How To Even…Paleo Diet

By Michael Gushue & CL Bledsoe

Here’s some truth juice: everyone loves diet fads. The folks who invent them love diet fads because money. The people who follow diet fads love them because self-esteem and body image. The amazing thing is that every couple of years or so there’s a brand new diet fad that either (1) completely contradicts the previous diet fad, or (2) is exactly the same as the previous diet fad but with a different name. When did all this diet fad rigamarole start?

Probably in ancient Rome. If you were one of the poors, your diet consisted of:

• Grass baked into bricks but not considered sturdy enough for general construction.
• Water, by which we mean sewage.
• Fruit you stole from some Noble’s garden (e.g., Crassus Pinguis).
• Wine, by which we mean vinegar, by which we mean urine
• Some soiled animal/weather phenomenon that had been possessed by/mated with a god.

On the other hand, if you were wealthy, the purpose of meals was to show that you were willing to eat anything as long as it was ridiculously expensive, incredibly rare, and difficult to prepare. Dinner was an occasion to show off how decadent, rich, and don’t-give-a-fuck you were to your rich, decadent, don’t-give-a-hoot neighbors. Typical comment: “Larks’…