Your cart is currently empty!
Hey Paleotards- You’re Doing It Wrong, Fuckfaces.
Paleolithic dieting is perhaps the worst of sub-subjects to diet, because even outside of the internet there appears to be no consensus among authors about what, exactly, paleo dieting is. In fact, the debate about what actually constitutes paleo is frankly more mind boggling than the fact that anyone finds Jack Black to be amusing. To date, I’ve read the following paleo books:
- The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet and Exercise and a Design for Living– S. Boyd Eaton, Marjorie Shostar, and Melvin Konner. If not the first, it was one of the first paleo books, and is shockingly the least “paleo” of any of them. I doubt these people are even clear on what the Paleolithic Era was.
- NeanderThin: Eat Like a Caveman to Achieve a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body– Ray Audette. In my opinion, the seminal work on paleolithic dieting, Audette recommends what seems to be the closest thing in print to what actual paleolithic man ate.
- The Paleo Diet– Loren Cordain. Initially, Cordain allowed for the inclusion of sweet potatoes and beans, neither of which are paleo for reasons I’ll list later in this article. He later backed away from that stance, but this book is a pile of shit.
- The Paleo Diet for Athletes: The Ancient Nutritional Formula for Peak Athletic Performance– Loren Cordain. Even higher carb and less paleo than his original book, this shitshow recommends sweet potatoes, bananas, and a post workout recovery drink with high-glycemic carbs post workout. Apparently, Cordain is unaware that there are athletes disinterested in running ultra marathons out in the world.
- The Evolution of the Human Diet: The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable– Peter Ungar, ed. An academic text on paleolithic eating habits in which Loren Cordain directly contradicts his mainstream work, this one is pretty much a gem if you want to find out what paleolithic man actually ate.
- The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet– Robb Wolf. My second favorite paleo book in which Robb Wolf not only gives a paleo drink recipe (it’s basically just tequila and lime), but he makes recommendations much more in line with the archaeological record and Audette’s recommendations.
- The New Evolution Diet: What Our Paleolithic Ancestors Can Teach Us about Weight Loss, Fitness, and Aging– Arthur DeVany and Nassim Taleb. Trash on par with the Paleolithic Prescription- this book was seemingly written for vapid housewives so whacked out of their heads on Vicodin they can’t tell bullshit from chocolate pudding.
- The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram your genes for effortless weight loss, vibrant health, and boundless energy– Mark Sisson. I was underwhelmed. Certainly not as bad as NED, but it was too touchy feely and not informative enough for my liking.
I’ll hardly assert that having read the above makes me some sort of an expert on the subject of paleolithic dieting, but I’ve done a tremendous amount of research into the actual archaeology and into the evolution of fruits and vegetables, which puts me heads and shoulders above all but perhaps three of the above listed authors. Before we delve into the actual archaeology, however, I felt it necessary to employ some aid from renowned internet paleo author J. Stanton, author of Gnoll Credo, to help me flesh out the divisions in the paleo community. You know, so I can eviscerate half of the internet for being the dumb fucks they are thereafter. As such, the following portion was cowritten by both Stanton and myself.
The Main Paleo Categories
Strict Paleo
“I determined, therefore, to eat only those foods that would be available to me if I were naked of all technology save that of a convenient sharp stick or stone.” (Ray Audette, Neanderthin) As mentioned above, this is for all intents and purposes the paleolithic dieting bible for anyone actually concerned with dieting in the manner of our ancestors. In practice his statement means meat, fat, organs, and any other unprocessed animal product from animals fed and finished on grass (or forage, in the case of non-grass-eaters like chickens); fish and shellfish; eggs; tree nuts; vegetables; roots; berries; mushrooms. Cooking is permitted, but dairy products, legumes, grains, potatoes, sugar, added salt, and processed foods of any kind are not. For reasons that will be covered later in the article, fruit is allowed but limited. Raw honey is allowed but very strictly limited to small amounts.
Traditional Paleo
This trend is currently exemplified by Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution and the Hartwigs’ It Starts With Food / Whole 30. Building upon strict paleo, it brings the additions of delicious, delicious salt, and other spices (except soy sauce and other grain-derived sauces), sweet potatoes (but not white potatoes), cooking oils made from animals or fruits (tallow, coconut, palm, olive). Clarified butter gets a hall pass, as do limited amounts of coffee, tea, mate, etc. Red meat is encouraged over white, eating the entire animal (offal and all) is encouraged, and there is a bit of fat-phobia in Wolf’s book, though he’s backed away from that position somewhat over time. This diet is also more tolerant of processed food, but it doesn’t allow for “Paleo” junk food nonsense like “paleo cookies” and “paleo pizza”, even if it is made with coconut flour, arrowroot, or other technically “legal” ingredients, no matter how much people who “have been on paleo for 4 days and just feel TOPS” might whine.
Primal
Primal is Mark Sisson’s brainchild, and is explained in his book Primal Blueprint. Primal includes all of the Traditional paleo foods with the inexplicable additions of white potatoes (an explanation on why white potatoes aren’t paleo is forthcoming. Just keep yer britches on.), dairy if you tolerate it well, and gluten-free soy sauce is OK. Though he’s apparently a glutard, his diet is fat-tolerant, as his general recommendation for carbs is around 150g/day depending on one’s goals. Completely counter to Audette, for whom cheating on a diet is tantamount to (and possibly worse than) cheating on one’s spouse, primal is more tolerant of occasional cheating (the famous “80/20 rule”). It’s essentially paleo-lite for housewives. In spite of that, Sisson was the first paleo source to cover issues like sleep and exercise in addition to diet, which makes his approach not entirely crap.
Perfect Health Diet
The PHD is essentially Primal with the addition of white rice and a few other tropical “safe starches” (e.g. cassava, sago, taro, tapioca). This diet recommends a starting point of appx. 15-20% protein, 50-60% fat, and 20-30% carbs, with modifications to suit various specific goals like hypertrophy or weight loss. It’s focused on nutrients like a fat kid with Prader-Willi syndrome on an ice cream cone, with specific recommendations for quantities of organ meats, bone broths, fatty fish and shellfish, etc. It’s more in line with Audette, even if the food choices aren’t, because the PHD is less tolerant of outright cheating but more tolerant to occasional low-fructose sweeteners like dextrose and rice syrup.
Specialized and obsolete versions of “Paleo”
Being something of a fad diet, certain versions of paleo have gone the way of reel to reel, the Dreamcast, the RCA video record player, and the Shake Weight. Before anyone gets their panties in a twist, stop and consider the fact that paleo is, for all intents and purposes, a fad diet. It arose out of a series of articles in mainstream journals about “Ancestral Diets” in the 1980s, turned into “Evolutionary Medicine,” and then became a diet with something of a cult following in health food stores. Later, CrossFit boxes abandoned the archaic Zone diet and pushed paleo’s popularity further, but since everyone has the attention span of either Lindsey Lohan or a gnat (they’re basically the same thing), paleo was dropped like a fat girl in swing class when everyone decided that gluten was the enemy and moved on to glutardation. I’m certainly not suggesting that the paleo diet isn’t useful, but rather that, like any other diet, its popularity will wax and wane with media coverage and, sadly, internet message board discussions.
Autoimmune Paleo
Autoimmune paleo was essentially traditional paleo minus all of the nightshade vegetables such as tomatoes, all peppers, both sweet and hot, eggplant, white potatoes, and the few common allergens remaining in a paleo diet, like eggs, nuts, and shellfish. This diet was typically only used by people with autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, and although it was generally very helpful for them, it fell out of fashion faster than two polo shirts worn at once with popped collars.
Cordain’s original Paleo Diet
This is perhaps one of the saddest books ever produced, because Cordain created a trend that flew in the face of his own research harder than that bird that smashed Fabio’s nose. It’s likely that Cordain wishes he could gather up all of those books and burn them, because what he essentially did was try to combine the low fat-faddism of the 1990s with paleolithic eating, which essentially created a horrifying chimera of diets that resembled the monster at the end of The Thing. In spite of the fact that Cordain suggested in “Implications of Plio-Pleistocene Hominin Diets for Modern Humans” that hunter gatherers’ diets (which he believe mirror paleolithic diets in many ways) contained between 19% and 35% fat, the original Paleo Diet includes bizarre admonitions like “cut all the fat off your meat and then fry it in flaxseed or canola oil.” Luckily, he managed to get his wits about himself in the last ten years and replaced his original pile of trash with a much more sensible and accurate book, The Paleo Answer.
Though these diets are all fairly disparate, they have a number of critical features in common:
- No grains. That means no bread, no cereal, no crackers, no tortillas or chips. (Exception: Perfect Health Diet allows white rice in moderation.) Grains (wheat, corn, rice, barley, oats, rye, and other seeds and grasses) weren’t eaten much in the paleolithic because they require milling and long cooking to be made edible. Raw grain plus water essentially equals paper mache, and there’s not a primate on Earth that can eat paper mache without shitting their proverbial pants.
- No grain products. This means no “vegetable oils” like corn, soy, sunflower, grapeseed, and canola, no corn syrup or Frankengredients like TVP (textured vegetable protein). That pretty much puts 75% of the supermarket off limit if you’re any kind of paleo.
- No peanuts or peanut butter. They’re a legume, not a nut. Plus they’re only 18% poor-quality protein (PDCAAS = 0.5) with boatloads of inflammatory linoleic acid (“omega-6 fat”). Peanuts, like corn, also contain a fungi called aflatoxins which is one of the most carcinogenic toxic substances known. There’s no treatment for aflatoxin infection, either- once you have it, you have it. Cooking can kill aflatoxins, but it’s not 100% effective- for some reason ancient man knew this, but flight attendants don’t.
- No sugar except what naturally occurs in fruit, and limited amounts of honey. Obviously, ancient man had little access to sugar cane, and they certainly weren’t going to tangle with a bunch of bees for honey on a regular basis. Thus, sugar and honey are pretty much out, which basically eliminates all junk food from one’s diet when combined with the grains.
In short, no matter what kind of paleo you’re doing, you’re essentially limited to the meat counter, the produce section, the spice rack, and maybe a stop in dairy. As J Stanton puts it “Eat anything you could pick, dig, or spear. Mostly spear.” He’s got an article to that effect called “Eat Like A Predator, Not Like Prey.” One caveat to the “dig” portion of Stanton’s quote I’d like to point out, and one to which I alluded earlier, is regarding modern tubers and fruits. Agriculture does funny things to food, and fruits and tubers are perhaps some of the best- they in no way resemble their ancestors. Tubers, for instance, were basically oblong pieces of bark with a tiny bit of meat in the middle. According to Loren Cordain (the academic, not the shitpile author of pandering diet books), most of tuber eating was chewing on and digesting insoluble fiber- paleolithic man got over 100g of fiber daily from gnawing on tubers .
Because eating tubers was so time intensive (and likely led to more TMJ than a 12 hour stint at a glory hole), tubers were likely the initial objectives of cooking (Ungar 36). Tuber consumption increased concomitantly with meat consumption and was likely the fallback food for primitive man, no doubt because that fiber filled up empty bellies (Ungar 203). That, however, is a far cry from the sugary-sweet sweet potatoes with Saran Wrap-thin skin upon which you’ll see your typical paleo advocate munching.
Similarly, white potatoes in no way resemble their ancient ancestors. The wild potato, which still grows in Peru (where it was originally domesticated 7000-10000 years ago), is more bitter than a fat girl on prom night, more gnarled than your great grandma’s arthritic hands, and thicker skin than what’s likely on your palms. Apples in the paleolithic were little larger than cherries and were incredibly tart- in fact, they were far more like the crab apples that litter your driveway every fall than the Granny Smith you see in the grocery store. If you want to see what an ancient strawberry looks like, look no further than a wild strawberry- they’re basically the size of blueberries and about as tart as a lemon. In short, none of the produce you’re eating is paleo, and tubers and fruits are the worst culprits in this regard.
I’ll continue this insanely lengthy article soon and hash out more of the reasons why people who eat paleo aren’t, in fact, eating like paleolithic man. Unfortunately, the introduction to the disparate types of paleo dieting took so long it left me with little room for explication of the difference between modern paleolithic eating and the actual diets of paleolithic man. In any event, there’s plenty more to cover, so we’re going to school these paleotards like they’re sitting in those tiny chairs with the desk attached. Luckily, their legs are so fucking skinny form all of the cycling and jogging that they can probably fit- let’s just hope they’ve eaten enough calories to hold onto their crayons as they take notes.
One final note- I love the idea of paleolithic dieting. I just hate the motherfuckers who do it.
Search
Latest Posts
Latest Comments
Categories
Archives
- October 2024 (1)
- February 2024 (1)
- July 2023 (1)
- May 2023 (1)
- April 2023 (2)
- March 2023 (4)
- February 2023 (1)
- January 2023 (1)
- August 2022 (1)
- June 2022 (1)
- May 2022 (1)
- March 2022 (1)
- February 2022 (1)
- January 2022 (2)
- December 2021 (8)
- November 2021 (8)
- October 2021 (22)
- September 2021 (6)
- August 2021 (12)
- July 2021 (7)
- June 2021 (6)
- May 2021 (7)
- April 2021 (4)
- March 2021 (7)
- February 2021 (9)
- January 2021 (6)
- December 2020 (3)
- November 2020 (7)
- October 2020 (7)
- September 2020 (4)
- August 2020 (6)
- July 2020 (6)
- June 2020 (5)
- May 2020 (9)
- April 2020 (6)
- March 2020 (8)
- February 2020 (9)
- January 2020 (11)
- December 2019 (10)
- November 2019 (5)
- October 2019 (8)
- September 2019 (6)
- August 2019 (4)
- July 2019 (6)
- June 2019 (10)
- May 2019 (9)
- April 2019 (5)
- March 2019 (8)
- February 2019 (8)
- January 2019 (9)
- December 2018 (6)
- November 2018 (3)
- September 2018 (1)
- August 2018 (1)
- July 2018 (5)
- June 2018 (2)
- May 2018 (5)
- April 2018 (4)
- March 2018 (3)
- February 2018 (3)
- January 2018 (1)
- December 2017 (2)
- November 2017 (2)
- October 2017 (5)
- September 2017 (1)
- August 2017 (2)
- July 2017 (1)
- June 2017 (3)
- October 2016 (2)
- August 2016 (1)
- March 2016 (1)
- December 2015 (1)
- November 2015 (1)
- October 2015 (1)
- August 2015 (2)
- July 2015 (3)
- June 2015 (1)
- April 2015 (1)
- March 2015 (1)
- February 2015 (2)
- January 2015 (1)
- December 2014 (2)
- November 2014 (1)
- October 2014 (3)
- September 2014 (3)
- August 2014 (5)
- July 2014 (5)
- June 2014 (5)
- May 2014 (3)
- April 2014 (5)
- March 2014 (6)
- February 2014 (7)
- January 2014 (8)
- December 2013 (2)
- November 2013 (4)
- October 2013 (6)
- September 2013 (5)
- August 2013 (5)
- July 2013 (5)
- June 2013 (5)
- May 2013 (4)
- April 2013 (4)
- March 2013 (5)
- February 2013 (6)
- January 2013 (7)
- December 2012 (4)
- November 2012 (5)
- October 2012 (5)
- September 2012 (9)
- August 2012 (7)
- July 2012 (7)
- June 2012 (8)
- May 2012 (9)
- April 2012 (9)
- March 2012 (5)
- February 2012 (7)
- January 2012 (5)
- December 2011 (4)
- November 2011 (10)
- October 2011 (5)
- September 2011 (4)
- August 2011 (6)
- July 2011 (5)
- June 2011 (4)
- May 2011 (5)
- April 2011 (4)
- March 2011 (5)
- February 2011 (4)
- January 2011 (3)
- December 2010 (7)
- November 2010 (12)
- October 2010 (13)
- September 2010 (11)
- August 2010 (14)
- July 2010 (11)
- June 2010 (7)
- May 2010 (8)
- April 2010 (11)
- March 2010 (4)
- February 2010 (7)
- January 2010 (13)
- December 2009 (6)
- November 2009 (6)
- October 2009 (9)
- September 2009 (12)
- August 2009 (5)
- July 2009 (7)
- June 2009 (9)
- May 2009 (7)
- April 2009 (6)
- March 2009 (9)
- February 2009 (7)
Tags
Newsletter
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
Insert the contact form shortcode with the additional CSS class- "wydegrid-newsletter-section"
By signing up, you agree to the our terms and our Privacy Policy agreement.
16 responses to “Hey Paleotards- You’re Doing It Wrong, Fuckfaces.”
Jamie you hit the nail on the head. Loren Cordain looks like he smells like piss and doesn't bathe. Fuck him.
Read this recently:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/evolution-of-diet/
That was a cool article.
… Was that a cool article?
Jamie,
did you ever study or do the "all-meat diet"?
http://web.archive.org/web/20150508150639/http://zerocarbzen.com/2015/03/09/zero-carb-interview-the-andersen-family/
http://zerocarbzen.com/the-bear/
http://www.empiri.ca/p/eat-meat-not-too-little-mostly-fat.html#don-t-make-these-mistakes
I've written about Vilhjalmur Stefansson more than once. I always add protein shakes to my diet, but for the most part that's how I've eaten for the last few years, with the addition of a carbup/cheat day.
Cocks
Can you elaborate a bit on the peanut butter part? I eat a ton of peanut butter since i mix it with my protein shakes 2-3 times a day. I'm not on a paleo diet but should i not be eating it or something?
No, stop fucking eating it. Consuming penis butter leads to AIDS, although feel free to smear it over your nipples if you want. You can easily replace it with kale in your pro shakes, or even cat shit.
I don't know what you want me to elaborate on. Peanuts contain aflatxoxins, as I mentioned, and if you get aflatoxin poisoning you're fucked- there is no cure for that.
Are You Having Problems FOLLOWING with your Paleo Diet?
Want to munch on healthy delicious recipes as soon as TONIGHT?
Get your awesome Paleohacks Cookbook.
With bistroMD you can rest assured that not only will you get delicious meals, but that every entree and every day in bistroMD's weight loss programs will be balanced to bistroMD's designed nutritional platform to help promote an healthy diet.
STEP 1 – Select one of the weight loss plans for 5 to 7 days of meals.
STEP 2 – Overview your menu before ordering and select the entrees you want for each day and week.
STEP 3 – Order your weight loss program online.
STEP 4 – Your meals are sent to your door.
ORDER NOW – delivered to your home.
New Diet Taps into Innovative Plan to Help Dieters LOSE 20 Pounds within Only 21 Days!
QUANTUM BINARY SIGNALS
Professional trading signals delivered to your cell phone every day.
Follow our signals right now and gain up to 270% a day.
Discover How You Can Master Your Habits And Reprogram The Subconscious Mind To Get Any Result You Want In Your Personal Development and Fulfillment!
Introducing… Procrastinating Your Procrastination!
Are you looking for free YouTube Views?
Did you know you can get these AUTOMATICALLY AND ABSOLUTELY FREE by registering on Like 4 Like?