Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

Question

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http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/anti-ageing-diet.html

"Therefore, cooking foods at lower temperature (e.g., baking, sauteeing, or boiling), eating meats rare whenever possible (not chicken or pork, of course), eating raw foods whenever possible (e.g., nuts) are all strategies that limit exogenous AGE exposure. And minimize or avoid butter use, if we are to believe the data that suggest that it contains the highest exogenous AGE content of any known food."

Is he right - or off the deep end?

flag	asked Oct 22 2010 at 15:48 Dave S. 21k●1●11●65

He has dared to question the sanctity of the holy paleo butter and must now be branded as a heretic. – Matt Oct 22 2010 at 16:08

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except that butter isn't actually paleo ;) – patrick3000 Oct 22 2010 at 16:28

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Okay, that's just funny. – Dave S. Oct 22 2010 at 17:05

Heh, good call Patrick. – kilton Oct 22 2010 at 17:38

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You know what's great? Raw beef tartare topped with raw butter. MMmm. – Bread-Eating Beelzebub Oct 22 2010 at 18:31

David Moss · Accepted Answer · 2010-10-29 16:53:34Z UTC

I commented on Davis' original post, so I'm going to allow myself the indulgence of quoting myself:

First, that very paper says that only about 10% of exogenous AGEs actually make it into circulation, so that automatically takes butter down to 26.5KU/g. Of course if a patient has advanced kidney failure then worry about exogenous AGEs should be a concern, but so should protein, potassium etc etc.

Secondly, the focus on exogenous AGEs in this table is obviously one-sided. Saying that butter contains more AGEs than a bowl of fructose, ignores the fact that once inside the body, the carbohydrate will cause immeasurably more glycation than the fat. These researchers are quite obviously pushing an lipophobic agenda here and I wouldn't fall for it.

Third, it's not just butter, apparently, but olive oil is also 120KU/ml or about 900 times more than an apple. But it would surely be absurb to think that apples will glycate less then olive oil?

Fourtly, there something extremely suspect about the fact that whole milk contains 5300 times less AGE than butter. This should make us think twice before thinking that there's something uniquely bad about dairy fat that this study has discovered.

So the findings about butter (and olive oil) are highly dubious.

On the exogenous AGE controversy, it is certainly plausible that exogenous AGE intake is biologically significant, even though it's a small portion of overall AGEs for people on a normal diet. Fwiw, I do treat high-temperature cooked meats as probably less healthy than gently cooked equivalents and do prefer offal to muscle meat (which also produces fewer AGEs) and like to throw as many herbs and spices onto my meat as possible (although technically this might only refers to HCAs not AGEs) for the same reason, but it certainly doesn't seem that this is a major factor in overall health. A high AGE diet might well fall into category of paleo but non-optimal.

grace · Answer 2 · 2010-10-29 14:47:46Z UTC

http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2010/10/is-butter-high-in-ages.html

I have to give some credit to Davis as being otherwise visionary in helping folks get off their addiction from wheat and get some sun/vit D. RE: ANY nutritional studies -- as the Jersey folks say FUHHHGEDABOUTIT.

grace · Answer 3 · 2010-10-29 14:43:20Z UTC

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Consider reading: http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2010/10/melissa-mcewen-says-women-need-manly.html

Davis is not paleo FYI (the paleo links were all advised by me)

answered Oct 29 2010 at 14:43

grace
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Cave Man Mind · Answer 4 · 2010-10-23 07:02:54Z UTC

I do believe there is something to it and I think it all stems from this grey area we have regarding Paleo being our guide to optimal health, and then the domain of extreme longevity (100+ years old) where Paleo or Evolutionary history & selection has almost no effect. I think AGEs is one of these.

Eat all the char-grilled and high AGE food you want and it will probably have a negligible effect on your health up until the upper-bound of Paleolithic human life span of ~80 years old. But set your sights on 100+ (which I am genuinely starting to believe is feasible for almost everyone if every aspect of aging is addressed) and the lifelong AGE consumption could negatively effect your goals. As Dr Davis outlined it is just basic biology when you get down to the nitty gritty.

I think as we all explore what it means to be healthy, and as such continue to be on the frontline of this investigation, we will continue to come up against issue such as these. Paleo doesn't stop aging, it just greatly slows it down. So there is nothing incompatible with Paleo in the idea that certain things minimising AGEs could also potentially further slow down this aging process. We have really good Paleo reasoning for why we love AGEs and burnt food; for our ancestors the risk from AGEs was FAR outweighed by the need to thoroughly cook food and ensure it was edible and free of parasites. This is why we all love crispy chicken skin, pork crackling, BBQ, a char-grilled steal, etc. However in the modern world we no longer have this constraint; so we can consider that this perhaps is no longer an optimal practice to eat burnt food.

Personally I am keeping this issue in mind as I explore new recipes and foods keeping a consideration to lower AGE containing foods like soups and sushi... but I write this after having just gnawed on a dripping char-grilled piece of meat ;)

xjhues · Answer 5 · 2010-10-22 18:39:58Z UTC

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right or deep end is irrelevant imo, since i'm not giving up butter. :)

answered Oct 22 2010 at 18:39

xjhues
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Hard now to conceive of life without Kerrygold!! – familygrokumentarian Oct 22 2010 at 18:51

Kamal · Answer 6 · 2010-10-22 18:05:41Z UTC

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AGEs don't matter because we'll die at a young age due to hunting accidents and whatnot.

HOLD ON...that's ancient paleos. This is a potentially important issue for us modern paleos, and slightly nudges me to slow cook things more to avoid the extreme AGEs caused by medium-high temperature cooking.

answered Oct 22 2010 at 18:05

Kamal♦
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They didn't all die young. Modern tribes have elders and likely so did paleo tribes. Elders seem to be very important for stability and guidance of the tribe. In most tribal societies (all I've seen), elders are respected if not revered and make the rules for the tribe. The older ones also have knowledge of events that only happen occasionally, like maybe only once every 30 or 40 years and so are better able to deal with unusual problems. – Eva Oct 22 2010 at 18:23

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I'm going to force an oatmeal cookie down the throat of the next person who parrots the outdated/discredited "cavemen died young." – Bread-Eating Beelzebub Oct 22 2010 at 18:30

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Violence solves nothing. I'm going to accept an oatmeal cookie from the next person who realizes that the average upper paleolithic lifespan of ~34 years is less than half of the current US lifespan of ~78 years, and AGEs would be WAY more important for us. Are my facts off? Are you going off life expectancy at 15 instead of at birth? Will I be attacked any time I don't view paleo life in a glittering light? – Kamal♦ Oct 22 2010 at 18:41

Eva- this isn't an issue of paleo tribes having elder members. As an analogy, Parkinsons is probably a bigger issue for modern people than paleo people, because the disease spikes with old age. AGEs aren't so important in your twenties or thirties, but could be an important factor for diseases of old age (which is one reason why some people eat paleo, coincidentally--that chronic effects of nutrition should be considered in addition to acute effects). – Kamal♦ Oct 22 2010 at 18:47

I think the point is that it can be a survival win to have older people around. Anyone with children must be acutely aware of this. If you die early, even if you have successfully reproduced, it can still affect the viability of your offspring. – Ambimorph Oct 22 2010 at 19:11

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Stephen-Aegis · Answer 7 · 2010-10-22 16:27:54Z UTC

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It's not just butter it's virtually ALL cooked food, which is why my gut(stomach and brain) both tell me somethings wrong.

I believe I was reading Eades talking about ingested AGEs not being the concern, but rather internally created ones.

He cited studies showing fructose consuming veg*ns had more AGEs than omnivores.

answered Oct 22 2010 at 16:27

Stephen-Aegis
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	Correlation =\= Causation. – Stephen-Aegis Oct 22 2010 at 20:28
	Eades did not critically review the AGE paper he mentioned. The vegetarian group was significantly older, ate a ton more fructose, etc. Glycation and aging is not about correlation, there is an interesting and specific biological plausability there. – Kamal♦ Oct 22 2010 at 20:57
	Eades post here...proteinpower.com/drmike/sugar-and-sweeteners/… – Kamal♦ Oct 22 2010 at 20:58

Ambimorph · Answer 8 · 2010-10-22 16:10:40Z UTC

What evidence is there that dietary AGEs result in AGEs in our tissue? Is this another case like dietary fat and dietary cholesterol?

We did grow up on a campfire, though I don't know to what extent exposure to AGEs would effect our evolution, since ageing is not always a reproductive problem.

Dr. Davis and butter yet again - exogenous AGEs - is it a problem?

8 Answers