On to the next fad diet floating around out there! Remember, you don’t need me yammering at you in order to be able to evaluate these ideas. There are very, very simple things to look for:
1. Does the diet have a gimmick or a hook? In the case of the paleo diet, the gimmick is the idea that we need to return to those halcyon days when life expectancy was less than 30 years, there were no antibiotics, and you were in constant danger of starvation. Right, those days!
2. Does the diet have a solid basis in fact or is it just “science-y”? The premise of the paleo diet is that not enough time has passed in our evolutionary history from our hunter-gatherer days (say 10,000 years ago) till now for our bodies to adjust to our modern diet, specifically the food we eat that comes from agriculture. So all cultivated items are OUT, my friends. We can’t handle them. No grains. No legumes. No fruit not in season. (You can have those blueberries if you picked them yourself off a roadside bush.) Except that there’s evidence that we have evolved in the past few thousand years to adapt to items we eat now that we didn’t (necessarily) eat back in the Good Old Days. Many populations have now developed the ability to digest lactose (the natural sugar in milk) as adults, for example. And the discovery of grains and ancient grinding stones in paleolithic caves pretty much rendered moot most of the argument for avoiding that slice of toast with your avocado. You’ll never hear that from the paleo boosters, though. (You’ll also never hear them saying that the avocado you bought at the grocery store is a fairly modern cultivar that was unknown before 1920. Alas!)
Let me take a little detour here and explain a bit about this whole evolution thing, because the term gets so misused. There are basically two types of evolution: macro and micro. Macro evolution is the type of development that involves new species development. As the book of Genesis says in chapter 1, God created all creatures “after their kind.” There can be huge diversity within a species (think of dogs), but the lanes seem to be clear on this score, although there are plenty of discussions centering around what exactly the word “kind” means. There’s no question, though, that micro evolution takes place; that is, variations within a species. The whole drug-resistant bacteria problem plaguing our hospitals is the result of micro evolution or natural selection.
3. Is someone making a lot of money from the diet? Oh my, yes. The main dude is Mark Sisson, a one-man paleo diet industry. The title of his book says it all: The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram your genes for effortless weight loss, vibrant health, and boundless energy. You’ll note that I’m not linking to the book’s Amazon page as I usually do with items available there. I don’t want you to waste your money, and I have no interest in making any money myself by your following my link. He sells far more than the book, by the way, including, of course, ridiculously expensive supplements. All you have to do is read part of the subtitle: “reprogram your genes.” Honestly, folks, have you ever heard of anything so silly? (I seem to ask that question a lot on this blog.) I’ll leave my genes alone, thank you very much, and let them function the way God made them.
In fact, and here I climb up on my soapbox and start tearing my hair out, if it were indeed possible to “reprogram your genes” or indeed to “change the way your body works” in any substantial way, do you know what the result would be? Death. (While I’m up on the soapbox I’ll also fulminate against any and all devices that claim to “remove toxins” from your body. My husband used to work with a very down-to-earth, smart woman who had nevertheless gotten interested in one of those “foot detox” thingies and was considering spending $1,500 for one. Jim was able to convince her that the whole thing was a scam, as the changing color of the water in the footbath from clear to brown takes place whether you have your feet in the water or not. The brown color comes from . . . rust, which is produced as the salty water reacts with the metal inside the unit. And don’t get me started on those “pulsed electromagnetic field therapy” machines that “penetrate the whole body” and “improve all bodily functions.” Again, I’ll leave my bodily functions alone, as I’d prefer to keep on living. In reality though, and thankfully for those who undergo these treatments, they do . . . nothing much. Some, I think, play a low-voltage electrical current across the surface of the skin, thus giving you a nice tingly feeling. And there’s always the good old placebo effect.)
But I digress, as I often do. Let me wrap this up by saying that there’s some truth to the paleo diet in that we are indeed scarfing down food that our bodies can’t handle, but it’s perfectly clear what that food is: the stuff that has only been around in cheap quantity since about the 1970’s: junk food. Junk, junk, junk. Ding-Dongs and Ho-Hos and Cheetos and chips. And pop. And all the hidden sugar and salt in all processed foods. Our intake of sugar and refined carbs is plunging us into a full-blown health crisis. We don’t need people spouting and touting the glories of eating like a caveman; we need good, common-sense recommendations that we all need to follow.
But who’s going to pay for that?
Here are some good articles on various topics addressed in the above.
“How to Really Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer: Why the Paleo Diet Is Half-Baked” in Scientific American, June 3, 2013.
“Paleo People Were Making Flour 32,000 Years Ago” from The Salt: What’s On Your Plate, NPR. Sept. 14, 2015.
“INSIDE EDITION Investigates Detox Foot Baths” Nov. 8, 2011.
“Americans Are Totally Obsessed with Avocados Thanks to This Man” in TIME Magazine, June 27, 2017.