The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat [Paperback] Review

Let me begin by saying that I am a 100% believer in the paleo diet/ caveman diet concept.I am a national-level olympic weightlifter and have tried every combination of high/low carb/fat diet to find something that allowed me to stay in the same weight class as I got older.The only thing that has ever worked is the paleo diet.

For a good, concise description of the paleo diet, search for it on wikipedia.

Having said that, I will now be critical of this book.I found this book to be very verbose and never provided a convincing argument for the paleo diet.Very little evidence was provided that the diet described in this book was what was eaten 20,000 years ago.Most of the argument for this diet was modern research on how ingredient X (e.g. omega-3 fatty acids) is good for you.I have heard excellent evidence supporting the paleo diet during a few lectures by a scientist that studies coprolites (few thousand year old petrified excrement), unfortunately, similar evidence is not in this book.

Furthermore, there are a few technical issues I have with what is presented in this book.I have a PhD in theoretical chemistry.Having gone through graduate school, I know that just about anyone can get a PhD or become faculty if they are patient.Because of this, I'm immune to the Doctor/Professor name dropping used throughout this book.

Repeatedly, the author asserts that chloride from salt causes the body to become more acidic.Offhand, it is not at all clear to me how this could happen.Chloride ions in solution are basically inert.I have to believe that this conjecture is wrong.

The author also makes repeated comments about how bad salt is for you.A few years back, there was an article in the journal Science (one of the two highest tier scientific journals) about the politics of salt.The article describes a political agenda to show that salt caused medical problems.A few hundred million dollars and a half dozen project leaders later, the program was shut down because the researchers could not prove what the politicians wanted.I'm not suggesting that people should eat a lot of salt, since cavemen ate much less sodium and more potassium than we do today, but I am suggesting the health problems blamed on salt have sketchy research backing them up.

In spite of this book's problems, it is worth reading.The description of the paleo diet is good enough to be effective when followed.

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat [Paperback]



Buy cheap The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat [Paperback] now Get 32% OFF