Paleo 2.0, a rational response to inanity

 Have you guys heard of Paleo 2.0 yet? If not, I recommend reading about it. Dr. Kurt Harris says that Paleo has become polluted by dumb ideas like:

• Hominin ancestors ate only lean meats and little saturated fat
• A paleolithic diet is characterized by plenty of cultivated nuts
• A paleolithic diet has plenty of sweet fruit year-round - fruits that did not even exist until they were artificially bred a few hundred years ago
• A Hunter-gatherer diet always had a precise balance between “acidic” and “basic” foods and failure to maintain this precision would lead to calcium being “leached” from your bones, resulting in osteoporosis.
• A paleolithic diet has plenty of grilled salmon and skinless chicken breasts.
• Eating fish is essential to brain growth and general health.
• Milk and cheese are causes of cancer.
• Eggs can be eaten, but you should throw away the yolks to avoid too much cholesterol.

I agree, but I'd add a few more:

• leaky gut is the case of most illnesses
• X neolithic foods cause leaky gut
• X food is bad because of some botantical "fact" like it's from the "new world"

I've noticed this quite a bit since Chris Masterjohn has two new posts on Gluten Sensitivity which attack the first two bad ideas: 

Gluten Sensitivity -- Promises and Problems

How to Properly Interpret Ex Vivo Studies

Maybe I am sensitive because Chris is my boyfriend, but mostly I am amused by the comments he gets. I have thus dramatized a few of them from various authors in this video for your amusement:

As for the last point, I will just say that every time I read a blog post by a paleoautomaton recommending "yams" (sweet potatoes) and condeming the evils of white potatoes, I just chuckle at the botanical ignorace.

Overall, at this point I'm annoyed enough with the whole thing that I'm almost embarrased when people call me paleo. When I think about things that are important to me, are they really paleo? Is it worth being associated with this whole nonsense? But then I remember that Chris isn't even paleo and he still has to endure it :) 

So, what's important to me at this point?

• Grass-fed local meat from good farms
• elimination of crap ingredients like soybean oil
• that people stop fearing good fats

And these three things, while they have been shaped by my involvement in paleo, aren't paleo per se.