There's decent evidence that avoiding grains like wheat is a good idea, but I don't think there's any reason to think sugars and simple starches are bad for you

There's decent evidence that avoiding grains like wheat is a good idea, but I don't think there's any reason to think sugars and simple starches are bad for you. The article insinuates orange juice is bad for you because it has sugar in it. So what? People in Cuba get something like a third of their calories from cane sugar and are quite healthy; healthier than Americans. Many healthy cultures have subsisted on milk, which is loaded with sugar. Cutting out sugars and simple starches like rice is just a convenient way for fat people to lower calorie intake. If you're lean I've not seen any convincing arguments to avoid sugars. Also, a lot of the paleo way of looking at diet as the cause of diseases is I think way over done. Some folks will insist almost any disease can be traced to diet, but I think there's good evidence that yet to be isolated infections cause things like rheumatoid arthritis and MS and some other stuff. For example, skeletons show rheumatoid arthritis existed only in the New World and spread after contact to Europe and Asia. Another aspect is mutational load. People with weak immune systems or poorly tuned cell metabolism used to regularly die in childhood. Now these people survive to adulthood and eventually exhibit various degenerative diseases. They also pass their genes on, increasing prevalence in the population. Diet surely matters, but population increases in various middle age degenerative diseases probably has other factors totally independent from diet.