Healing Diets: Paleo or Crazy Sexy Vegan Diet for Health?

Posted on April 24, 2014 Updated on October 20, 2014

Healthy eating is one of the key parts of the health puzzle, but what exactly is healthy eating? You will certainly struggle to find any anecdotal stories of miraculous healing following the government’s recommendation for 5 a day. The Standard Western Diet is just too full of rubbish to allow most of us to gain the full potential benefits of any fruit and veg we may add. However, more radical approaches often have many people citing them as reasons for their recovery.

So in this blog I want to look at an overview of two popular diets that people often cite as a reason for their drastically improved health.

By the time someone has decided to come and see me they are keen to make serious changes to improve their health and are often looking for a food plan to follow, as part of their healing journey. Normally I recommend either Kris Carr’s Crazy Sexy Diet (CSD) or the Paleo approach followed by the likes of Chris Kresser’s Personal Paleo Diet. Both of these diets have anecdotal accounts of healing and being at either end of the spectrum at least one should seem possible for you to follow. Kris Carr’s approach is what she believes has helped her recover from Cancer. The CSD is certainly very close to the way Debbie ate while recovering from CFS/ME and an autoimmune thyroid problem. While at the other end of the dietary spectrum, the paleo approach outlined by Chris Kresser also has many advocates, especially those with autoimmune problems.

On the face of it these diets are two extremes; CSD being vegan and Paleo often touted as meat heavy. I’m talking about CSD rather than just vegan or vegetarian as you can be vegan/vegetarian and still have a very unhealthy diet packed full of soy and processed foods. Crazy Sexy Diet is aimed at improving health and happens to be vegan. The concepts are also different:  In many ways the Crazy Sexy Diet is very modern; While on the other hand Paleo is an attempt to eat as our Paleolithic ancestors did in the belief that their hunter gatherer diet is optimal for our health because that is what we are designed to eat.

The key fact is that both diets have their supporters who claim huge benefits to their health by adopting their respective diet.

So lets do an overview of the approaches and start by comparing what the diets both exclude. I’ve done the comparison using Chris Kresser’s 30 day reset tweaked for those with autoimmune problems. as that seems fairly standard recommendation for a lot of health conditions.

Crazy Sexy Diet vs Paleo – What they Exclude

The diagram opposite shows the foods that are excluded, on the left from the Crazy Sexy Diet (CSD) and on the right from the suggested Paleo diet tweaked for autoimmune problems. In the middle cross over area are the foods excluded from both. You can click on it for a bigger version

As you can see there are actually more similarities than differences which may begin to explain why they can both seemingly facilitate healing. If the key concept is that some foods are damaging our health, then what is excluded may be more important than what is included.

Adding ‘nice things’ really is a joke as both diets can include truly delicious meals. It is the reaction of most people though to focus on what they will be missing rather than all of the nice things they can have.

Crazy Sexy Diet vs Paleo – What Do They Suggest I Eat?

Lets look now at what you can eat on each diet. Both diets once again contain an overlap of foods that the authors say are good to eat. The diagram on the right shows an overview. Both authors certainly agree more on what not to eat though. It is also worth mentioning that  supplementation of B12 will be needed on a vegan diet; I’ve not included that as it not a food but rather a supplement.

The key thing here seems to be that the Crazy Sexy Diet gets a lot of protein from beans, nuts and legumes, where from a Paleo perspective meats offer a more nutrient dense source of protein.

Crazy Sexy Diet vs Paleo – The Contradictions

The source of protein is one of the big discrepancies between the two diets;  it would seem that the Crazy Sexy Diet relies on a food source that is actually excluded from the Paleo approach and the Paleo diet relies on animal products that are excluded from the Crazy Sexy Diet.

Let’s look at at why beans and legumes excluded from a Paleo diet, when they hold such an important role in the CSD. This seems somewhat of a grey area. Some experts say they are excluded because of the phytic acid they contain.  Phytic acid is said to block absorption of some nutrients like zinc.  However, according to some sources it seems that beans and legumes have less phytic acid than some of the foods that are included in the Paleo approach. Compounds called lectins which cause leaky gut and inflammation are another reason for excluding beans and legumes, but it seems that research suggests most of that is destroyed by heat and cooking. FODMAPs* are another reason, but then there are other fruits and vegetables that contain FODMAPS that are not automatically excluded. Chris Kessner seems to exclude them because they may cause problems and more importantly they are less nutrient dense than animal products, and those nutrients they do contain may also be less bio-available.

Time to move onto to why animal products are excluded from the Crazy Sexy Diet. Two main reasons are glaringly obvious; firstly the inhumane treatment of factory farmed animals, though obviously this is a moral standpoint rather than a health based one. Secondly the research between fat, red meat and cancer. On the face of things this would be damning to the Paleo approach, but when you look at the research there are potential flaws. A lot of Paleo supporters have pointed out that the study linking red meat to cancer seems to include a lot of meat eaters who are overweight, smoke and are inactive. The quality of meat eaten is also ignored and those following the Paleo approach would agree that factory farmed produce is bad for our health.

The diets also disagree on Fats;  Crazy Sexy Diet is promoting that saturated fats are bad for us and lead to cholesterol. This seems to be a rather outdated view point though. The Paleo diet promotes saturated fat as good energy source that we were designed to use.

In terms of ethos the Crazy Sexy Diet’s thrust is eating  clean and ‘alkaline’ foods for detoxing and health. Where the thrust of the Paleo approach is to eat nutritionally dense foods that allow the gut to heal which they believe is key to correct immune function. That is a brief overview of ethos and really needs a more comprehensive post in it’s own right, which will follow soon 🙂

Crazy Sexy Diet vs Paleo – Where They Agree

Both diets also agree that inflammation is linked to many diseases and that the fatty acid omega 3 is very important for an anti-inflammatory diet. They also promote eating ‘clean’ in terms of reducing toxic load from pesticides and fertilisers etc. We also saw that both approaches agree on a lot of the foods to be excluded in a healthy diet. Although this paragraph seems short, in reality I think there are still more important aspects they have in common than not.

In Summary

This blog is an brief overview rather than an in depth comparison because so many people are completely unaware of what these diets involve and how they compare. Eating healthily is is confusing, with advocates on all sides claiming scientific reasons behind their choices and those choices do often conflict. These two specific diets are no different. However, the worst thing you could do is continue eating a standard western diet because you’re confused. I have little doubt what these two diets agree to exclude is crucial in the healing process.  I will be looking at both approaches in greater depths over the coming weeks, but I would love to hear your comments of how you got on with either/both approaches below 🙂

Pete

References
Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It!

Your Personal Paleo Diet: Feel and look great by eating the foods that are ideal for your body

The Paleo Approach: Reverse Autoimmune Disease, Heal Your Body

Further Reading
Raw Vegan, Blood Type O, Paleo, Low Carb High Fat Diets – what do they have in common?”
*FODMAP is an acronym for “fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides and monosaccharides and polyols,” which are basically a group of highly fermentable, short- and medium-chain carbohydrates that can cause digestive problems such as wind and bacterial overgrowth due to being poorly absorbed by some people.