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The Paleo diet is specifically designed to imitate how human beings ate for tens of thousands of years. Does it seem odd to be calling it a fad diet? Of course,

The Paleo diet is specifically designed to imitate how human beings ate for tens of thousands of years. Does it seem odd to be calling it a fad diet? Of course, engaging in that form of name calling is inherently promoting the social norm as the non-fad. However, the social norm diet (particularly in the USA) today takes a majority of its calories from foods that did not exist for the most people living 200 years ago (refined vegetable oils, refined sugar, and refined or poorly processed grains).

VLM 14y ago
Correct although I'd revise it to quantities not just that it exists. You can have a perfectly healthy diet while consuming around one pound per year of corn syrup. Unfortunately, you simply cannot have a healthy diet while consuming 40 pounds per year per person of corn syrup (this no exaggeration BTW since roughly 30 years ago, not 200 years ago, coincidentally about when people started getting real fat) Also if you're a starving roman legionary living outdoors and marching 15 miles a day thru Gaul and doing hard core military training when not fighting pitched battles then what little wheat and corn you can get will not make you fat, but it doesn't work so well when you eat even more grains despite a lifestyle of sitting in a car for 2 hours a day and then at a desk for 10 hours and then watch TV for 6 hours at home on the couch and for a variety of lifestyle and economic reasons that isn't changing any time soon, although IS feasible you could maybe put down the six frosted filled donuts for breakfast and eat two sliced apples instead...
darkarmani 14y ago
> However, the social norm diet (particularly in the USA) today takes a majority of its calories from foods that did not exist for the most people living 200 years ago (refined vegetable oils, refined sugar, and refined or poorly processed grains). Don't forget: clean (refined) water, refined medicines, sterile operating rooms. Old doesn't make it better.

VLM 14y ago

Correct although I'd revise it to quantities not just that it exists. You can have a perfectly healthy diet while consuming around one pound per year of corn syrup. Unfortunately, you simply cannot have a healthy diet while consuming 40 pounds per year per person of corn syrup (this no exaggeration BTW since roughly 30 years ago, not 200 years ago, coincidentally about when people started getting real fat) Also if you're a starving roman legionary living outdoors and marching 15 miles a day thru Gaul and doing hard core military training when not fighting pitched battles then what little wheat and corn you can get will not make you fat, but it doesn't work so well when you eat even more grains despite a lifestyle of sitting in a car for 2 hours a day and then at a desk for 10 hours and then watch TV for 6 hours at home on the couch and for a variety of lifestyle and economic reasons that isn't changing any time soon, although IS feasible you could maybe put down the six frosted filled donuts for breakfast and eat two sliced apples instead...

darkarmani 14y ago

> However, the social norm diet (particularly in the USA) today takes a majority of its calories from foods that did not exist for the most people living 200 years ago (refined vegetable oils, refined sugar, and refined or poorly processed grains). Don't forget: clean (refined) water, refined medicines, sterile operating rooms. Old doesn't make it better.