Most people interested in food-related matters are certainly
aware by now of the Paleo Diet - but may not really understand it.
This article from Epicurious, Scrutinizing the Paleo
Diet, presents a fair analysis of the pros and
cons. It's actually a review of a new book,
Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about
Sex, Diet, and How We Live by
Marlene Zuk. The Epicurious article also links to an
excerpt of the book in The Chronicle of Higher
Education, Misguided Nostalgia
for Our Paleo Past. It's quite an interesting article,
especially where it elaborates on Zuk's concept that we're
suffering under "paleofantasies," i.e.
"Given this whiplash-inducing rate of recent
change, it's reasonable to conclude that we aren't suited to our
modern lives, and that our health, our family lives, and perhaps
our sanity would all be improved if we could live the way early
humans did. Our bodies and minds evolved under a particular set of
circumstances, the reasoning goes, and in changing those
circumstances without allowing our bodies time to evolve in
response, we have wreaked the havoc that is modern
life."
Yet, as Zuk explains, it really isn't that simple.
"The paleofantasy is a fantasy in part
because it supposes that we humans, or at least our protohuman
forebears, were at some point perfectly adapted to our
environments." And she asks some reasonable questions,
"Recognizing the continuity of evolution also makes
clear the futility of selecting any particular time period for
human harmony. Why would we be any more likely to feel out of sync
than those who came before us? Did we really spend hundreds of
thousands of years in stasis, perfectly adapted to our
environments? When during the past did we attain this adaptation,
and how did we know when to stop?"
And going back to looking at just the diet, it's evident
that it's actually impossible to follow a true Paleo diet,
"even if we wanted to eat like our distant relatives
whose diets we do know about, we couldn't because most of the
plants and animals they were eating don't exist in the same form
today."
That's not to say that following a Paleo diet may not be a
good thing, especially for people who, by following it, find it
easier to give up unhealthy eating habits. As Zuk writes,
"But in a larger sense, we all sometimes feel like
fish out of water, out of sync with the environment we were meant
to live in. If gnawing on that rib or jogging barefoot through the
mud is therapeutic, enjoy. But know that should you wish to join
us, the scientific evidence will gladly welcome you to the 21st
century, in all its inevitable anxious uncertainty."
So if you want to pursue this further and are curious to try out
the Paleo diet, here are the cookbooks from the EYB
library that will help you along, sorted by popularity. And let
us know how you're doing.
Photo by CastleGrok