Good Morning, Paleo
Paleo on Good Morning America today- did you catch it? Entitled Popular Paleo Diet Becomes Way of Life for Some with a description as follows, “The Paleo diet-turned-lifestyle phenomenon mimics how our cavemen ancestors ate, slept and exercised.”, it opens with the commentary that the Paleo lifestyle is not just about what we eat, but how we move and live overall and we are first introduced to a young couple who follow the approach. And they own a ‘Paleo Chocolate’ company. Next, we see the integration of movement which is fairly portrayed via walking, wearing Vibrams and playing frisbee. I liked this part since the key is to get moving in any way, shape or form (and, btw, five-finger shoes are not mandatory). We then see what a typical meal is like. There is bacon, of course. Later, blue-blocker glasses are donned in order to block the rays we get from artificial lighting and TV. Good to see they’re hitting all the stereotypes. This is not to imply that there’s anything wrong with wearing Vibrams, or Blue Blockers or eating (natural, uncured) bacon now and then, but to make it seem like all of the above are important components of the Paleo regime is a bit off the mark. On the upside, we get a few minutes of Mark Sisson who points out that this healthy approach to living is not, actually, just a hot trend and backs up what Dr. Cordain often says in that if it were a fad, it would be the longest running one, since it’s been going on for 2.5 million years. Then a cutaway to the in studio expert, who agrees that the Paleo diet is healthy…except, of course, for the ‘facts’ that:
- ‘if we eliminate entire food groups, we cannot get enough calcium or fibre..blah, blah, blah’
- “the list of foods to stay away from is huge”
- “it’s really tough to stay on this because of the deprivation and restriction”
He offers the bottom line, however that the ‘diet is safe if you have the community to support you’ (good thing he’s not making it out to be cult-y…) and it’s hard to live in 2014 like Fred Flintstone (great), so if we ‘learn to cheat a little bit’, we can then implement the approach into our own daily regime. Sigh. I don’t know whether to be happy that at least they got some of the facts right or be disheartened about the same old nonsense offered by the expert about the lack of calcium, fiber and feasibility to maintain it. It still seemed, to me, to be a less than accurate portrayal of how True Paleo living can be, in that it offered only one approach to integrating it. I find it appeals to more people when it’s presented in its simplicity- eat real food and move. That’s it! Check it out for yourself. They close with ‘could you go Paleo?’ and an invitation to tweet them at #SocialSquare What will you tweet?
