There’s a bit more to the book than John and Robb indicate; here is my
reaction.
Although it is a good book, it is clear that we who have been around
evolutionary fitness for a while are not the target audience. For us, the
book has transformed the diet aspect of evolutionary fitness into just
another diet book, fighting for market share with, Dr Atkins, The Zone,
Hofmekler’s Warrior Diet, Fritz’s Evofit and Protein Power.
Early on, the book sets up a straw man of <the faddish low carbohydrate
diets> and sets out to distinguish the Paleo Diet from them. But the
contrasts are too vague to be useful. What we really need for comparison
is a complete statement of the over arching principles and assumptions of
each diet or, failing that, a food by food, nutrient by nutrient, analysis
of a week of recommended eating and drinking in the context of environment,
geographic location, climate, food availability, pathologies, activity
levels and activity types. We get neither.
The other early target of the book is <the typical American diet> but it,
too, is neither described nor analysed sufficiently for all readers to have
in their minds the same image.
There is a nutrient by nutrient analysis of one day in the diet of a 25
year old woman - is this the target buyer - but the precision indicated is
spurious. For example, on page 27 the selenium from her Paleo Diet is
indicated at 0.147 mg, but on page 133 we are, rightly, told that <the
selenium content of fruits and vegetables varies greatly, depending on how
much selenium was in the soil where the produce was grown>. What we are
missing is the source of the book’s precision: is it the result of the
author’s own work? Does it rely on the USDA data base? What is the
probable range in which this 0.147 mg fits? Are the recommended daily
allowances endorsed? We are not told.
Throughout the book there is much we are not told. And this is my
fundamental criticism. The Paleo Diet is the Paleolithic diet dumbed down
for the American book market. Thus we get an emphasis on fat loss, which
is unlikely to have been a concern in the Paleolithic era, but appears to
epitomize the market segment selected by the publisher. The book also
says, on page 45, we need more protein <to give us more energy and help us
burn off extra calories>. Burning off extra calories is the last thing
that Paleos would have wanted as it would have provided no evolutionary
advantage; quite the opposite.
Something else we are not told: on page 100 <It is not possible for us to
duplicate precisely all the foods that our ancestors ate. Many of these
foods no longer exist … or they are unavailable commercially, or they just
are not palatable given our modern tastes and cultural traditions>. Why
can’t we readers decide, instead of having this richness and complexity
censored from the book?
Another example of dumbing down is the apparent editing out of the
information we need to interpret what the book tells us. For example, on
page 45 <The average carbohydrate content of fruit is about 13 percent per
100 grams>. What is wrong with that sentence?
Another example on page 47: <To calculate the glycemic load, multiply the
glycemic index by the carbohydrate content> but a chapter seems to have
fallen out of the book at this point as there is no guidance on using the
glycemic load to make our dietary choices. Nor is there an indication of
the units to use for <carbohydrate content>.
A third example: Appendix A gives the acid / base values of 100g portions
of common foods. But the footnotes are missing. Why is mass significant
when reporting a ratio? If brown rice scores a +12.5, 12.5 what? It is
clearly not pH, the standard measure of acidity and alkalinity.
... continued ...
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