Bradford York says:

The line and word breaks are a mess in the Kindle version. Hope this is not an example of what to expect from Kindle formatting.

Rating: 2 / 5

Oliver says:

Before I rip into this book, I will say this: a lot of people would be better off if they followed these rules. Many people in the developed world have terrible diets, and are overweight and otherwise unhealthy as a result. There is a lot of room for improvement, and following these rules would be far better than staying the course, at least for the majority of people. That being said, I can do better than this book in a single sentence: “Don’t eat more calories than you burn each day, and eat a balanced diet.” That advice is a whole lot better than the book, but of course you knew that already.

This book is just plain silly. It is full of contradictions. For example, within the first few pages, the author claims that everything he knows can be boiled down to just seven words: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Just a couple of pages earlier, however, the author pointed to the diet of the Inuit, whom he says eat mostly whale blubber, and the Masai, whom the author claims survive mostly on beef and milk, as viable diets. Neither whales nor cows are plants. So, where does the author really stand on “mostly plants”? I still don’t know.

Rule 4 is “avoid foods that contain high-fructose corn syrup.” I fully agree. But, the author then goes on to say that it does not matter whether a product contains corn syrup, dextrose or any other kind of sugar, because “sugar is sugar.” Well, duh. And, the author’s rule apparently is, “avoid foods that contain a lot of sugar.” I did not need to buy a book to learn that.

What really gets me riled up, however, is the anti-intellectual, and anti-scientific condescending attitude of the author. The author mixes in some intelligent comments with a bunch of complete nonsense. He tells us that we should rely on folk wisdom, because, after all, humans have survived a long time just fine. Really? As of 1900, the average life expectancy was what, 50 years at best? Before that, it was even less. Now it is what, 70+ years? And, for centuries, people thought leeches were a good way to treat your humors, or some such nonsense. Folk advice about health is almost always wrong. Science is often right. And, even when it is wrong, it is rarely if ever as far off the mark as folk “wisdom.”

The idea of eating what your ancestors ate is a huge mistake, which the author would realize if he were aware of evolutionary theory. We evolved to like sugars and fats because these kept us alive long enough to reproduce. All evolution “cares” about is getting your genes into the next generation. Once you are past the age of reproduction, you are more or less dead weight and evolution does not care about you. Heart disease and cancer tend to kill those above 40. So, the diet that evolution favors could very well lead to those diseases. Modern folks, however, are concerned about being alive and healthy way past 40, and the diet of the past is almost certainly not going to favor that because evolution has an entirely different set of “priorities.”

And, back to our grandmas’ generation again, grandma was often more concerned with getting enough calories into her systems to make it through the day. She (like impoverished folks today) did not have to worry about getting fat and she did not have the luxury of turning down calories today because of possible long term effects. Until recently, you could not even get diet Coke in South America. If you asked for it, they would give you a funny look — who in their right mind gives away calories? But then again, no one there was fat.

So, both from a cultural and from an evolutionary standpoint, looking at the diet of the past is asking for disaster because the health problems of today are new and different from those of the past.

I could go on ripping this book, but I’ve ranted long enough.
Rating: 2 / 5