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Most paleo converts are white. I'm Indian. Europe is way colder than India, and you guys might be different with respect to nutritional needs. The obvious stuff like lactose tolerance notwithstanding, what else is different? Here's some speculative ideas:

-Paleo Europeans eat more meat, because fruits and veggies didn't grow all year -Paleo Euros eat more berries, Indians eat more (mangos?) -Indians have been eating coconut longer? (depending on region of India) -We darkies need more sunlight to get vitamin D (not really speculative, or food related) -Our tubers are different than yours, but I don't know what they are/were

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Um, what part of India? It's a big place with varied diets! – Bread-Eating Beelzebub Sep 6 2010 at 12:06
@Kamal -- I think this is a great question you are asking and while I do not know the specific answer, I suspect you are asking the right questions. – Patrik Sep 6 2010 at 18:49
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Indians are still Caucasian so I think there would be more similarity than not. Also what about Euros from warm climates such as Southern Italians, and Greeks (and Iranians and Turks)?. I would think that what works for these people would be similar to your needs. Especially is you are Indo-Aryan and not Dravidian. Im a Southern, Eastern and Western European mix and my girlfriend is East Asian. Dang, I hope my future kids can narrow down their Paleo needs, haha – Ryan Sep 7 2010 at 1:39
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Let me put it this way... if you want to OPTIMIZE the diet, maybe you have to take genetic differences into account. (And it seems from the answers below that we're not quite clear on how exactly this plays out.) But the key thing in the beginning is mainly to remove all the crap that is poisonous to everyone: wheat, soy, trans fats, vegetable oils, and so on down the list. – JJ Sep 7 2010 at 16:11
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Kamal, I asked a similar question a while ago. Or, actually, the conversation turned towards that. I def feel better when I eat mangos, coconuts, and veggies, and worse when it's meat meat meat. I'm from Pune. – valkyrie Apr 29 2011 at 20:42
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6 Answers

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Even though there are changes that occurred over the past 60,000 years since we left Africa, the biggest chunk of evolution had happened over 2,5 mln years since we started eat meat and our brains could rapidly develop. The changes, mutations and adaptations that happened since our move out of Africa are only cosmetic compared to it - like skin color, higher tolerance for milk among peoples with early cow and goats domestication. There might be a slightly benefit with eating whatever is local and available, just as everywhere else. I moved around, I don't live where I used to live, and I assuming my ancestors spent at least some dozens of generations in Europe b/c I am very pale. It's also good to know when a particular style of agriculture was introduced in your general area. I don't know exactly where my ancestors came from, but I know that in Easter Europe the grains were introduced very late, so although they might have eaten them on their way from Asia, they probably weren't a staple of their diets as much as in ancient Western Asia, central Asia etc., which might mean even less adaptation. I am actually celiac, but of course that can happen everywhere.

We all have the same biological base. There is no such thing as race from biological perspective, the differences in the ways we look is only as differences in clothing that had to be adapted to a particular climate. So I wouldn't bother much beyond the Vit.D absorption if your skin is of very dark shade. There are some genetic accommodations that had happened over the past few tens of thousands of years which helped people survive particular local challenge, like higher numbers of people with a kind of anemia (which helped survive malaria) or malfunction in iron handling which might have been beneficial in contact with some diseases. I think a lot of it is more of a realm of epigenetics than genetics. Which means that they can still be changed even "against" what your ethnic group has been doing for a while if you move somewhere else and don't need that particular genes expression/switched on.

I think the other principles - eating meat, fish, natural fats and local veggies with some fruits is the same like everywhere else.

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I vehemently disagree and to be clear, I think that the Paleo diet can and should be tuned to people of varying ethnicities. – Patrik Sep 6 2010 at 18:54
Hi Patrik, please expound. – Kamal Sep 6 2010 at 18:55
Well actually I agree TOTALLY with originalthe post above Patrik . How can anyone really argue against such sensible reasoning? Give de tails please.... Unless - like many - you don't agree with the "out of Africa " hypothesis (and I would have a lot of sympathy there) – andrew Sep 6 2010 at 19:40
I'm with Patrik, western European dairy adaptation is a prime example. Skin adaptation to sun exposure for vitamin D absorption is another – Stephen-Aegis Sep 6 2010 at 20:28
There are smaller differences - adaptations, which I think are minor even if very visible, like skin color. The base, the majority of who we are, is identical. The higher tolerance for milk is also not a permanent change in a population but rather it occurred more often than in the other group. We as species have mixed so much, that it's really difficult to develop significant differences. – Yoannah_offca Sep 6 2010 at 21:12
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Kamal, I have just returned from India. I worked on my own and with Dr. Rosedale. The majority of Diabetics I worked with were from Gujarat. I would be curious to know how you are doing. India is a vast country with so many different peoples. However, all who climbed on board to a high fat, moderate protein, low carb diet responded well. Vegeterians in India tend to be protein deficient and hard pressed to jump on the higher fat bandwagon. Diabetes is a problem that is exploding there. If you choose to get your sugar from Mangos as opposed to berries, I would see it as a cultural rather than a biologic choice. Namascar to you and your family.

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Yup, my Gujarati family is full of diabetics, even though everyone has a very low BMI. I'm trying to get them to eat paleo, but it is a tough sell for people that have been vegetarian or mostly vegetarian for so many years. What I need is for a doctor (Indian, preferably!) to physically walk up to them and tell them to eat paleo. What were you doing in India? – Kamal Apr 30 2011 at 0:25
Working with families who have diabetes. I met Dr. Rosedale there when he was working in Chennai. We hit it off and I have enjoyed the learning experience of my life. 3 years now back and forth. I would love to find a Paleo Indian Doc. The explosion of diabetes is readily apparent in the diabetic bellies and skinny fat that is everywhere. – Andre Chimene Apr 30 2011 at 4:12
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I'm really wondering whether the subtleties in diet differences are big enough to warrant attention. Because we can't/don't do randomized trials comparing different ethnicities' response to different foods, there may be stuff we don't know about other than lactose/wheat adaptation.

Even with the out of Africa hypothesis, we had many thousands of years to develop differences in the way we digest and metabolize nutrients. Personally, I wonder about my immediate ancestors. My region of Indian (Gujarat) has been largely vegetarian for a while. No one in my family has eaten meat for many many years until me. Probably too short of a time to give a survival advantage to those that deal with wheat and beans better than meat, but who knows. Also, I'm sure some regions have eaten a large percentage of tubers for eons, while others have eaten barely any. It's these kinds of things that I'm looking for any existing anthropological/archaeological evidence on.

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I think scientists are just starting to find differences. Not many are known now. I know that vegetable oils and sugar have devastated Gujarat and many other Indian regions. Gujarat is considered a diabetes hotspot. – Bread-Eating Beelzebub Sep 6 2010 at 19:46
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Yeah, my 110 pound mom and 120 pound uncle both are diabetic Gujaratis. I'm trying to get them to eat more meat and less whole grains, which is quite a challenge. Interestingly, digestion-wise, I seem to do the best with a diet consisting solely of refined wheat and rice! Meaning no fiber. More than a piece of fruit a day really throws me off, and spicy foods do too. I'm not the Indian prototype I guess. – Kamal Sep 7 2010 at 5:11
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well some things like rice and grains are never beneficial to the body in the long run, but there is definitely meat in india, and there are definitely vegitables. The fruits seem to be the only big difference, and for that idk.

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Paleolithic humans inhabited various biomes, each of which provided food to the humans who lived there. Paleo polynesians obviously ate very differently from paleo europeans, but they all ate paleo, or they didn't eat at all. As far as Vitamin D goes, there is always supplementation for those days when we don't get some strong sun.

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This sounds like a case where a little self-experimentation would be very useful. If you do that, Kamal, I'd be very interested to know the results. As an aside, I think we should rely less on theory and speculation than we often do, and just give different things a try and see what happens. I suspect that people from warmer climates may have higher insulin sensitivity on average, due to higher availability of fruit year around, but this is just speculation.

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