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A new book is out (with some bad reviews) trying to make fun of the paleo lifestyle. Paleofantasy. I guess it is no surprise that someone would try to make money by ridiculing the paleo/primal/cavaman diet, just as others have done with the Atkin's, South Beach, Ornish, Pritikin, and Grapefruit diets. A new diet plan becomes well-known and soon enough the detractors write a book against it.

It's unfortunate that the paleo/primal lifestyle had to choose that name, it's just asking for jokes since it immediately invokes images of dirty, hairy brutes hunched over a fire, gnawing a huge bone.  Maybe there are a few eccentric people who really want to live like cave-men, but most of the well-known names in the paleo/primal community realize that it's impossible to live like the cave man, and they wouldn't want to anyway. We have a lot of wonderful blessings in the modern world and an author who implies that we'd toss it aside to live in a cave does not understand what the lifestyle is all about.

So forget the labels, don't jump on the bandwagon of the latest fad just to jump off again when you read a criticism of that fad. Instead, consider this: You probably want to live a long healthy life, feeling great, with plenty of energy to work, play, and enjoy every day; you probably do not want a life of sickness and pain, experiencing problems that require frequent visits to doctors, drugs, and maybe an early death. Good food and clean water are two things our bodies need to be healthy.  (The others include exercise and rest.)

God created a variety of plants and animals for our food so we can live healthy lives. The food that God created is not like the so-called food that is created in a food-industry lab. Food scientists try to discover the properties and individual molecules that are in real food so they can isolate and repackage them, but there's more to food than individual molecules.  It is truly a case of the whole being greater than its parts.

Produce from a Farmer's Market

Real food grows in the ground or eats the plants that grow in the ground, or lives in the ocean. Eat real food, as close to its natural state, raised with the least amount of chemicals, preservatives, and processing possible.

You will not find real food in a "health food store" that is nothing but rows of supplement bottles lining the shelves. You will not find real food in the aisles of boxes and cans even in a "whole foods" type of store.  Just because a store calls itself "fresh" or "whole" or "natural" doesn't mean you don't have to be careful of what you buy inside.

Beef cattle at Fort Creek Farm in
Sparta Ga.

(Obviously,  sometimes we eat things that come in a bag, can, or box; just today I bought raisins*  and raw walnuts (in bags), tea bags in a box, and olive oil in a can; I also buy cans of coconut milk and a large container of coconut oil.)

Don't get sidetracked with labels to describe the diet you follow. Let the primal/paleo lifestyle simply be a guide and a reminder to avoid modern processed phoney-foods. Just eat real food for life.

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*By the way, check your bags of dried fruit; it's hard to find any that don't contain a vegetable oil. Amazing that they add oil to keep dried fruit from clumping. I'd rather break apart the clumps by hand that eat the oil. I was buying Newman's Own Organic Raisins until I noticed that they add sunflower oil. Sun Maid raisins contain no oil, but they aren't organic. So which is worse?