What is Behind All This Paleo Bashing?
Is it me, or is the amount of ‘anti-paleo’ media coming to an all-time high?
I don’t seem to recall this degree of passion about a vegan or gluten free approach.
Let’s think about why.
If one follows a vegan diet, there’s still plenty of room to suggest including all sorts of grains and legumes.
While there’s no dairy, there’s obviously plenty of opportunity for a hard sell on getting in the gluten-rich TVP (texturized vegetable protein) from the numerous fake meat products, beans galore as a non-heme protein source and every last possible grain one could think of.
Similarly, in the gluten-free approach, while wheat, barley, rye and sometimes oats are given the cold shoulder, dairy is included as are all beans and any gluten free grains, and, of course, as we see by the preponderance of the many gluten-free treats, white sugar is everywhere.
And neither of these two approaches seem to have been taking a hit the way Paleo is at the moment.
Do you see a trend?
True Paleo doesn’t allow for any of the products sold by the big, bad boys- no grains, at all, nor legumes, no dairy and no sugar. This is very frightening for any and all companies selling anything from cereal to bread to bagels to yogurt to cheese to peanut butter, soy sauce and energy bars.
If you’ve been Paleo for a while, you already know this stuff is in everything!
To send a message out to avoid all of it would wreak havoc on the marketing campaign of many an advertiser.
Further, since the main sponsors of the USDA include Coca Cola, The Dairy Council, Pepsico, Kellogg’s, General Mills and Mars Candy, it’s easy to see why registered dietitians educated under the current curriculum would be taught to encourage consumption of these foods in some manner, even if under the guise of them being ‘healthy’ options because they’re gluten-free or vegan.
Finally, just as an aside, have you ever noticed that generally, people tend to be more adamant in their disapproval of something when they don’t fully understand it, or if it threatens their current belief system? As if by giving a new idea a chance, they’d risk shaking the set of rules or values they’d believed to have been true all these years, so they find it best just to push them away?
And it’s not as if there’s a lucrative kale lobby on our side that can push back with the media.
So, we have to forge ahead as True Paleo pioneers and keep leading by example to show that, guess what? If we eat lots of fresh veggies, natural proteins and fats and steer clear of sugars, refined carbs and junk in general, we’ll be a healthier society that isn’t getting fatter and sicker every single day.
