35 Comments so far ↓

• Contemplationist // Mar 18, 2011 at 11:13

  I wonder what that huge spike in vegan searches in 2006 was about. hmmm
  Anyway, the trend is unmistakable – flat/slight decline for vegan and exponential increase for paleo

  • Richard Nikoley // Mar 18, 2011 at 11:46

    As they say, three guesses and the first two don’t count.

    The China Study

    Publisher: Benbella Books; 1 edition (June 1, 2006)

    • Contemplationist // Mar 18, 2011 at 13:46

      Ah excellent! I suppose people were interested but after reading what was required of them – give up meat, eggs, or uh anything delicious, they said well fuck it I’d rather live.
      Now with paleo, if there is ever a spike, there wont be an equivalent reduction as people will see – omg as much steak as I want? bacon? sweet! I guess I could do without bread!

      Just speculatin

    • Swede // Mar 18, 2011 at 14:28

      Mad cow scare?

  • Richard Nikoley // Mar 18, 2011 at 11:48

    The other interesting data point is the spike in the first part of 2011, but, it was led by a spike for “paleo diet” by 2-4 weeks.

• LCforevah // Mar 18, 2011 at 12:36

  It would be interesting to know how many people who comprised part of that spike in 2006 have had to change their diets due to the resulting health problems we know are engendered by a vegan diet. The drop from the initial high is precipitous, and I think it’s because for so many it’s just unfeasible to follow a vegan plan.

  On another note, I want to let the lowcarb community know that their concerns are being heard. I work for a company that sells to Whole Foods. Every year they send us a nine page list of ingredients we can’t use in the products sold to them. Fairly easy for this company since we were organic before the word was being used. Well, we have a new one we can’t use–HFCS ! Whole Foods has had such an outcry from their customers that they are requesting all vendors to eliminate HFCS from their products.

  We only had a few sauces that used HFCS and are replacing it with evaporated cane juice, which is much less concentrated than crystallized sugar, and will consequently have much less glucose and especially fructose than HFCS.

  Richard, we don’t sell our products to the Whole Foods in NorCal so I don’t know what their vendors use in their sauces and marinades.

• Dan // Mar 18, 2011 at 13:21

  As my wife always tells me;

  ‘People who don’t eat meat have no souls!’

  ;oD

• Stabby // Mar 18, 2011 at 15:06

  It may be helpful to include vegetarian in the search. It seems like that one might be searched for more often.

  Apparently these people are no longer fearing for their lives to eliminate all animal products (because apparently the cause of all disease is primarily animal products…) so veganism is climbing and vegetarianism is falling. Plus the hierarchy of pretentious finger-waging is appealing. If you still consume dairy you can’t pretend that you are better than vegans by virtue of the most draconian animal-product avoidance.

  • Richard Nikoley // Mar 18, 2011 at 15:27

    Yea, you could conceivably combine vegetarian diet with vegan diet, but then you could also combine low carb diet with paleo diet and you get about the same total results.

    http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22paleo+diet%22%2C+%22vegan+diet%22%2C+%22vegetarian+diet%22%2C+%22low+carb+diet%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

• Matthew // Mar 18, 2011 at 15:44

  Quarter pig in the crockpot as we speak… threw an apple in the sauce for flavor… does that make me a vegetarian apologist?

  • Richard Nikoley // Mar 18, 2011 at 15:53

    Naw, just fruit that knows its place.

• Eugenia // Mar 18, 2011 at 19:46

  The only thing I don’t like from the paleo diet is its stance on grains and legumes. I am against eating lots of grains/starches, however, I believe that the stance on legumes is wrong. NEW research shows (search for it on google) that prehistoric people did eat legumes, while this was not known until now. So I think that the paleo diet must allow for beans. Beans are good for you. Starches/grains in moderation though. The rest of the paleo diet has me in agreement.

  • Contemplationist // Mar 18, 2011 at 20:53

    As Kurt Harris says, tolerance is not optimality. Humans scrounged for any source of calories they could find. If a tiny amount of those included beans, so what? Again, we must stick to empirical evidence. Care to share links for beans’ benefits?

    • Eugenia // Mar 18, 2011 at 22:34

      There are many recent articles you can find on Google, all recent and from researchers. However, legumes were reported a lot a few months ago too, I think it was on The Guardian about a new research.

      However, I don’t need just the scientists to tell me how good beans are. I saw it on myself. As a kid and teenager we’d eat 3-4 times a week beans in Greece. Then I left Greece, went to UK and then USA, and I stopped eating beans. The rest of my diet didn’t change much, but the bean one did (because I didn’t like the canned beans, and cooking beans from scratch takes a long time). And guess what. 12 years later my health is down the toilet (I won’t give you details, but let’s say that my health problem is related to not getting the known positive effects of beans). I tried to re-introduce them, my husband doesn’t like them though, so I can’t use them as much as I need to.

      • Jared // Mar 19, 2011 at 00:17

        Beans are not your savior… It’s crazy to think that beans are essential nutrition and they are the reasons your health has deteriorated.

        Beans are poor people protein… plain and simple…

        What exactly is in beans that isn’t in meat or seafood?

      • gallier2 // Mar 19, 2011 at 01:00

        Eugenia, at that time in Greece, you also ate other things as beans and you were probably younger and had more sun (vit.D). To conclude that it is the beans that makes the difference is wrong. This said, paleo eating is not a religion, if you like beans and you digest them well, nobody is going to stop you.

      • Sue // Mar 19, 2011 at 18:24

        Eugenia you can’t say for sure that omitting beans from your diet caused your health issues. “The rest of my diet didn’t change much” – maybe it was enough of a change to contribute to health issues. Also where did you live in Greece – was it a less toxic life, less stress etc?

  • PresidentOfPaleo // Mar 19, 2011 at 06:42

    Beans are my preferred source of carbs (need them for running).

    I take what I like out of it and totally disregard what I don’t like.

    I don’t give a rat’s ass what prehistoric people ate or didn’t eat, I care about what works for me.

  • Michal // Mar 19, 2011 at 12:51

    The only thing I don’t like from the paleo diet is its stance on grains and legumes.

    Translation: The only thing I don’t like about the paleo diet is the paleo diet.

    Do you even know what the paleo diet is? After all beans are great if you enjoy the bacterial overgrowth in your gut. I love feeling bloated and nasty.

    • rob // Mar 19, 2011 at 15:45

      Oh noes! The bacteria is overgrowing my guts!!!

      • Richard Nikoley // Mar 19, 2011 at 16:02

        While I agree with Michale’s main point, which is you gotta draw a line somewhere, I agree with rob, too.

        I’ve always been a bit skeptical of the gut bacteria thing. I know they are very important. I’m skeptical that we can do that much to change them easily. I doubt a measure of beans now and then is going to make a big difference. I also don’t know that some measure might not be beneficial. A large part of our evolution as generalist exploiters of food sources has to do with hormesis and ingesting a wide array of mild toxins.

        It’s funny how on the one hand we are now seeing stories of how an overly serialized modern society is stunting the growth of healthy immune systems and the fix, apparently, is to get a little dirty, and clean under your fingernails with your teeth, etc.

        But don’t dare every eat anything but pure & clean.

        That’s inconsistent reasoning, in my book.

        • Michal // Mar 20, 2011 at 19:07

          Some people are more or or less sensitive than others. Beans always lead to bloating and gerd for me. This is due to too much bacteria consuming them and releasing gas.

          A few beans now and then are fine but so is an occasional coke(probably much less often than the beans).

• Kim // Mar 18, 2011 at 21:21

  Veganism is a fad and was bound to fall by the wayside, while paleo is a normal human diet. It does seem that diets as a whole are searched a lot.

• Frank Hagan // Mar 19, 2011 at 11:49

  You always crack me up!

  And nice chart on low-carb+paleo comparison to vegan+vegetarianism too. Maybe with Taubes’ new book and the rise of paleo cookbooks, we’ll see it rise again to the 20.0 it is on the beginning of the chart (2004 … wonder what was happening then?)

  • gallier2 // Mar 20, 2011 at 03:02

    Tom Naughton makes a big splash with his Fathead docu since it’s available on Netflix. If you follow his blog you will see a lot (and I mean really a lot) of absolutely new comers, who have never heard of low-carb/paleo before. The majority is positive (except for the annoying Marcus a PhD which demonstrate quite clearly what dogma is) and pissed off at the conventional wisdom propagated by state and corporates.

    • Richard Nikoley // Mar 20, 2011 at 05:00

      Fat Head is also free on hulu.com for those without Netflix. And if hulu blocks outside US, easy to resolve by setting up a VPN connection to a US server first. Google for that.

• Jeff // Mar 19, 2011 at 15:33

  All those search trends represent is that people who can’t think for themselves get all excited when they see a few examples of people who got lean eating a paleo diet.

  Then they go online and start espousing how dumb other people are and how ‘dumb’ bro-science is.

  No perspective. Give it 10 years.

  • Richard Nikoley // Mar 19, 2011 at 15:54

    And I thought I was cynical.

    I don’t have any illusions and have always subscribed to the bromide that “no one ever went broke overestimating the stupidity of the [] public.”

    So yea, when and if Paleo ever catches on, it will be because of popularity and fad, pretty much like anything else.

    But every now and then, what begins fo r superficial reasons actually takes root.

    I take some comfort in the confidence that while Paleo-ish isn’t perfect, it’s probably as close to the notion of an ideal or optimal human diet we’re ever going to get and that will only be born out by consistent results in improved body comosition, health and compliance over a long term.

    But of course we’ll have to see.

• Tomasz R. // Mar 19, 2011 at 17:10

  Some native people have successfully gone to 75-90% fruit diet:

  http://autoimmunethyroid.wordpress.com/2006/09/24/gone-bananas/

  example practice illustrates the high morals you get on this almost fruitarian diet

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd9JpVxiz9E&feature=related

  • Richard Nikoley // Mar 20, 2011 at 09:37

    Tomasz

    Do by any chance of of any other sources for this info? Any anthropology papers online or anything like that. The Wikipedia page on this population seems a bit useless.

    • Alex Thorn // Mar 20, 2011 at 10:25

      If you read the information below that video of tribal infanticide you find these caveats:
      The video was produced by an organization called Global Voices…
      “Global Voices is a non-profit global citizens’ media project founded at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society”

      This film is directed by a son of a JESUIT missionary and actors ARE used, according to ABC news.

      UPDATE:
      An ABC News report today (Feb. 8, 2009) states that the Christian missionary group Youth With A Mission is accused of deliberately exaggerating the extent of the infanticide problem to force the Brazilian government to allow the group to convert the natives to Christianity.

      This may be a more impartial article on the Yanomami Indians:
      http://www.amazon-indians.org/yanomami.html

      Apparently they do hunt small game as well as grow cassava and plantain. Their reputation as a warlike ‘fierce people’ is purportedly due to a sensationalised book by a discredited anthropologist!

      • Richard Nikoley // Mar 20, 2011 at 13:57

        Thanks Alex.

        It just didn’t pass my smell test entirely and I didn’t want to jump on it. A bit too convenient.

        • Alex Thorn // Mar 21, 2011 at 04:07

          I know what you mean – taking something like that as face value is tempting for use as a return volley against all the vegan/fruitarian propaganda but can backfire if you do not check it is bone fide.

          Didn’t Weston A. Price find something similar with a couple of neighbouring tribes – one was primarily eating meat and the other plant – he observed the predominantly plant-eating tribe was the more aggressive of the two? Again, that maybe an inaccurate report of his work!

• Seb // Mar 28, 2011 at 20:19

  ”Die, Mutherfucker!”

  And then you’ll say vegetarian are the one so hateful and judgemental… what an hipocrite you are!

  YOU are the one who have a whole section on your website about bashing vegetarians… which I find pretty pathetic… no matter how you’ll rationalize this it will still be a childish thing to do.

  I believe whatever your diet is… vegan/vegetarian/caveman/junk food/insects if you’re angry on that diet … there’s something wrong! Do it differently! Maybe you should eat more magnesium and calcium rich leafy green vegetable? That would help calm you down I think.

  • Richard Nikoley // Mar 29, 2011 at 13:25

    Seb:

    I’m LAUGHING at you morons. Don’t you get it? you’re just projecting.

    By the way, there’s a new post up. It’s about vegan parents who just can’t seem to stop killing their kids on such a “healthy” diet.

    http://freetheanimal.com/2011/03/stop-the-madness-vegans-keep-killing-their-kids.html

    And while I’d love to sign off with “die mutherfucker,” I wouldn’t to that because you might mistake it to mean that I mean you, and not the ideology.

    Hint.