Have you considered the possibility that the paleo diet may be one of those rare things that is horribly flawed in theory but works just fine in practice? You'

Have you considered the possibility that the paleo diet may be one of those rare things that is horribly flawed in theory but works just fine in practice? You're correct that there's no good nutritional reason to only eat "paleo" foods (though certainly, almost all the foods that you should definitely avoid, like chocolate, chips and cheesecake, are non-paleo). You're also correct that a modern "paleo" diet doesn't have all that much in common with a hunter-gatherer's diet anyway. But as a useful heuristic for coming up with a healthy diet for weight loss in the modern world, it's not too bad. If you're trying to lose weight only three things really matter: a) Are you maintaining a calorie deficit? b) Are you getting enough nutrients? c) Is the diet easy to stick to, or does it make you hungry/give you cravings? The paleo diet seems to work fairly well by all of these metrics. It's really just a standard low-GI diet with a few other things unnecessarily banned (beans, dairy). The restrictive nature of the diet means you eat a diet rich in meats and vegetables, which are nutrient rich and fill you up with relatively few calories. The low-GI nature of the diet stabilizes your blood sugar and stops you getting the hunger pangs you'd get on a more carb-rich calorie-restictive diet. And it seems to be relatively easy to stick to with only a moderate amount of willpower -- I've been on it for nearly three weeks now and the idea of eating a brownie just gives me a headache. I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone trying to maintain weight, since I think it would be difficult and expensive to consume enough calories for a healthy lifestyle without eating modest amounts of grains. And the prohibition on beans and dairy is probably unnecessary. But as a workable heuristic for weight loss, "eat paleo foods" isn't half bad.