The Zone seems like an excellent program with genuinely solid results for
some people and a lot of good science behind it.  And in its defense, since
the book does recommend changing the ratios if needed, you could
theoretically say The Zone will fit just about anyone.  I heart from one
guy who jokes that after a great deal of fiddling with The Zone, he found
his ideal Zone ratio is <1% carbohydrate, 75% fat, and 25% protein--in
other words, Atkins.  There are also people out there pushing the 60%
carbohydrate, 20% fat, 20% protein diet, which you could argue is a "Zone"
diet for some people.  ;-)

>Also, and I mean this in the most good-natured way, your second
>sentence, "Macrobiotic diet experts..." doesn't sound all that different
>from how I've heard paleolithic eating presented on occasion. Or Zoning,
>for that matter. :)

A very valid criticism, and one of the reasons I often get impatient and
cranky even though I am very largely in sympathy with the ideas of
paleolithic nutrition.  My dictionary gives one of the definitions of
"philosophy" as "inquirity into the nature of things based on logical
reasoning rather than empirical methods."   It further defines philosophy
as including metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.  And in that sense,
injecting philosophy (as defined above) into this list can be a very -bad-
thing, because it can lead us to forget that ultimately the goal of diet is
to produce better health, and if that result cannot be demonstrated
empirically then this is nothing but a religion (and I don't need a new
religion).

The concept of a paleolithic diet is a simple one and fairly easy to
implement and test on yourself to see how your body reacts.  If it reacts
favorably (and I suspect that most people's bodies will) then you've got
something good.  If not you should probably look at it carefully to see if
you're doing something wrong, or if it just needs some tweaking or
fine-tuning for your individual needs.    But if you give it a good,
sincere effort and it's still not working out, find something else.  That
should be the attitude on -all- diets I think.  (Within reason of course.
The negative side of that is people like my sister-in-law, who tries at
least a dozen different diets a year and who clearly lacks commitment in
following any of them.)