbiome have taken millions of years of evolution to get us where we are today. It's ridiculous to assume that any particular period during those years had a bigger effect on our development than other particular periods. Paleo, keto, carnivore, vegan are all OK temporarily because our ancestors also changed diets with the prevailing conditions. But none are as good as having a wide variety of foods to support the wide variety of microbes in our microbiome, where 70% of our immunity resides.

it's not for me, fruit is the way !

We know, Professor, that you are not a fan of any diet that is not loaded with beans? A modern paleo diet includes fruits, vegetables, lean meats, fish, eggs, nuts and seeds. (Mayo clinic). None of those things are bad for you. no one tells asians they HAVE to consume milk or diary. No one tells people with celiac they HAVE to eat grains. Beans are very binding and can worsen constipation, no one tells people they HAVE to eat beans if they neurological constipation. You can live very happily and healthily on meat fish eggs nuts and seeds, veggies and fruit. Indigenous Australians evolved and lived for 65,000 years or more we know of without dairy and wheat or beans! Indigenous Australians were in good health, and ate penguins, snakes, ostrich, lizards, kagaroos, bone marrow, tubers, nuts and seeds and fruit (not like today's fruit granted). They are the perfect example of a paleo diet and thriving. The macadamia nut is indigenous to Australia. And who is eating 'lots' of processed meat on paleo? You are ignoring healthy paleo diets and focusing on 'junk food paleo'. This is a ridiculous argument against paleo you are being silly and I'm done with Zoe. Steak and green salad with sweet potato is healthy. Fish and greens and nuts is healthy. These are dishes found in any healthy eating guide. Sure the 'paleo dessert' is ridiculous, but the paleo diet isn't. even on the heart foundation 'healthy eating' recipe guides - chicken and coleslaw (paleo), Thai beef salad with eggs (paleo) etc.

Nice chat, but would prefer something with more data from clinical studies. The science of weight loss is well understood, and has been since the 19th century. YT is full of earnest, well meaning ppl offering opinions. Where you can really add value is insight intonthe science of nutrition

But everyone died at about 35 with this diet. Complete bullshit

Comedy gold from Zoe... Christopher Gardner is beyond meat and beyond parody. I haven't laughed so much in months. Up there with Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year. Cannot wait to read the comments on tomorrow's instalment.

It's hysterical to hear a vegan propagandist talk about all the other diets. So much misinformation in one place!

Paleo is obviously bollocks... Cavemen didn't include tomatoes, avocados and blueberries in winter and we don't run after our lean meat!

Are you guys trying to mis-spell "dailies" a new way every day?

To put a better spin on the BS around the paleolithic diet should have knowledgeable paleontologist on who study what people ate over the last 300,000 and what human ancestors ate for a million years before that. Gardner is certainly correct that farm raised meat is nothing like wild meat being high in saturated fat and low in omega3.

Like this channel. But those who can't see the bias and the desire to discourage the low carb high fat meat diets isn't paying attention. New research in the LDL debate is coming out. Excited to see what happens and whether the scientific community is prepared for a change of opinion. Zoe would double in subscribers if they interviewed the likes of Dr Anthony Chaffee, Dr Shawn Baker or Dr Ken Berry. They are heavyweights in the carnivore keto space.