It's "natural" all right, but is it "Paleo"?

About Unknown Tony is the host of the Paleo Magazine Radio podcast, author of "Paleo Grilling: A Modern Caveman's Guide to Cooking with Fire", and Cofounder of Powerful PT, an innovative information resource for Fitness Professionals. He has appeared on numerous local and national television and radio broadcasts and regularly hosts healthy cooking workshops and informational lectures. He is also a full-time Personal Trainer and Wellness Consultant who lives in Jacksonville Florida with his wife Jamie.

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Whether you call it Paleo, Primal, Archevore, Ancestral, Paleo Template or "Om, nom nom nom!", the idea of eating like our paleolithic (or, if you're down with WAP, early Neolithic) ancestors is surging in popularity.Hoards of Five Finger wearing, CrossFitting (or MovNatting), and no pooing (not that kind of poo!), uber healthy/uber geeky folks from all over the world have jumped on the bandwagon. (Full disclosure: I just described myself. It takes one to know one.) The movement can even claim it's own, "Woodstock", the 2011 Ancestral Health Symposium. However, the "Caveman" lifestyle still has some kinks to work out.To better illustrate this point, imagine the following scenario:A professed "Paleo" is tucking into a big plate of bacon and eggs for breakfast (washing it down with coffee of course) while hanging out with a "non-paleo" friend. Let's just say they are at an IHOP restaurant.Non-Paleo: How come you're eating bacon? A caveman wouldn't have eaten bacon.Paleo: Well, it's the closest thing to an animal that I could order at IHOP.Non-Paleo: Yea sure. Explain the coffee then.Paleo: I like coffee, and it is not considered a NAD ...Non-Paleo: You just said NAD.Paleo: GROK SMASH!!!End scene.Besides testifying to the superior physical condition of your average "Paleo" vs "Non Paleo" (I keed I keed), the preceding scenario describes an example of how the naturalistic fallacy has muddied the Evolutionary waters, regardless of what shore you stand on.Applied to Paleo, this turns into, "Our ancestors ate the foods found in nature, therefore the foods found in nature are good and everything else is bad. You should only eat the foods found in nature."While "only eat the foods found in nature" might sound like solid dietary advice, the fact is, there are many poisonous, dangerous, and outright inedible things "out there". The fact that they are "natural" is not enough to qualify them as "good", ergo, the "naturalistic fallacy".Chris Masterjohn made a similar point in a post titled "Understanding Weston Price on Primitive Wisdom — Ancient Doesn’t Cut It" . In it, he wrote:Chris goes on to say:In other words, human beings, living in diverse and challenging environments, with greater and lesser degrees of success, learned, adapted, and cultivated traditions that allowed for survival. Traditions, like the consumption of whole fish among the Inuit, therefore, provide modern science a convenient starting point for analysis, exploration, and investigation. Other practices like genital mutilation and cannibalism, however, can be discarded despite their "traditional" history.There are many things that are not found in nature that have nonetheless been found to be good (like coffee). For example, Vibram Fivefingers which protect the wearer's feet while affording the same bio-mechanical advantages of walking barefoot, Cross-fit gyms full of weights that simulate the energetic landscape of a hunter gatherer, and a global internet community that creates a virtual tribe where ideas, recipes, and support can be shared by members.The bottom line is that the goal isn't reenactment (well, most of the time), but rather, the discovery of appropriate analogs that stimulate the most benefit with the least amount of damage.So, instead of rooting around for starchy tubers in the semi-arid grasslands of our ancestors, we go to the grocery store, farmer's market, co-op, or our backyard garden for carrots, turnips, and potatoes. Rather than tracking a wild boar and spearing it with a sharpened stick, we score some bacon from a farmer and lay it on the frying pan. And, in a rare PETA friendly move, we leave the animal-skin loincloth behind and deck ourselves out in vegan attire."Criticism of Evolutionary Psychology" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology_controversy