Diet Another Day: Paleo, 5:2 & the world of diets

As 'The Man' makes a move on your cans of pop and piles of red meat, we delve into the world of healthy eating

Feature by Peter Simpson | 11 Apr 2016

We’re living in turbulent times. First the World Health Organisation harshed our buzz with the slightly terrifying news that red meat was “probably” carcinogenic, which is one of the last things you’d want to hear about one of your favourite meals. Then the UK Government announced plans to bring in a sugar tax to try and stop us all from chugging cans of Irn-Bru like they’re going out of fashion. “From our cold, dead, diabetes-inflated hands,” we shouted, to which the medical profession shrugged and said: “That’s fine, we’ll wait. This shouldn’t take long.”

Now, humans have always had a bit of a complex relationship with meat, whether it’s the reported 7,000 animals the average meat-eater gets through in a lifetime, or the oft-told tale that we're powerless to avoid eating spiders in our sleep, we just love meat. Throw in the mid-2010s love for slow-smoked barbecue and enormous burgers, and it’s probably good our medical friends are at least trying to stop us all from turning into big balls of sweaty gristle. We probably won’t listen, but at least they’re trying.

And the soft drinks thing is sort of fair enough. In January, Public Health England claimed that the average five-year-old eats the equivalent of their own body weight in sugar in a year, and setting aside various mechanical arguments (surely all that sugar makes them put on weight, which increases the amount of sugar they have to eat?) it doesn’t seem like an ideal start in life for the chubby little fellas.

Adult reference intakes

But even beyond the obvious problems like carcinogenic meat and sugary drinks, it's a bit tricky to keep an eye on what exactly goes into our bodies. Luckily, there are some recommendations to work with. The NHS recommends you, the average person, consumes 2,000 calories a day. Nice round number, that.

Within that, you should have no more than 70 grams of fat (20 of which should be saturated), 260 grams of carbohydrates (90 of those could be sugar), 50 grams of protein and six grams of salt. So far, so straightforward; you just mix your Soylent Green-like food substitute to the required thickness and bang – nutrition. But if you want to be all 'Dining 1.0' about it, and eat actual food, then this is the point at which things start to get a bit, well... hard to track.

Five-a-day

As we all know, you need to get five portions of fruit and veg a day – after all, fruit and veg are good for you and they taste good. Unfortunately, they also contain a load of sugar (that's why they taste so good), so that needs to come out of your allowance. You should also aim for around six portions of whole grain a day, but without maxing out your carb intake. You're gonna need some protein, from meat or another source, and ideally you'd also want around three portions of dairy a day, but watch out for the fat in all that meat and dairy. Oh, and the sugar. And the protein. And the salt.

Turns out crafting a plan is a bit like spinning plates whilst trying to eat off them at the same time, so it's no surprise we're drawn to trendy and catchily-titled diets that seem to offer a surefire way to manage your food intake. They seem scientific, there's a rationale behind them, and quite often they come with a phalanx of press releases and natty graphic design. Unfortunately, each of these has its own glaring flaw and/or hilarious side effect.

The Paleo Diet

Take the Paleo Diet, where dieters avoid refined and processed foods with the aim of eating like our stone-age forebears did. Cavemen always look fairly buff in those museum exhibits about Stone Age life, and hunter-gathering 'feels' like a decent basis from which to plan a diet, so it all seems kosher up to this point.

The problem is, there are no accurate records of exactly what paleolithic man actually ate, which kind of undermines the whole premise. It's a bit like finding a picture of your favourite celebrity, then planning your meals around what you think they might have eaten the day it was taken. Not exactly scientific, is the point.

The Alkaline Diet

Even when diets get it right, they quite often come at things from the wrong angle. The Alkaline Diet recommends cutting down on 'acid-creating' foods like meat and refined sugars in order for your body to maintain an ideal pH balance. 'Hmmm', he said, furrowing his brow and nodding sarcastically. Cutting down on foods which are bad for you – good. Claiming that your diet can change the acidity of your blood, a claim which sounds like bullshit because, well, it is – not so good. 

The 5:2 Diet

Then there's the current king of the diets, the 5:2. Sacrifice two days of the week to fasting on just a few hundred calories, then go for your standard choices in the remaining five days – bish bash bosh, job's a good 'un, etc etc. The primary benefit of the 5:2 Diet is that it gets the pain of dieting out of the way in a comparatively short period, leaving you to munch on a standard diet the rest of the time. The downside is having to get by on around a quarter of your guideline calorie count without punching anyone.

The 5:2 has the backing of a surprising number of medical types, as well as that guy on your Facebook feed who constantly talks about 'pushing the envelope' through mouthfuls of raw courgette, and because it's basically a remix of standard dietary advice it isn't exactly bad for you. Can't say we're convinced, but knock yourselves out. Our stock-in-trade is sarcasm and pictures of giant sandwiches – we might not be the ones to ask.

Is it all bollocks, though?

So, let's recap; taking charge of your eating habits is very, very tricky. It requires taking a conscious look at everything you consume, weighing up myriad nutritional factors, and some of the quick fixes that promise to help are misguided at best. That's the bad news. The good news is that thing about eating spiders might not be true after all, although we do eat a surprising amount of dirt every year. Wonder how many calories are in dirt...

http://theskinny.co.uk/food