Good posting about WAPF's misguided criticism of other healthy diets like Paleo.

"Overall I agree with most of the tenants of the Weston A. Price foundation..."

Here I never knew they were landlords ;-)

Jimmy Moore has already interviewed Sally Fallon about her article and she doesn't give an inch. Jimmy listed many of the other responses at the end of his post...the one from ThePaleoMom is terrific: http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/...-fat-diet/19307

I did that too, though not necessarily for the same exact reasons. And I still think I'm right in my criticism Loren Cordain's Paleo diet. I also criticized some of Price's own conclusions, and I still think I'm right about that too.

Pottenger's cats suggest that those triplets will require an even bigger effort to reproduce, if it becomes even possible for them to do so by then. And even if they can, IVF does not guarantee viability of their offspring or the next generation after that. So no, not daft, just slow to be realized. But one thing is certain, the progression from loss of health, to loss of fertility, then loss of viability will happen.

It's been happening for the past 10,000 years since the beginning of agriculture, and it's been accelerating with world commerce and the lipid hypothesis. Forget asteroids and aliens, if you need a solid idea for your next doomsday movie, this is it. Extinction by diet-induced infertility and non-viability. Ironically, all this is made possible by modern medicine, which itself was made a necessity by the products of agriculture. It's very possible. You can't fix dead.

On the other hand, I agree with the idea of momentum in the same general direction. Better to make friends with people who mostly agree with you, than make enemies with people who disagree a little with you.

I think you can find any one of these dietary "sins" among some group or other that Price studied. The Inuit alone covers much of this. I don't think the "Paleo" diet is homogenous enough to criticize in this manner... but a diet doesn't need to include all the foods Price came across healthy populations eating to be considered reasonable.

As the blog post states, Cordain has rethought some of his initial premises. He did what reasonable people do when they're presented new information. Even Dr. Atkins made changes in his diet, right? Otherwise why bother to write a new book?

But the Paleo movement is not about that one book written 10+ years ago. It is far, far bigger than that and encompasses a wide variety of interpretations.

You know, I realize that many people have certain ideas about what a given diet includes.

When you have a diet like Atkins, where a specific person outlines a specific plan and includes or excludes specific foods or macronutrients or whatever, then you can judge it.

But how can you globally judge something like Paleo?

Whale fat is technically paleo far as I know, although I don't know anybody eating it. That isn't saturated enough?

It's like the idea that paleo is low-carb or something; far as I can tell it is not. That's an addition some people just like to add in there.

And there are plenty of lacto-paleo people that eat a lot of coconut oil and butter and goat cheeses.

It just seems like an odd thing to speak out against, only because it forces a definition, like we have to point to one person and say "that person is the ONLY definition of that way of eating that matters."

Natural selection is already working. Infertility is a helluva bigger problem in today's world than I think it was a few centuries ago although I admit I've never seen actual stats. Then again that's in the first world countries. The sheer staggering quantity of kids bred like insects in third world countries still seems to be out of this world. But that seems to be partly a poverty survival response (the harder the conditions, the more children, as the odds that someone will survive are higher).

Janet, using the link you provided, I don't see any comment from PaleoMom on that page.

Only peripherally related: I recently found this mayo http://www.wildernessfamilynaturals...mayo/Mayo16.php which is expensive, but then if you made your own using all those ingredients it probably would be too. I haven't got it yet, to try it yet. I doubt this would qualify as paleo but I think it's a nice example of a modern food doing its best to hold all the "principles" of paleo in place.

PJ

PJ,
Hers is the first on the long list of rebuttals at the end of Jimmy's post, but here is the direct link: http://www.thepaleomom.com/2013/07/...paleo-diet.html
It is followed by Diane Sanfillippo's response, and many others, a list that has only grown since the interview. Good-hearted Jimmy tried to find common ground and a "we are all working together to improve the SAD" approach, but Fallon just repeated her criticisms. I tune out all the paleo bloggers who argue over minutia or criticize low carb so further expanding the "food fights" is disheartening. Let's all agree that Coca-Cola and Cocoa Puffs are not real food and stop wasting time staking out territory.

Don't think I want to try a mayo that is stable for 18 months! Fresh mayo is a snap to make, inexpensive, lasts about two weeks in the fridge, and doesn't need a sweetener to balance the vinegar. That is one complicated list of ingredients in that jar.

I actually liked the list of ingredients.

If I could make mayo a) that worked, sometimes it doesn't for me and b) that didn't taste like crap, I wouldn't be looking to buy it I suppose... I can't even remember the last time I had it now.

*

Did she actually imply -- if not basically SAY -- that it is DEPRIVING THE CHILDREN if they don't get sourdough bread or baked beans and that hence, paleo people must be mostly childless because they just haven't thought that through?

THAT'S INSANE!

That's like the "You're depriving your kid of pasta" argument against lowcarb!

I don't understand. Is she possessed? I mean she has been nothing but the stalwart on good eating -- if you don't count the above LOL but that's her eating plan -- but why would she need to make such a big huff about paleo?

Thanks for the article. As I suspected, it pointed out how frankly wrong the insistent-assumptions were that she was making.

PJ

LOL! It took me a while to get that.

Good one, Cleome! LOL

ETA: Ahhh, just now saw Nancy complimented you on your grammar catch first.

Step 1) put down paleo.
Step 2) co-opt its basic principals.
Step 3) hope people buy into this nonsense.

I see two main problems with diets based on anthropology and history. The first is what I call selective re-creationism. It's the idea that we can select aspects of individual diets to make one comprehensive diet, then attach the claim that this new diet is just like the old diets it's based on. The current WAPF diet suffers from this. The second problem is political correctness. The original version of Loren Cordain's Paleo diet suffers from both.

If we remember Dr Jay Wortman's experiment, this would be much closer to reality, rather than selective re-creation or political correctness. The idea here was to re-create a diet as close as possible to what this same group ate historically. Sally tries to convince us that the WAPF diet is "traditional", but in fact between the three, only Dr Wortman's experiment reflects actual traditions of one diet of one group.

On the whole, it's not so much of a problem since most of these diets adhere to similar fundamental principles, which when tested experimentally, produce similar results. Low-carb (what Taubes calls refined and easily digestible carbs), high-fat, whole fresh foods, plenty of fresh meat. Take the Atkins diet and the Mediterranean diet for example. They're pretty close in terms of performance, yet Atkins comes out on top. And this is very interesting since Atkins isn't based on any traditional diet per se. Instead, it's based on contemporary clinical results.

Another problem is that most diets I know of haven't been tested experimentally like in the A-TO-Z study for example. We got tons of claims but no hard data. Without hard data, all we got is opinions and opinionated people. Let's get the hard data and cut the BS.

Oooh, if you're not up to reading that article I linked above, at least look at the handsome guy. 3 pictures of him in there, only in the first one is he fully clad.