#842 - Chris Kresser

Joe Rogan (0:00)

No, three, two, one.

I always wonder what you base your countdown on, Jamie. You got two things going, is it an accurate count on, or you're just roughly guessing? It's like a five count because we have a... There's a delay?...

Chris Kresser (0:16)

connection to the thing, and then the thing, and the thing.

Joe Rogan (0:18)

Okay, well, we're live. Chris, what's up?

Chris Kresser (0:21)

Good to be here.

Joe Rogan (0:22)

Thanks for doing this, man.

Chris Kresser (0:23)

My pleasure.

Joe Rogan (0:24)

We were just talking about the term paleo.

I put up that we're going to talk about nutrition and diet and all that good stuff, and then somebody went to your page, and it says paleo and lifestyle expert. As soon as you have that word paleo, people go, oh, fuck.

Chris Kresser (0:42)

Serious baggage. I mean, every day I think about, oh, I kind of wish I never would have used this word.

Joe Rogan (0:51)

Yeah, well, Mark Sisson went with Primal, and he uses that Primal blueprint. That's his sort of distinction of it.

Chris Kresser (1:01)

I like that. I mean, they're both just words is what it really comes down to. I wrote a book that has the word paleo in it, and I thought about it even before I published the book. I was thinking, what I'm talking about is not really what people mean when they say paleo. It's a lot more inclusive and a lot less dogmatic. And if I use this word, there's going to be pros and cons. The pro is people recognize it.

It's one word that points at a whole way of thinking.

I could have called it the nutrient-dense ancestral nutrition book, but that's not too catchy. There have been five people that read it.

But on the other hand, paleo has a ton of baggage, as you said.

People get a certain idea when they hear that word. And for some, it's good. For others, it's kind of neutral. They don't know anything about it. And then for still others, it's like instant turn off. And why should we be emulating our paleo ancestors' lifestyles? They all died when they were 30 This is stupid. Right. Why should we do this? So it's a totally loaded term. I think we just need to get past it as an idea or a term and look at what it's really pointing at and evaluate it on that basis.

Joe Rogan (2:18)

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And also, there was the issue with the term paleolithic, like using the term paleo. And then there were some articles written about the actual diet of the paleolithic people, where they ate everything they got a hold of. And if they got grains, they ate a ton of grains.

Chris Kresser (2:34)

Yeah, absolutely.

So, I mean, we know they weren't eating cheese doodles and drinking Big Gulps, right? So it's kind of easier to talk about paleo in terms of what it didn't include.

Joe Rogan (2:44)

Right.

Chris Kresser (2:44)

So it didn't include processed and refined bread, flour, cookies, muffins, all kinds of packaged foods that comprise a large percentage of the American diet. I think the top six foods now are grain-based desserts, sugar-sweetened beverages, pizza, chicken dishes, which are like primarily fried chicken nuggets, forgetting the other two, but it's all crap.

Joe Rogan (3:13)

That's the primary foods of America.

Chris Kresser (3:15)

Those are the six primary foods of Americans. It's just completely nutrient-depleted junk. So we can all agree that our paleolithic ancestors weren't eating those foods.

And then we know it's pretty clear that they were eating a lot of meat. Well, I'm sure we'll talk about that. Meat and fish, wild fruits and vegetables, not the domesticated varieties that we're eating today, but wild fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and some starchy plants. So those are the two extremes, if we bracket it. And then things like grains and legumes were more of a question mark. Like there's some recent evidence that shows that legume consumption was probably pretty more common than we thought amongst our paleolithic ancestors.

They came later onto the scene, but if they were there, they probably ate them.

Joe Rogan (4:05)

Is that based on geography, like where legumes are present?

Chris Kresser (4:08)

Exactly. And what other food sources were available? It's pretty clear that they weren't the first option. If they were able to slaughter an animal, they would have done that and eaten the organs and the brain, and probably thrown the muscle meat to the dogs.

Joe Rogan (4:21)

Really?

Chris Kresser (4:22)

Yeah. We have it backwards. I mean, when you look at traditional hunter-gatherers and the way they eat animals, they go just like wild animals do. When a wild animal kills another animal, it goes straight for the organs. And that's because the organs are way more nutrient dense than the muscle meats.