Did not want to hyjack other thread- the US news best diet article

[novicecrafter]

Greetings,

This is my first post on here and I did not want to hyjack the other thread. I have been lurking for awhile and reading forum posts. I have been considering going paleo or primal for some time now. It really seems like this community is extremely excited about the diet/lifestyle and I can respect that. It has been a wonderful learning experience. I do however notice that sometimes it seems like any criticism of the diet will be ignored or shot down without giving it a full shake. Its only human to defend the things that we love! So I hope that I can bring up a question respectfully and open a discussion that will be beneficial.

The article

http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/best-overall-diets

The other thread about this article quickly responds by defending it and saying that it has more people voting for its efficacy than any other diet. I wanted to point out that while it may have more people than some saying it works- it is about the proportion to people who say it doesn't.  Going just by the numbers the eco atkins diet is far more successful. Why I would like to bring this up is the eco diet basically eats everything that the paleo diet is against. Legumes for example!


Now people voting for what has worked for them is hardly scientific proof- however I do believe that it is something to be looked at as the research quoted is always heavily biased.

~18% say paleo works (works+not works= A   percentage is works/A X 100)
~95% say eco atkins works !! yikes!!
 The vegetarian and vegan diets also have similarly huge percentages of "work" vs non work

So I guess I wanted to point out that in defense of a lifestyle that is loved people here only looked at how many said it worked without looking at what percentage that ended up being. I would like to hear what you guys think about this. I am still very interested in paleo or primal- but at this time I am trying to be open minded and look at the evidence for any and all diets.

Thank you

[Paleo Curmudgeon]

Let me make three points here:

1. This is a Paleo / Primal / Caveman Diet SUPPORT forum. Not the a Paleo / Primal / Caveman Diet debate forum.
There is a low carb forum that does have a debate section.  However, having said that you won't get banned here for bringing this up like you would if you posted something about Atkins on a Vegsource forums. Paleo at least makes your more tolerant than being a vegan.

2. Being this is your first post as a n00b how is that you are not a troll?

3. Although I did refer to this as Caveman Diet above, we don't really consider it a diet. A diet is something you fail doing because once you reach your goal you gradually go back to your old habits and that's why more than 95% are back to their pre-diet weight within 5 years and some of them weigh more. I have a friend who dropped from 220 to 180 last year on Nutrisystem and now weighs 230.
Nutrisystem, Medifast and Jenny Craig really work well. But, you can't eat their artificial food the rest of your life. You can eat paleo the rest of your life.

[novicecrafter]

I understand that this is a community of people who follow this lifestyle- not a debate forum. I am here because I do see the logic in the diet - but I need more information and some discussion before I make the decision. What better place to go then to a community of folks who live the lifestyle? I am tired of reading junk articles and while books are helpful there are books that tout many different kinds of diets with equally passionate arguments. I want to find out from the people who live it and love it!

I am not a troll- just a newbie. I have been lurking for awhile but when I came across a question that could not be answered from reading previous posts I decided to register and ask.

I apologize if I have been rude- I do not always come across the way I mean to ( a bit socially awkward at times).

Thank you for your response!

[JayJay]

US News is anything but. It's entertainment and political agenda masked as news. You really need to take anything there with a grain of salt and look at more reliable research and first-hand opinion sources then US News. I don't know how soon after that story was posted you started following it, but in the first few days, Paleo was overwhelmingly the most popular and successful. In fact, the "votes" directly contradicted the ratings in the article. They were almost flopped 180 degrees. Once the story started getting around, the numbers started going all over the place.

In any case, the tally now on Paleo is  Yes  5297 / No 23739 / Haven't tried 217

I'm extremely suspicious of the numbers, especially the "no" numbers. I doubt there are enough people even on Paleo in the U.S., or even the world, to generate these numbers on one web site. I suspect some vegan or other group wrote a script to add vote counts one way or the other to support their agenda. It's not that hard to do.

I recommend you buy some books on the subject, read Taubes and Eades, Mark's Daily Apple, and other sources that discuss Paleo and Primal specifically. These writers/bloggers/doctors really cut through the crap and tell it like it is. If Paleo seems logical to you now, it will only be more clear to you after you read some of the better written works on the topic. But above all, try it. The only people who are really critical of it are those who either, A) Haven't tried it or didn't do it right or long enough, or B) Have some sort of agenda that prevents them from supporting it (such as vegans/greenies, scientists and doctors who believe the low fat lie, and pharmaceutical companies who are making piles of money off of the junk science that promotes the low fat, "take your statin" mantra).

 

[kyleen66]

It's been pointed out on other forums that the US News article had "ballot" stuffing by the vegan community - hence why their numbers were so crazy positive and while the Paleo "diet" was so crazy high against. The real sad part is that it was just being judged as a way to lose weight, when it's SO VERY much more than that.

No one here really feels the need to defend the way they eat. And believe me, I'm not offended. This is working for me for health benefit reasons. It's not a quick fix to weight loss and then go back to your old way of eating. This is a lifestyle change.

No one is going to go "oh please please eat Paleo" - it's just something you have to try yourself, for at least 30 days, and YOU decide if you feel better and got positive results from your goals. No one can tell you what you should do. We're here to support you and offer help and suggestions while you try. Ultimately, we're all personally responsible for our own food choices.

Welcome!

[novicecrafter]

Thank you! That does make sense (the sudden change in numbers). At the risk of insulting those in the vegan community I do know that a few of them at least (that I have met) are very against this diet because of the large quantity of animals consumed. I do appreciate that no one on this forum is saying "please eat paleo" then attacking me with horrible pictures of factory farms. I am looking for health and long term fitness and wish to base my dietary choices on that. I will check out the book recommendations as well.

[Jean]

Welcome to the forum!   

I also don't believe those tallies - I'd doubt there are that many people who've even tried paleo. Online polls are not valid statistics.

Anyway, we are all individuals, and the only way to find out if paleo is good for you is to give it a go for a few months. That's what I did - read Robb Wolf's book, decided it made sense and I should try it and see if it worked for me. It's worked so brilliantly most of my family and some of my friends have gone paleo after seeing the results - I'm like a new person! I'm looking forward to a long and healthy life - eating paleo forever.

[sparrow]

I'd doubt there are that many people who've even tried paleo.

This is what I was going to say.  I'd be shocked if that many people really know what the paleo diet is, forget that many having tried it.

[samjohn]

At the risk of insulting those in the vegan community I do know that a few of them at least (that I have met) are very against this diet because of the large quantity of animals consumed.

Sometimes it is difficult to eat enough things that had faces to pick up the slack left by all those vegans. Luckily, things that had faces are usually very tasty.

[Warren Dew]

For the first few thousand votes, paleo had approximately 37 times as many "yes" votes as "no" votes, with the ratio staying pretty constant from the first few hundreds of votes up to ten times that much.  Then, suddenly, the number of "no" votes got multiplied by exactly 100.  That seemed to me to be pretty clearly vote fraud, which has only continued since then.

For more information about what the survey looked like before the vote manipulation began, see my blog post from that time:

http://psychohist.livejournal.com/57780.html