I recently bought a Amazon Kindle. It is a electronic reading device that allows you to download books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs wordlessly from the amazon store and read them on the device. What music is to the iPod touch, is what reading is to the Kindle. It has supercharged the convenience of reading and so I will be writing about the books topics who relate to this blog. I usually read 6-10 books a month with a 2-3 being about nutrition, sports, exercise, biology, science, etc and will include them in the category Book synopsis and review.
I came across The Evolution Diet: What and How We Were Designed to Eat and bought it on a whim because the topic of paleo eating interests me. Though the book is well written and I agree with most of it, there are many glaring fallacies that I would like to point out.
- The author recommends on numerous occasions to eat bread and grains. You would think by the title of the book, he would only suggest food items that existed before the agriculture revolution 10,000 years ago. This is very misleading.
- “Diets such as the Zone and Atkins push the unending benefits of protein as an energy source and blame all health problems on carbohydrates. Those methods of eating may help you loose weight – at least for a few weeks – but they will be contrary to what your body is designed for and cause a significant amount of stress on the inner workings of the body.” The Zone and Atkins promote a balance of protein and carbohydrates and aim to use fat as the primary fuel source. Though our ancestors did not evolve with a with by eating with a balance between protein/carb/fat that does not mean it will cause stress on the body. This is a case of empirical knowledge having more clout than conventional wisdom.
What I liked about this book the most was the authors ability to articulate his thoughts with analogies that make sense and are memorable. At one point he said, ‘do not eat anything that starts with a capital letter.’ A capital letter indicates it is a trademark, trade marks are man made, man made generally means it is processed (Oreo, Go-Gurt, Gatorade — chicken, almonds, apples). Another being ”A good rule of thumb… is that the further away from nature a food gets, the worse it is for our bodies.”
Here is the authors basic philosophy on food culture.
“Four principles of the evolution diet: 1. Listen to your body, not your culture, 2. Appropriate your diet in the method of our ancestors, 3. Eat from nature and avoid intake of Artificial Extreme Foods like friend Twinkies, and 4. Exercise and sleep when your body tells you to.”
This quote is a good synopsis of the book. It shows the very basics of paleo but lacks depth into the subject matter.
The Evolution Diet works well to get one thinking about why food that is closest to its original form is good for you but it lacks practical application and has limited scientific studies backing up his claims. If someone wanted to know more about paleo eating, I would suggest The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain over this book.
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Christopher,
Here’s a couple of books for your reading pleasure: (1) “Good Calories, Bad Calories — Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health,” by Gary Taubes, and (2) “Gut Feelings — The Intelligence of the Unconscious,” by Gerd Gigerenzer. “Good Calories” is a thick book — a difficult, detailed, and slow read — but rewarding if you want the scientific background to understand and appreciate the current carbohydrate / insulin dispute. “Gut Feelings” is short and interesting, similar in content to Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink”. Enjoy.
Cheers,
Dad