Who Were the Sea Peoples?

It's hard to say just what it was, but one thing for sure: it contained plenty of sugar in all that fruit: "IF we want to return to our ancestral diets, the ones we ate when most of the features of our guts were evolving, we might reasonably eat what our ancestors spent the most time eating during the largest periods of the evolution of our guts. If that is the case, we need to be eating fruits, nuts, and vegetables—especially fungus-covered tropical leaves... So, what should we eat? On its own, the past itself does not reveal a simple answer, ever." (Hat tip: Jim Henley.)

I was going to post on this (I swear) but Ryan beat me to it . I had thought about this when I saw a guy posting the anti-paleo diet -- plenty of starch! -- and boasting about how many people had had success with it. For one thing, he claimed, eating lots of starch makes you feel much more full than meat does! So let me add a couple of points to Ryan's: 1) These diets also work by simply cutting lots and lots of things out as verboten: once you have seriously reduced your food selection, you are unlikely to eat as much, since your diet is less interesting; and 2) These diets work by telling you that you will feel so much more full if you eat a lot of X, whether X is meat or X is starch or X is vegetables. You have invested in the diet, so you eat a lot of X, and say to yourself, "Gee, he's right: X really does fill one up more than Y!"

Reader August kindly sent me this link . This guy (Mat LaLonde) does not strike me as cranky at all. Just to be clear: I think NeoDarwinian theory is a pretty good description of how life has evolved, and I think that there are undoubtedly implications for our diet springing from that fact. What bothers me about some of the paleo advocates (e.g. DeCoster) is they seem to ignore plain facts about evolution, such as the rapid adaptation to dairy on the part of herding peoples. But certainly, we should look to our pasts for clues as to what might be good for us. My ancestry being Northern European, I am not bothered by wheat or dairy at all. My wife's ancestry being Southeast Asian, she can't tolerate lactose or gluten. That all makes perfect sense to me. And this seems to be what Mat LaLonde -- hey, Mat, who stole that 't' from your first name? -- advocates: pay attention to what you can and can't digest properly. And our evolutionary past certainly can give us hi...

Ryan Murphy is skeptical about the paleo diet . And with good reason: there is little evidence supporting it in the peer-reviewed literature, and its most cogent defender is a journalist. One response from the paleo advocates is: It's a conspiracy! All of the peer-reviewed journals have been bought off by big agriculture (although it is a mystery why in the world big agriculture wants us to eat less meat ). Bob Higgs once conveyed to me a very nice way to think about this sort of contention. (I quote him here from memory, so I will not have gotten his argument precisely!) "People ask me," he said, "if I believe that conspiracies exist. 'Of course I do,' I tell them. 'Just go down and eat breakfast in a cafe near K Street in Washington any morning, and there will be a conspiracy being hatched at almost every table around you." "But the people asking the question usually believe in one big conspiracy [the Bilderburgs, the Illuminati, agribu...

In my recent diet post , a number of commentators accused me of posting on something I knew nothing about. But that is the very point... I know nothing about nutrition science. But I know I don't know anything about it, so I listen to the experts. Sure they may be wrong, but they are my best bet. The problem the people commenting have is that they don't know anything about nutrition science either, but they think they do, because they have read a couple of diet books. The people they are challenging, on the other hand, have spent decades researching this stuff full time. Compared to them, the fact that you've read six books on the paleo diet is so close to nothing that calling it nothing is fairly accurate. And this applies to about any subject, say, canon law . Here is a nice quote from Professor Peters: "A professional knows the limits of his knowledge. An amateur does not know the limits of his knowledge. A dilettante does not know that there are any limits...

A 28-year long study of 121,000 middle-aged men and women shows eating too much red meat significantly shortens your lifespan. On the other hand, things like whole grains contain "hundreds of thousands of protective substance." Of course, what are massive scientific studies compared to a few testimonials , which, we all know, is the way real science gets done!

Tyler Cowen notes research showing that belief in completely contradictory conspiracy theories is positively correlated. Grist for this mill: how about a web site that holds both that: 1) The theory of evolution is a bunch of rubbish being pawned off on us by our statist masters? and 2) The paleo diet is a vital breakthrough, based on the theory of evolution, being hidden from us by our statist masters? I bet you can find one if you google for a minute or two.

I assure you, you and I have neither the skills nor the time to test each new exercise plan, form of alternative medicine, diet, etc. for ourselves. And let me further assure you that the fact that the founder of a fad is anti-state is a terrible way to determine your diet. So, what to do? Let the market do it for you. Especially the market most vitally concerned with the maintaining really top-notch health in people: professional sports. For pro sports teams with millions of dollars on the line, it is vital to stay on top of breaking research into health and fitness. They have great resources to put into evaluating these new ideas, and tremendous motivation to use anything that works, whether it is "anti-state" or not! Is chiropractic care quackery? The fact that 31 of 32 NFL teams employ chiropractors is a pretty good sign the answer is "no." Are paleo diet and exercise quackery? Well, on a web site promoting things paleo , we find: "NFL veteran John...