hokum for the credulous, December 23, 2004 - John Coleman

After all the praise fans heap on Cordain, I was expecting a convincing
scientific case for his ideas. Instead what he offers is a collection of
anecdotes, fallacies and just-so claims.

The opening proclamation is that the Paleo diet is the diet humans are
designed to eat, because humans evolved on this diet. Thus an ad
antiquitatem fallacy is the basis of the entire concept. His evidence for
our alleged adaptation to the diet is changes in gut morphology, but a
single fact cannot be the basis of a scientific theory. Cordain follows
these fallacies by claiming that humans are not adapted to modern diets.
That's fair enough, but doesn't support his own fantasy.

The real null hypothesis to be refuted is not adaptation to modern diets,
but adaptation to a natural high plant food based diet - the logical
opposite of his claim. Of course, he never refutes the null hypothesis in
any reasonable way, instead he makes biased remarks about problems on
contemporary vegetarian diets.

When concern turns to constipation on such a high meat diet, Cordain drags
up some research that completely contradicts his diet. Firstly we have an
anecdote about Vilhjalmur Stefansson an artic explorer whos party were cured
of constipation eating the "Eskimo" diet. No surprise, because the diet is
full of oils and fats that are excellent lubricants. However, Cordain wisely
advises removing fat from modern meats, to lower the risk of cardiovascular
disease, with his version of the diet. Ironically his second piece of
supporting evidence proves his concerns over constipation wrong. When
Vilhjalmur Stefansson and a friend try the diet, supervised by doctors, they
report gastric problems if they consumed an all meat diet without all the
fat. It seems the Paleo dieter must choose between constipation or
cardiovascular risk? Ironically the Innu peoples have a god they call
Matshishkapeu ("fart man"), a god capable of delivering a deadly bout of
constipation. How did the Innu peoples ever know of the existence of deadly
constipation, and make it a centrepiece of their mythology? The existence of
constipation on a high meat diet is proof that humans are not adpated to
such a diet.

Where is the evidence that the stone age diet is healthy? Again, it's not in
this book. Contemporary stone age populations may not get cardiovascular
disease or cancer like modern people, but they are far from healthy, with
traditional remedies for common ailments from the cold to constipation.
Worse, stone age peoples had terrible childhood mortality rates, and poor
longevity by modern standards. Are we really to believe that bad diet has
nothing to do with this? Cordain wants us to believe this, but he has once
again no supporting science.

Nothing in this book is anything like science, the claims are not even
annotated with their respective references.

If you want to feel good about eating a lot of meat, this is a must read. If
you want a credible case for the stone age diet, you will be completely
disappointed.