Dan Pardi has a recent blog post outlining five popular versions of the paleo diet (aka Stone Age diet, caveman diet, paleolithic diet). (I don’t like the term “caveman diet.”) Although it’s a short post, I haven’t read it yet.
Medical and nutrition science researchers need a concensus definition, if possible, before they begin their investigations. I suspect they’ll end up with several definitions, as we’ve seen with the Mediterranean diet.
“No dairy products”. I don’t see the point outside engineering a shibboleth.Just because dairy was a novel invention so too was mother’s milk and we are mammals after all.
Thanks for teaching me a new word, Dave!
-Steve
“Medical and nutrition science researchers need a consensus definition…”
I’d argue that what they need is a research culture and methodology that enable them to investigate a spectrum of paleo-inspired diets, rather than boosting or nay-saying a (defined or undefined) slogan.
BTW, I see from the literature* that greasy pellets of purified substances (sucrose, corn starch, corn oil, casein, cellulose…**) are called a “standard Western diet”, which is compared to “control” diets that consist of chow — which is an unpurified combination of foods (hence not at all comparable) that includes uncontrolled amounts of, for example, phytoestrogens.*** In other words, the “Western diet” isn’t Western, and the “control diet” isn’t a reasonable control, or even consistent, but that’s OK with peer-reviewed journals in what passes for a field of science.
I can’t imagine this sort of research culture producing anything but confusing noise.
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* Typical example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2748316/
** Used in the above: http://www.researchdiets.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/D12079B.pdf
*** Chow criticism from vendor of the above: http://www.researchdiets.com/resource/chow.htm