The text that follows is taken from the video below.

All content belongs to Mat Lalonde, and errors are mine.

Introduction

Have you heard of Mat ‘The Kraken’ Lalonde? If you’re interested in the paleo world you almost certainly have, but if you’ve not, here’s a quick intro; Mat is a PhD (in organic chemistry) teacher at Harvard university. He is well known for looking at accepted paleo science with a highly scientifically critical eye. He also has a pretty combative nature, which has meant that he’s come to be know as ‘The Kraken’. He’s not afraid of calling a spoon a spoon… 

Mathieu Lalonde, PhD — Nutrient Density: Sticking to the Essentials

Can everybody hear me with this mic? Can everybody hear me with this mic? Do you know how to increase the volume? You don’t, talk louder? Is this it? It’s on then, okay excellent. That’s a little too loud, okay that’s good, that’s great.

I’m Mathieu Lalonde. Just to clarify things, I have a PhD in organic chemistry from this university, also got my post doc in inorganic chemistry from this university. I’m currently staff, I’m responsible for training and teaching but I am not faculty and I do not have a research group; whether or not that makes me qualified to speak on the subject of nutrition is for you to decide. I often get the question why should I avoid grains and legumes and I purposely left dairy out of the equation and whenever I’m asked that question I will typically use these four things – there’s the immunogenic and allergenic properties of proteins that are found in grains and legumes. There’s unsustainable grain agriculture, it’s not clear whether or not legume agriculture is sustainable. There’s the whole theory of food palatability and reward, which is championed by 01:40, I hope most of you know his work and then there’s nutrient density. What I like about these four things is that when you present that to someone, you have a choice. You can either address it from an evolutionary angle or you can address it from a very simple, maybe biology-psychology angle specifically with these two things here, actually sorry these two things here.

The reason I say that is not because I don’t believe in evolution, I personally am a strong believer in evolution but it’s because 40% of Americans believe that evolution is false and 20% of Americans are still undecided on the issue and officially only 40% of Americans think that evolution is true. We are ranked 2^nd to last, Turkey is a little bit worse than we are. This is a very unfortunate reality for our community and this is why I prefer to address the issue in this matter. My talk, as the title implied, is going to focus on nutrient density and whenever someone asks me about nutrient density I give them this great paper by Professor Cordain and S. Eatton who’s sitting right here and this is a table that’s in the paper and they analyzed a variety of food groups based on these nutrients and then they classify them and you can tell based on their analysis vegetables have pretty high score, sea food, lean meat and then fruits. A diet of vegetables, sea foods, lean meat and fruits is going to give you everything that you need.

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