“Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions
Disclaimer: I started reading on the paleo diet about a month ago, after friends recommended it as a support for my strength & conditioning routines. I've been loosely following the guidelines for the past 2 weeks. I do see an improvement in my sleep quality and in the past week have noticed a spike in my swimming endurance.<p>This article highlights one aspect of the scientific community that I abhor, the petty disputes. So on one side we have Cordain, who promotes a new diet that seems to carry some widely documented positive results, but who may be inaccurate in his notion that <i>we haven't had time to adapt to changes in our nutrition in the past 10,000 years</i> and may or may not be extrapolating a bit on other points. On another we have Zuk, hellbent at debunking the former's work, based solely on those arguments. Finally, we have Laura Miller, author of the article, who feels that Zuk's arguments are justification enough to dismiss proponents of the paleo diet almost as a fad.<p>Yes, crickets managed to adapt to their predator in 5 years, but what of the multiple examples of species that just disappeared, when another was introduced in their ecosystem? Cordain is probably wrong in some of his presumptions regarding evolution, but then Zuk just ends up pointing that out without proving anything of interest herself.<p>Does Miller really believe that people who eat paleo do so because the diet is from the paleolithic? Who cares when it's from? A month ago I had only a vague idea of when the paleolithic ended. If you asked me I would've said "hmm, 50k years ago?"<p>What convinced me was its simplicity and results. I read reports and testimonies of people getting better on it and athletes performing on it. Rather than telling me "actually, this isn't quite paleolithic" or "actually, we did have time to adapt", I would be much more interested in a study that debunks those reports, or at least attributes them to something else than the diet.<p>Also, I've not yet read enough on the diet in details, but from what I've garnered of its main lines, there are some specific reasons as to why certain foods should be avoided. How about looking at those arguments and then debunk them? I for one would love proof that the diet is wrong about cereals and legumes.