“Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions
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“Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions
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Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions
#2Based on the single review for the book on Amazon and the "15 of 52 found helpful", this seems to be an inflammatory topic:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q6XM1A/?tag=saloncom08-20
I'd be curious to see more scientific reviews of the book first before buying it.
Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions
#3Based on the single review for the book on Amazon and the "15 of 52 found helpful", this seems to be an inflammatory topic: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q6XM1A/?tag=saloncom08-20 I'd be curious to see more scientific reviews of the book first before buying it.
Goodreads has only two written reviews with positive scores and two negative scores without written reviews: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13707578-paleofantasy
There seem to be no reviews of any science bloggers that I can find - but from reading through the article it seems that the author and me share many grievances about the myths perpetuated by some of the paleo-diet-folks (I'm a biologist, myself).
Regarding that Amazon-review: It was posted on the 5th of March, but the book is only going to be published on the 11th. Did he/she get a preview-edition? I somehow doubt it, the reviewer doesn't seem to be the kind of person who receives copies for review.
Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions
#4Based on the single review for the book on Amazon and the "15 of 52 found helpful", this seems to be an inflammatory topic: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q6XM1A/?tag=saloncom08-20 I'd be curious to see more scientific reviews of the book first before buying it.
As is often the case with controversial reviews, the comments on that review are fairly eye-opening.
Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions
#5Interesting review and idea, although I have no idea if it's true. Makes me wonder what other area of knowledge that is filled with garbage.
I note that my programming skill(in term of producing tangle results) and mathematics are probably the only thing I trust in absolutely.
Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions
#6Based on the single review for the book on Amazon and the "15 of 52 found helpful", this seems to be an inflammatory topic: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q6XM1A/?tag=saloncom08-20 I'd be curious to see more scientific reviews of the book first before buying it.
The Amazon review is not by someone who is a verified purchaser of the item under review, nor does the reviewer appear to be, from the reviewer's other reviews I've quickly glanced at, someone who is deeply familiar with the science on the subject. So, yes, the topic is inflammatory, but I wouldn't think less of the book based on a "review" like that. I agree with you that it would be good to read reviews of the new book by scientists who research those issues.
(Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, after noticing that some "reviewers" of his first book seemed not to have actually read the book, added section headings in the table of contents of his second book designed to trip up lazy reviewers. He detected several of those, even among people who review books for professionally edited publications for mass audiences.)
Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions
#7Yep eating natural food is all bs.
Please go back to your regular diet of ice-cream and cheetos.
Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions
#8Interesting review and idea, although I have no idea if it's true. Makes me wonder what other area of knowledge that is filled with garbage. I note that my programming skill(in term of producing tangle results) and mathematics are probably the only thing I trust in absolutely.
The problem with the "paleo-diet" is that it's not really an area of knowledge (like for example, plant evolutionary biology). Judging from the published studies it looks like proponents of the diet make up the plans and then studies by actual scientists later confirm some of the positive (and negative) benefits.
There are some scientific studies on the "paleo-diet" as an actual dietary plan, searching pubmed for "paleo-diet", "paleo diet" or "paleolithic diet" reveals 77 results, a few of which are concerned with how modern man might benefit of an old diet. Some of the published stuff is positive about paleo:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21139123
> Furthermore, doubts have been raised about the necessity for very low levels of protein, fat, and cholesterol intake common in official recommendations. Most impressively, randomized controlled trials have begun to confirm the value of hunter-gatherer diets in some high-risk groups, even as compared with routinely recommended diets.
It also seems to be good for sufferers of Diabetes Type II: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20144375
So it seems that the usual recommendations for nourishment and sports (that's always good) are pretty good, but the evolutionary science behind it is quite hokum.
A lot of this knowledge that has been published outside of academic circles in books is slightly contradictory and is, in the worst case, broscience [1]. The wiki-page for this diet has some great points: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet
[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=broscience
Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions
#9The biggest problem I have with Zuk is that the entire premise of this book is based on a straw man argument. The "Paleo" in paleo diet comes from the fact that there was a clear dip in human health once we entered the neolithic era (i.e. started farming). We are not emulating a caveman's diet per se, we are simply trying to find and remove what caused that original dip in health.
To anyone uninformed about the paleo diet:
The Paleo diet is not a crusade against anything that isn't a meat or vegetable and its certainly not trying to perfectly emulate some fictitious caveman's food diary. The paleo diet is a recommendation to avoid things that have anti-nutritional properties, things that may tax our liver or our insulin response or halt our ability to digest vitamins and minerals as effectively.
The critical takeaway from the paleo diet is that there are many foods that the average person may have a "tolerance" for, but why eat foods we simply tolerate when we can eat foods that we thrive on?
Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions
#10The biggest problem I have with Zuk is that the entire premise of this book is based on a straw man argument. The "Paleo" in paleo diet comes from the fact that there was a clear dip in human health once we entered the neolithic era (i.e. started farming). We are not emulating a caveman's diet per se, we are simply trying to find and remove what caused that original dip in health. To anyone uninformed about the paleo…
That sounds interesting!
Do you have any proof for this statement:
>there was a clear dip in human health once we entered the neolithic era
This statement seems hard to prove seeing as we didn't keep any health-records between 10,000 BC and 2,000 BC (I can see, however, that we currently live quite unhealthy).