Talk:Paleolithic diet

Fad diet

User:Facts00 the "fad diet" issue has been discussed to death. Please see the archives (for example, the several discussions in Talk:Paleolithic_diet/Archive_6) before continuing to try to make this change. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 21:25, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Please add this information

Debunking the paleo diet by Dr. Christina Warinner @TED-Talk TEDxOU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOjVYgYaG8 ----~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.133.151.217 (talk) 11:17, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

 Done. I've added it to the external links section, thanks for the suggestion. – Joe (talk) 11:42, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I vaguely recall something about TEDx talks being of less reliability/usefulness (than the normal TED talks) somewhere. Something about less rigourous standards for speakers? Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:46, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

They're basically franchised, independently organised conferences using the TED brand, so the reputability and selectivity will vary depend on the organiser. This one (TEDxOU) was organised by the University of Oklahoma, and Warinner is verifiably an expert on ancient diets, so I think we're good to use it as an external link at least. – Joe (talk) 12:01, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Seems reasonable then. I was only vaguely recalling the issue with TEDx before so just wanted to check. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:19, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

@ (talk) - you and Joe are spot on. I worked for an organization where our founder gave a ted talk and I was of the many involved in the "effort" (the talk is exceptionally boring and perhaps among the least viewed ted talks!). In the bargain, I learnt more about the way Ted and Tedx work. Both try to get interesting speakers to talk - for the exceptional ones (like Malala Yousufzai and Bunker Roy), it is free, but for the rest, speakers have to pay to speak, and the audience has to pay to listen. A lot. For the audience, it usually costs about 1,000 USD/day including the hotel (it is all exceptionally professionally arranged - much like a high priced international conference on ending hunger in Africa). For the speakers, the amount that the speaker has to pay to be allowed to speak varies from 5,000 to 10,000 USD per talk (there are a number of slabs - it looked like a mix of trying to choose a mobile phone service + a happy meal + booking tickets in an auditorium!). TedX franchises the same system out to any oganisation that can pay the franchising sum to Ted. There is a nice video on Ted, with interviews with the founders and staff on you tube somewhere. Their "low key" head office looks a lot like the outfit I worked for :) Notthebestusername (talk) 09:21, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Did she debunk anything?

Myth 1 : Humans are not adapted to eating meat, but then she changes her mind and claim humans did eat meat during the paleolithic period.

Myth 2 : The agrarian revolution did not happen?

Myth 3 : Paleolithic humans did not get their food from the supermarket - No shit!!! No one thought about that! So most plants was not as tasty as today - so did they eat meat or not?

Then she spends the rest of the time to advocate paleo diet. LOL

Human history of eating grains

The line, "Although little is known about the diet of Paleolithic humans, it is very likely that they did consume wild grains and legumes..." needs a reference. I added one that is directly relevant to the claim. My link has been reverted twice by jytdog without a good reason. If it's this same jytdog, it's someone who takes payment to edit Wikipedia, so the motivation for there is suspect. Let99 (talk) 21:35, 30 May 2017 (UTC) (struck-out part was removed without redaction in this diff. restored by me in this diff. struck-out by me in this signed diff. Jytdog (talk) 01:37, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

[I'm merging the two sections at the bottom here, because they are about the same issue. Let99 (talk) 22:01, 30 May 2017 (UTC)]

About the (badly formed) reference, Humans feasting on grains for at least 100,000 years, that has been added:

• here and
• here and
• here ...

As has been noted when this has been removed, it doesn't mention the paleo diet. User:Let99 if you would review this talk page and its archives, you will see that this article has been extremely contested. We have paleo fans and paleo haters all bringing bloggy sources that do not even mention Paleo and trying to force content into the article based on them, which is WP:SYN. Please read WP:SYN.

The article already makes it clear that the underlying claims about paleolithic people don't work; you are trying to beat a dead horse with an offtopic source in any case. Jytdog (talk) 21:41, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

The source doesn't need to mention Paleo Diet specifically. The article says, "Although little is known about the diet of Paleolithic humans, it is very likely that they did consume wild grains and legumes." There is not source for that. There is no need for the reference to mention Paleo Diet, because the claim does not mention the Paleo Diet. What source do you propose for that claim in the article? Even the claim as written is false, because more than one study has found that humans have been eating grains for many tens of thousands of years--it is not "likely", but definitive. Also, there are 44 references -- are you going to delete every single one that doesn't mention the Paleo Diet? For example, this, this, this, and this do not appear to mention the Paleo Diet either, so your justification for reverting my edits does not hold up at all. Let99 (talk) 21:59, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

The statement "Although little is known about the diet of Paleolithic humans, it is very likely that they did consume wild grains and legumes" needs a reference. I am proposing several here for the community to consider. This, this, and this are all relevant. Please comment below about which source should be used as a reference to the claim in the article. I propose that all three are added as references to that statement. Jytdog, I am awaiting your response. If you do not respond within a few days, I will assume that you approve of the citations. Thanks. Let99 (talk) 22:23, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

starting from the end ("there are 44 references...")

• The first link there is current ref #44, a paper in the The Quarterly Review of Biology. If you look at ref #43, it discusses the paleo diet in view of that paper; the paper is just provided in case somebody wants to see what it actually said (we often provide the primary source discussed by a secondary source, in just this manner)
• the 2nd link there is to the Revedin PNAS paper. Yes that does not belong here.
• the 3rd link there is to Leonard's Food for Thought piece. This one directly speaks to the Paleo diet and both Eaton and Cordain's work. It is a key rebuttal, actually.
• the 4th, about humans possibly causing the extinction of mammoths, was used in a caption to an image. The caption was off-topic and i have removed it, and the ref.

Moving to the sentence you have called out and tagged, "Although little is known about the diet of Paleolithic humans, it is very likely that they did consume wild grains and legumes." That sentence is in the lead. Per WP:LEAD, all the lead does is summarize the sourced content in the body. This content is neither stated nor sourced already in the body. It should come out. I have done that. Jytdog (talk) 00:31, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

• additional note that the ref that is the subject of the dispute, along with not mentioning paleo, does not mention legumes, leaving probably the most contentious part of the now-removed sentence still unsourced. Jytdog (talk) 01:53, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

No journal papers?

The paleo diet website gives a number of references and talks of published papers on this diet. However ,I did not find any on this wiki. Are there no articles published in reputable medical journals (Lancet et al) on the paleo diet? Notthebestusername (talk) 09:23, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

pls see WP:MEDRS Jytdog (talk) 11:34, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

No one bothered to read up on paleo diet before "debunking" it?

This was one of the worst articles I've red on Wikipedia. It's extremely biased and it is 100% clear that the people who wrote it has no idea about what paleo diet means. Examples: 1. "and that in fact, humans have evolved to be flexible eaters" - No paleo-advocate disputes this - Strawman 2. "if humans had not been nutritionally adaptable, these technological developments would have been dropped" - Not if it was effective. Producing lots of excess food meant lots of excess labor and means to develop modern cultures. If this claim is true, then fast food and soda must be healthy, otherwise it would be dropped. 3. "10,000 years was "plenty of time" for an evolutionary change in human digestive abilities to have taken place" - The agrarian revolution did not reach all of mankind 10 000 years ago, it wasn't a majority of humans living from agriculture until 2-3000 years ago. And it wasn't ONE change. The normal diet in the western world today isn't even 100 years old. 4. "Excessive food energy intake relative to energy expended, rather than the consumption of specific foods," - So? As stated in the article people eat less energy on a paleolithic diet. 5. ""knowledge of the relative proportions of animal and plant foods in the diets of early humans is circumstantial, incomplete, and debatable and that there are insufficient data to identify the composition of a genetically determined optimal diet" - So? No paleo-advocate says otherwise. The once that state a specific composition do so based on mainstream nutrition. 6. "It has been noted that the rationale for the diet does not adequately account for the fact that, due to the pressures of artificial selection, most modern domesticated plants and animals differ drastically from their Paleolithic ancestors" - Ah, you mean that fact that most paleo-advocates stress? 7. "In general, any weight loss caused by the diet is merely the result of calorie restriction, rather than a special feature of the diet itself" - No shit Sherlock!? You mean a diet advocated partly because it makes you eat less calories has the same effect as calorie restriction!? Debunked it good there professor!