The paleo diet is a topic that tends to spark strong opinions. An online chat with celebrity chef and paleo enthusiast Pete Evans was called off last week after it was hijacked by a horde of commenters who clearly disagreed with his take on the diet. The past few months have also seen some prominent paleo bloggers distancing themselves from the term. Could this be the beginning of the end for paleo’s popularity?
Lost in translation
Some former paleo fans are dropping the label, saying it no longer means what it used to mean.
The basic idea behind the paleo diet is that our bodies are made to eat more like our caveman ancestors – that is, things they could gather or hunt like meat, fish and veggies. So the refined foods that are now common in the modern diet were shunned by the paleo crowd, with the view that our bodies haven’t adjusted properly to grains, sugar and processed foods.
But as it became more widespread and the word ‘paleo’ started to become synonymous with ‘healthy’, the paleo diet has become increasingly commercialised.
Paleo alternatives for almost anything began to appear – including desserts like paleo brownies and paleo cupcakes.
As Jamie Scott, previously ‘That Paleo Guy’, said: “Paleo has become a prefix- to throw in front of anything and everything in order to ca$h in. I can go now through the main airports in New Zealand and buy ‘Paleo cereal’ bars. Or I can head down to the local mainstream supermarket and buy premixed Paleo breakfast cereals.”
Nutritionist Clare Yates, author of ‘Optimum Health the Paleo Way’, has also distanced herself from “extreme paleo views”.
“This ‘paleo’ label was once an easier way to try to explain to people how you ate,” she wrote in a recent blog post. “I am thinking more and more that this is now ‘lost in translation’.”
Going too far
Another reason some former paleo followers are making a change is that they’ve found it stressful to stick to the rules.
“If I did happen to eat something on the “do not eat” list, I would feel terrible about it after and beat myself up for it, then try to go back to super strict,” writes Trina from the fashion, food and fitness blog Booty Shorts and Knee Socks, in a post titled “Why I stopped eating a ‘clean’ paleo diet”.
Of course, difficulties with restrictive eating certainly aren’t exclusive to paleo. When militantly following the rules of a diet begins to crowd out other interests and impacts relationships, or even becomes physically dangerous, an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating has been dubbed ‘orthorexia’.
Keeping it real
Despite varying definitions of what constitutes paleo and widespread debate over what a healthy diet looks like, there seems to be general agreement that eating ‘real food’ is a good way to go. That’s less refined food, more whole foods, more eating what’s fresh and what’s in season.
The idea that people need to be more connected with their food, allowing them to better decide what’s best for them as an individual, is also gaining more and more currency.
As Yates wrote in December: “You are all individual. Eat seasonally – and if you want to…EAT FRUIT for goodness sake! Don’t be scared of real food.”
Jo Smith of Australian blog Primal Living also wrote last month that she is moving away from the word ‘paleo’.
“Paleo got me excited nine years ago, but today it doesn’t. Why, because it has become too commercialised and it does not float my boat anymore. What floats my boat?
Talking about real food, where our food comes from, how it was grown, who grew it.
“We have complicated nutrition. Yes we have. Food coaches, dieticians, nutritionists, food manufacturers and scientists. We have lost connection with nature, the land and the art of eating simple, healthy and most importantly real food.”
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