And the war rages on...

Nothing like a bit of drama on a Tuesday morning!! I am making it into a little more than it actually is to be fair.  As no doubt most of you have heard, a new study has been released that claims that a moderate to high protein diet is bad for you, its marginally better if its plant based but still not great..

I have red a number of articles talking about this paper from more than one 'imaginative' journalist.  This one from The Guardian is one of a few that claims that the paper reveals that eating protein is just as bad for your health as smoking.

I haven't fully read the report, but I read somewhere that they stated high protein diet increased your chance of getting cancer by x% which is the same increased risk as smoking.  I will read the report fully when I have time to digest it properly as I need to understand the scenario, the subjects, the reasons for the study etc before I make my own educated conclusions, rather than reading some mainstream newspaper article that scandalises anything it can as that is what sells papers!

The reason I have chosen to write about it now, before making my own conclusions is that I find the attitudes of a lot of people, towards this paper, incredibly blinkered.  I don't suppose it is just this research that they disagree with, but it is the fact that people disagree with it just because it doesn't fit their lifestyle choices.  They throw claims around that it is rubbish etc, yet don't put forth a valid argument and counter reports/research as to why..  I personally eat a 30% protein based diet, and I get on with it.  I certainly wont suddenly change that until I have read all the facts, but, I am always willing to adjust my diet based on increasing my healthy life span and doing what is best for my body.

It amazes me that there are intelligent people out there, willing to put products into their body that have absolutely no scientific research behind them, they are very poorly regulated and make claims that they can not substantiate; all because some body beautiful person who has an incredibly strong marketing team behind them, flashes their pearly whites and says that it works.  The faces of products don't even necessarily use the products they are pushing.

I have also found a really interesting site https://chriskresser.com/ that I want to delve a little deeper into also.  The short of it that i have gathered so far is that he uses Paleo as a baseline diet, a template, that you can add to and adapt to suit your own body and utilise the good nutrients that we have available now and we didn't necessarily have back in the palaeolithic era.  He also disagrees with a lot of the arguments put forward by the Paleo crown as to why you should eat Paleo, as their arguments are flawed, which as you would know if you read a post of mine a while back, is what annoys me about the branded name in use for this.  He also puts forward a myriad of valid, scientific reasons as to why this is a great baseline to start from.

So, the conclusion I am drawing currently is that

1. I don't understand anywhere near enough about food still and the affects that it has on our bodies now, and in the future.  
2. I want to understand more about the inflammatory response that some foods may cause in our bodies and how to determine if you are affected by it.  
3. I want to read the latest protein papers and see if they have actually based their findings purely on correlation or if they have indeed taken causation into account.
4. I want to read more on Chris Kressers site and there is also a pod cast that he does, one of them is with a guy called Mat Lalonde and is on the subject of science behind Paleo and looks incredibly interesting from the transcripts that I have read, but it is also very sciencey, so will take me a good few reads to really digest and understand what is written there.

I think everyone should try and understand more about what they are consuming and how their lifestyle is affecting them now and in the future. I don't think any research is infallible and new research is happening all the time, research methods are improving and we are also evolving and living longer, so issues that weren't addressed many moons ago because they didn't need to be, do these days!