[Chet]

Check out this excellent wee vid:

Paleo in a Nutshell

It's from Methuselah at Pay Now Live Later, a very insightful UK nutrition based blog.

[Gubernatrix]

It's an amusing presentation and well put together but I don't think it would convince many people who weren't already that way inclined. It's just too easy to pick holes in the argument. I'm that way inclined and even I have my doubts. None of them were assuaged by the presentation.

Yes I believe all the stuff about the agricultural lobby and the fact that we've only been farming a very short time - those are the easy points to make. But trying to convince me that milk, cheese and bread cause all those diseases.....?? The presentation doesn't get anywhere near backing up that claim. There were no facts or figures, just assumptions and speculation.

I also think I would be rather offended if I was a doctor, implying that I am merely a pawn of 'big food' and the pharmaceuticals.

The presentation works well as an introduction or as a starting point for discussion. It explains the concept but it raises more questions than it answers.

[Chet]

Gubernatrix, on Apr 11 2009, 11:05 PM, said:

The presentation works well as an introduction or as a starting point for discussion. It explains the concept but it raises more questions than it answers.

Aye - I agree in the fact that it works well in the ways you have described above.

As far as I can tell, this was indeed the authors intentions - an easy to follow presentation that pairs common questions with basic reasons/answers.

IMO the fact that it promotes further thought/discussion/questions is a good thing

[Gubernatrix]

Fair enough. I think I was a bit put off by a lot of the comments people were making about the video - like it was the Ten Commandments or the secrets of the universe or something.

I think people (including myself) who follow cutting edge systems or concepts - whether it is paleo eating or barefoot running or whatever - need to keep in the back of their mind that there is a lot we don't know about this stuff and that however attractive the idea, it is often based on something we want to be the case or we think should be the case - not necessarily what is.

Er, anyway sermon over.

[Will Walshe]

I know what you mean mind you, but calling paleo eating a cutting-edge concept made me chuckle

[Gubernatrix]

Maybe I should have said "zeitgeisty" instead of "cutting edge" then. I'm sure that would still have made you chuckle but that's kind of my point. People who eat "paleo" are not eating like our ancestors, they are eating the way people do in a supermarket society - loads of choice, everything in season all the time, any type of animal or fish you desire.....

[Gubernatrix]

Here's an essay by Ran Prieur that is similar to where I'm coming from (but much more elegantly expressed). He is talking about primitivism in general rather than paleo dieting.

The essay is pretty long and you can read the whole thing here, but the first few paragraphs are the salient ones in this discussion:

Western industrial society tells a story about itself that goes like this: "A long time ago, our ancestors were 'primitive.' They lived in caves, were stupid, hit each other with clubs, and had short, stressful lives in which they were constantly on the verge of starving or being eaten by saber-toothed cats. Then we invented 'civilization,' in which we started growing food, being nice to each other, getting smarter, inventing marvelous technologies, and everywhere replacing chaos with order. It's getting better all the time and will continue forever."

Western industrial society is now in decline, and in declining societies it's normal for people to feel that their whole existence is empty and meaningless, that the system is rotten to its very roots and should all be torn up and thrown out. It's also normal for people to frame this rejection in whatever terms their society has given them. So we reason: "This world is hell, this world is civilization, so civilization is hell, so maybe primitive life was heaven. Maybe the whole story is upside-down!"

We examine the dominant story and find that although it contains some truth, it depends on assumptions and distortions and omissions, and it was not designed to reveal truth, but to influence the values and behaviors of the people who heard it. Seeking balance, we create a perfect mirror image:

"A long time ago, our ancestors were 'primitive.' They were just as smart as we would be if we didn't watch television, and they lived in cozy hand-made shelters, were generally peaceful and egalitarian, and had long healthy lives in which food was plentiful because they kept their populations well below the carrying capacity of their landbase. Then someone invented 'civilization,' in which we monopolized the land and grew our population by eating grain. Grain is high in calories but low in other nutrients, so we got sick, and we also began starving when the population outgrew the landbase, so the farmers conquered land from neighboring foragers and enslaved them to build sterile monuments while the elite developed an empty death culture, and invented technologies of repression and disconnection and gluttonous consumption, and everywhere life was replaced with control. It's been getting worse and worse, and soon we will abandon it and live the way we did before."

Again, this story contains truth, but it depends on assumptions and distortions and omissions, and it is designed to influence the values and behaviors of the people who hear it. Certainly it's extremely compelling. As a guiding ideology, as a utopian vision, primitivism can destroy Marxism or libertarianism because it digs deeper and overthrows their foundations. It defeats the old religions on evidence. And best of all, it presents a utopia that is not in the realm of imagination or metaphysics, but has actually happened. We can look at archaeology and anthropology and history and say: "Here's a forager-hunter society where people were strong and long-lived. Here's a tribe where the 'work' is so enjoyable that they don't even have the concept of 'freeloading.' Here are European explorers writing that certain tribes showed no trace of violence or meanness."

But this strength is also a great weakness, because reality cuts both ways. As soon as you say, "We should live like these actual people," every competing ideologue will jump up with examples of those people living dreadfully: "Here's a tribe with murderous warfare, and one with ritual abuse, and one with chronic disease from malnutrition, and one where people are just mean and unhappy, and here are a bunch of species extinctions right when primitive humans appeared."

Most primitivists accept this evidence, and have worked out several ways to deal with it.....

....A more reasonable move is to abandon primitive life as an ideal, or a goal, and instead just set it up as a perspective: "Hey, if I stand here, I can see that my own world, which I thought was normal, is totally insane!" Or we can set it up as a source of learning: "Look at this one thing these people did, so let's see if we can do it too." Then it doesn't matter how many flaws they had. And once we give up the framework that shows a right way and a wrong way, and a clear line between them, we can use perspectives and ideas from people formerly on the "wrong" side: "Ancient Greeks went barefoot everywhere and treated their slaves with more humanity than Wal-Mart treats its workers. Medieval serfs worked fewer hours than modern Americans, and thought it was degrading to work for wages. Slum-dwellers in Mumbai spend less time and effort getting around on foot than Americans spend getting around in cars. The online file sharing community is building a gift economy."