I’m gonna say this before we go one step further lest there’s confusion: people can and have lost weight and improved their health with paleo diet plans. If it works for you and your doctor says it’s cool, cool. I’m not here to monkey with that.
But like every diet, it comes with more than its share of bullshit. Some folks who promote the diet present it as a panacea that can treat diseases. Like long loved bondage ropes, ‘fraid not.
Today’s Moment of Science… Paleolithic man would eat the shit out of some cronuts.
The modern version of the paleolithic diet was first introduced in the 1970s with gastroenterologist Walter L. Voegtlin’s publication of The Stone Age Diet. It called for a way of eating loaded with animal products, high in fat and low in carbohydrates. Dairy and legumes were allowed, but only cooked fruits and vegetables. Doesn’t sound like what I expected from pre-ag diets, but I’ll play along for now.
Then he made arguments that humans are more closely related to dogs than sheep because we’re both carnivorous, so of course. He advocated for cullings of tigers and dolphins because he thought they were going to rise up and take over the world from man. Here’s where it goes from ‘daffy’ to ‘fuck that guy.’ Since the diet recommends expensive grass fed beef but only 3% of the US beef supply qualifies, he only wanted, uh, “superior types of individuals” to make babies that we had to feed. He was a eugenicist and white supremacist.
Let’s be clear, paleolithic advocates today by and large disavow this racist cuntwhistle. But given that many of his screwball ideas remain in the diet today, it’s unfortunate that the core tenets from this lunatic’s diet plan haven’t been prodded with more curiosity.
The even more modern version of the paleolithic diet (my brain hurts) was launched on us in the early aughts by some guy who I’m not gonna name because I really don’t wanna get sued. The basic rules of eliminating grains and processed foods, sticking mainly to meat, vegetables, and lower carb fruits seems reasonable enough.
Then, unlike many low fat diets, it cuts legumes. Unlike low carb diets, it eliminates dairy and artificial sweeteners. No butter, but it allows butter’s pricier cousin, ghee.
Then somehow it gets even more fucking annoying.
The rules teeter between seemingly random and infuriatingly stupid. No canola oil. No sugar. No corn or peas. Watch out for omega 6s, lecithins (I’m still unsure of exactly why), and minimize your intake of nightshade vegetables. Stick to pricey grass fed bullshit, seafood from non-farmed sources, fresh organic fruits and vegetables, cage free eggs, only a limited amount of nuts and seeds due to their ‘inflammatory’ properties, sweet potatoes are fine but regular potatoes are generally out. And for some ungodly reason, avoid salt.
Soon they’ll tell me cocaine and piss drinking aren’t paleo, and what’s the point of living then, huh?
Allegedly it’s worth giving up on happiness because bread causes goddamn all your health issues. Proponents of the diet have claimed gluten and other no-no foods cause a cavalcade of disorders. One article even claims that tomatoes and vaccines contribute to your autoimmune woes.
It’s not that all paleo popularizers are anti-vax, but the problem with believing you’re gonna live a long healthy life if you just eat like the cavemen? Someone’s gonna inevitably lean in and see if that’s the only thing you need to do, everything else we know about medicine be damned.
How real are the claims at the heart of the diet? Was this even the diet consumed by paleolithic man? Now to be fair, even if it’s not true to its name, it can be a healthful way to eat. But the promise is that it’s healthy for you specifically because it’s our ancestral diet from before agriculture started 10,000 years ago, which just doesn’t stack up. Research has shown that we were eating grains 170,000 years ago. Paleolithic humans had different diets in every part of the world likely due to a lack of global supply chain distribution. And thanks to selective breeding and hybridization, the foods that were around then are barely recognizable.
I’m guessing there were no honeycrisp apples.
Remember, if it works for you, paleo is mainly lean protein, fruits, and vegetables. However, some of the rather arbitrary rules make dietary sustainability difficult, and that’s the problem. If you’re trying to get healthy, something you can grimace through until you’ve lost some weight ain’t it. All that said, if you’re interested because it sounds like something that could be sustainable and healthy for you, don’t find a diet popularizer online. Go talk to your doctor and a registered dietitian.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, not looking forward to writing about the final boss of diets, the carnivore diet.
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