in which i'm cranky about paleo

[brigid]

for the past week i've seen four or five FB posts linking to this article

Comments

[brigid]

right? i mean that's the thing, it's essentially a diet saying "modify this however you want but stay away from super processed/super sugary stuff"

plus i love that even though animal protein is a part of it, it really pushes for seasonal and local shopping as well as grassfed & humanely treated animals. that (to me) seems pretty ethically sound

[atalanta]

i don't care what people want to call it and don't see much reason to spend time and energy critiquing it, but I definitely _have_ seen/heard people earnestly advocating the very literal "eating like cavemen!" idea.

[brigid]

oh see that is just stupid. i mean...yeah i haven't really interacted with anyone who thinks they're keeping it super duper oldschool (that would be incredibly irritating)

[spitcurl]

See, it IS incredibly irritating. And stupid. And I have encountered those people! Those are the people the satire is mocking, and NOT the sincerely healthy & rational people who relate to the types of foods eaten in Paleo

[jasonlizard]

Like many of the other restriction diets, I think paleo is just another way to get calories back down to where they ought to be. If you cut all the processed junk from your diet, you eat far more reasonably. And a lot of people need rules in order to function so they don't have to make decisions based on subtle distinctions.

That said, A tried paleo and was taking shots of olive oil to get the necessary fat calories. Which sort of defeats the purpose.

I think Michael Pollan nailed it, "Eat food[1]. Not too much. Mostly plants."

[1] Anything your grandparents would recognize as food from their childhood. Pop tarts and things that are ready in the microwave in 5 minutes probably don't make the cut.

[brigid]

that is, to me, what paleo is, eating real food, not stuff that will last sitting on a shelf longer than i'll probably exist on the planet ;)

i'm surprised that A had a hard time with the fat calories, is she a vegetarian?

[plankton]

Paleo definitely appreciates a lot of what Michael Pollan has to say even if they disagree on some of the details. They really push the "eat things only your grandparents would recognize as food" and there's a lot of concern in the community that as the diet becomes more popular there will be lots of prepackaged paleo foods put on the market. At least just about every book, podcast, blog, etc advocate buying food either from farmer's markets or shopping the perimeter of the grocery store. I'm always kind of amazed at the center aisles at conventional grocery stores (not trying to sound elitist or too get off my lawn, but really the sensory overload is remarkable

[iswari]

I recently did the Whole30, and had a similar experience of the center of the grocery store. I was walking through the middle to get to the chopped salad bar, and suddenly, I also felt overloaded by all the rows and rows of processed foodstuff.

[sirendipity]

What I wanted to say on FB, but felt it would add to the flames is that I think part of the reason why people struggle with the idea of paleo (and atkins, etc) is a symptom of 30 years of "healthy = low fat, high carb" teachings. People struggle with staying healthy, feel guilty when they aren't, and when a new way of "healthy living" comes around that's the opposite of what they've been told for decades it's like a slap across the face. They HATED atkins. Hated. I tried it for a few months and friends would get angry at me - yes, angry - because I would opt for berries as opposed to an apple. It was like I personally affronted everything about them as a person. It was... weird

[brigid]

well that's the thing, to me the article was annoying because it's seriously picking at the lowest hanging fruit since "yeah this diet is sound and healthy but the name is dumb so we're going to poke at it" because (to me) it just seems like a proxy for actually making fun of the lifestyle and people who practice it, just in a less direct way as opposed to flat out saying "it's a fad diet and you're stupid for doing it" (which is essentially the direction some of the comments went anyway) which just sort of felt disingenuous.

i think the only "diet" i've ever reacted really harshly to is the master cleanse, and that is solely because it's incredibly unhealthy for women since it leaches calcium like you wouldn't believe and because it's completely founded on really insane pseudo science (i read the book by the guy who designed the diet and it's flat out bizarre)

[iswari]

I totally agree with you that paleo critics get hung up on the caveman crap, and it's crazy, because most paleo people I know are just not into that at all. I also agree that most people I know who are paleo are prioritizing health over weight (and I've heard so many stories from friends about the specific ways in which eating in this way has improved their health), in contrast to those I know who have gone on the Atkins or South Beach diets (which may contain a lot of processed junk).

A former teacher of mine recently posted about co-authoring this, and it annoyed me on so many levels (I read it just to confirm my suspicions!):

http://www.amazon.com/The-Low-Carb-Fraud-Colin-Campbell/dp/1940363098

Debating whether or not to respond. I also did the Whole30 (though probably more plant-based than some, being mostly pescetarian), and really benefited from it.