Author Interview: Art DeVany

Thursday, 09 June 2011 11:05

All About PALEO: The Fitness Regime of the Stoneage

You’ve heard about “primal fitness,” read arguments that humans should “return to their roots”—and good luck finding anyone who thinks it’s “natural” or healthy to sit at a desk all day or to eat food with no expiration date.

INsite columnist Tony Federico went straight to the source of this Stone-Age lifestyle to find out just what being Paleolithic is really all about. Often referred to as the “grandfather” of the Paleo movement, 73-year-old Art DeVany is the author of The New Evolution Diet and has since been quoted by PBS, NPR and The New York Times. Most recently, he was seen pulling his SUV on ABC Nightline’s “You Are What You Eat.” Here’s what he had to say about saturated fat versus fruit, fractals and veganism.

The concept of eating “like a caveman” can be confusing—I’ve been asked if it means eating raw meat! Can you explain development of the New Evolution Diet? It didn't begin as a caveman thing. It began as our family experiment when my 2-year-old son became a Type 1 diabetic and my wife developed the disease a few years later. I began to see how we could reduce inflammation. This led to more fresh plants and fruits for their high antioxidant content. Then we knocked down foods that caused [blood sugar levels] to spike, like simple carbohydrates and grain-based foods, which are also highly inflammatory. The evolution connection just happened because my anthropology colleagues told me I was eating a hunter-gatherer diet when I talked to them.

Your background is in economics. How did you transition to advocating evolution-based health and fitness? Metabolism is economics. Each cell competes for nutrients with all other cells; what they receive depends on hormonal and neuronal signals. To paraphrase Adam Smith, we are a colony of trillions of cells, each specialized in some function and each maximizing its fitness. So, it was quite natural to apply economics to metabolism. My interest and experience in complex systems was just icing on the cake (a really bad metaphor).

You use fractal geometry to explain why “regular exercise” is counter-productive and why skipping meals can be good. (A fractal is basically a fragmented shape whose parts are a reduced-size copy of the whole.) Can you explain? Fractals appear in all self-organized systems. The blood vessels form a fractal. Hormone release is like a pulsing quasar, with intermittent bursts of all sizes. The distribution of prey is a fractal, as are the activity patterns of hunters, children at play and most sports, but for dreaded jogging and other non-natural activities. I modeled the energy landscape of the Paleolithic forager searching over this fractal landscape. Hunter-gatherers move when hungry, not when they are fed. That is why well-fed individuals have a hard time getting up and moving. A hunter moves in a slow-fast pattern, varying energy expenditures over all scales of effort. Intermittent fasting just comes right out of the model.

You recommend that butter and lard should be avoided, but you also enjoy a plate of ribs and a slice of cheesecake occasionally. What are your thoughts on saturated fat? Saturated fat has no demonstrated connection to cardiovascular disease and I only limit my fat intake slightly. Why? Well, fat can slide right into fat cells with no help. And fat is abundant in modern foods. But, the ketones produced by metabolizing fat are very helpful to the brain and the heart. The organs tend to specialize in using different energy sources. I say there is no need to consume any man-made, bottled, refined oils, especially if they are from corn. I just don't cook in oil at all, except to lightly sauté asparagus or salmon.

People starting diets similar to The New Evolution Diet often eat large quantities of fruit and nuts. We’ve been told that these are unquestionably “healthy” without limit. Thoughts? Fruit would have been difficult to acquire and seasonal during our earlier life as foragers; now they are available year-round and in abundance. Most fruits do not register on the Glycemic Index (GI) because it takes 50g of carbohydrate to measure. But, a large plate of fruit would have a sizable glycemic load. Some modern fruits are very sugary and are bred for their sugar content. 

Do you recommend machine-based workouts or “functional” training (movements that replicate specific real-world situations)? Machines are a pretty safe way to work out. They do not challenge [the body’s perception of movement and spatial orientation], but they build a base. I like a bit more wildness and action, but I always come back to weights, free or machine-based. 
 The number one problem for most people is a lack of muscle and strength; they are predictive of the risk of death, probably more so than cholesterol and all the other metabolic readings. Given a choice, I would do weight training. That creates the strength, poise and physiologic capacity to do anything else you want to do.

Any memorable success stories? My wife Carmela lost five dress sizes and created a kind of Mediterranean caveman cuisine. Her oldest son has lost 70 pounds and his blood pressure returned to normal. But the most heartening successes are Type 2 diabetics who have handed in their syringes.

Many consider high-protein diets to be dangerous for the kidneys. There is no evidence to support that concern for anyone with normal kidneys. Those who follow the New Evolution Diet consume so much vegetable, fruit and fat that their protein intake relative to other macronutrients is moderate. [On the other hand,] Marathoning and other long-lasting exercise damages muscle and the proteins released may overload the kidneys. This is called rhabdomyolsis and can be deadly.

T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study advocates a low-fat, low-protein, high carbohydrate, plant-based (vegan) diet that seems to be in direct contradiction to your recommendations. What is your interpretation? His study is an inscrutable Chinese statistical puzzle; 8,000 cross-correlations can support any argument you want to make. It is the hard work and the semi-starvation that keeps the Chinese healthy, to the extent that they are “healthy” when living in a Chinese city or working in a Chinese factory and exposed to damaging levels of chemicals. Now that more calories are becoming available to the Chinese, we find that their high carbohydrate diet is leading to an epidemic of Type 2 diabetes. About two-thirds of Chinese become diabetic by the age of 60. It is even worse here in the U.S., where the Chinese population is seeing staggering levels of diabetes.

You can read the full version of this interview on Tony’s personal fitness blog, FitnessInAnEvolutionaryDirection.com.

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