The paleo diet and the american weight loss utopia, 1975–2014

Utopian Studies

Volumn 26, Issue 1, 2015, Pages 101-124

  Johnson, Adrienne Rose ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Body; Diet; Disease; Evolution; Food; Health; Nutrition; Obesity; Paleolithic; The historical imagination; Utopia; Weight loss

Indexed keywords

EID: 84928041518     PISSN: 1045991X     EISSN: 21549648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5325/utopianstudies.26.1.0101     Document Type: Article

References (113)

1. Elizabeth Somer, The Origin Diet: How Eating Like Your Stone Age Ancestors Will Maximize Your Health (New York: Henry Holt, 2001), 9–10
2. Chris Kresser, Your Personal Paleo Code: The Three-Step Plan to Lose Weight, Reverse Disease, and Stay Fit and Healthy for Life (New York: Little, Brown, 2013)
3. I. Swift, interview by the author, Stanford, Calif., November 2013
4. Mark Sisson, correspondence with the author, March 2014. For circulation records, WorldCat (the world’s largest library catalog) listings are misleading. The catalog categorizes twenty-five thousand “reducing diet” titles in current circulation, and of those, approximately five hundred are designated as “Paleolithic” books. However, these figures do not account for different print and electronic editions and subsequent reprintings, which, for best sellers like these, usually constitute the bulk of publication
5. Though diets often borrow scientific terminology such as Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons, and troglodytes, most use the term caveman to evoke cultural meaning rather than scientific taxonomy. This essay uses caveman to draw upon this constellation of cultural meanings and Paleo in reference to specifically “Paleo” books published in the wake of Loren Cordain’s The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2002)
6. Tyler Graham, “The Paleo Diet and the Case for Primal Living,” Men’s Journal, December 2012, accessed January 2, 2014, http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/the-paleo-diet-and-the-case-for-primal-living-20130226
7. Kresser, Your Personal Paleo Code, 20
8. Seth Roberts, quoted in John Durant, The Paleo Manifesto: Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health (New York: Random House, 2013), back cover
9. Durant, Paleo Manifesto, 13
10. Ruth Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (London: Philip Allan, 1990), 141
11. Fedon Lindberg, The GI Mediterranean Diet: The Glycemic Index-Based Life-Saving Diet of the Greeks (Berkeley: Ulysses Press, 2009), 92
12. Robb Wolf, The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet (Las Vegas: Victory Belt, 2010), 30
13. Valerie Alston, Paleo Smoothies (Cooking Genius: eBook, 2014), 3, https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/paleo-smoothies/ id887836610?mt=11
14. Loren Cordain, The Paleo Answer: Seven Days to Lose Weight, Feel Great, Stay Young (Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2010), 3
15. Emmet Densmore, The Natural Food of Man; A Brief Statement of the Principal Arguments Against the Use of Bread, Cereals, Pulses, and All Other Starch Foods (London: Pewtress, 1890), iii, 50
16. James Gregory, Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth- Century Britain (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007), 80
17. John Harvey Kellogg, The Natural Diet of Man (Battle Creek: Modern Medicine Publishing, 1923), 29
18. Walter Voegtlin, The Stone Age Diet: Based on In-Depth Studies of Human Ecology and the Diet of Man (New York: Vantage Press, 1975), 253
19. S. Boyd Eaton and Melvin Konner, “Paleolithic Nutrition—A Consideration of Its Nature and Current Implications,” New England Journal of Medicine 312, no. 5 (January 31, 1985): 283–89 19. “Affluenza,” or the psychological costs of affluence, is the psychological equivalent of the physical diseases of civilization
20. Eaton and Konner, “Paleolithic Nutrition,” 283
21. For an excellent summary of the scholarly consensus refuting (or at least debating) Eaton and Konner’s claims, see evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk’s Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet, and How We Live (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013). Zuk’s discussion of “experimental evolution” is particularly pertinent (67–92) to arguments discrediting the “stalling” or “peaking” of evolutionary processes in the Paleolithic era
22. Eaton and Konner, “Paleolithic Nutrition,” 284. This figure was later corrected in the April issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The editors amended the “six inches” to “12.2 cm (4.8 inches),” but the correction was largely unnoticed, and most Paleo books still neglect the April 1985 correction
23. Douglas Crews and Barry Bogin, “Growth, Development, Senescence, and Aging: A Life History Perspective,” in A Companion to Biological Anthropology, ed. Clark Spencer Larsen (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 139–44
24. Cordain, Paleo Answer, 3
25. “About,” Mark’s Daily Apple, accessed August 1, 2014, http://www.marksdailyapple.com/about-2/mark-sisson/#axzz3DFQectPn; Sisson, correspondence with the author, March 2014. For a curated list of the top one hundred blogs (from well over a thousand), see Joel Runyon’s “100+ Incredible Paleo Diet Blogs” at http://ultimatepaleoguide.com/ paleo-diet-blogs/
26. “Manifesto,” Ancestral Health Society, accessed April 1, 2014, http://www.ancestralhealth.org/about
27. Jacque Wilson, “Paleo Diet Ranks Last on ‘Best Diets’ List,” CNN, January 7, 2014, accessed March 2, 2014, http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/07/health/best-dietsranked/
28. Lyman Tower Sargent, Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 127
29. Louis Marin, Food for Thought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 107
30. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), 170–71
31. Amy Bingaman, Lise Sanders, and Rebecca Zorach, Embodied Utopias: Gender, Social Change, and the Modern Metropolis (London: Routledge, 2002), 2
32. S. Boyd Eaton, Melvin Konner, and Marjorie Shostak, “Stone Agers in the Fast Lane: Chronic Degenerative Diseases in Evolutionary Perspective,” American Journal of Medicine 84, no. 4 (1988): 739–49
33. S. Boyd Eaton, Marjorie Shostak, and Melvin Konner, The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet and Exercise and a Design for Living (New York: Harper and Row, 1988)
34. See Susie Orbach, Fat Is a Feminist Issue: The Anti-diet Guide to Permanent Weight Loss (New York: Paddington Press, 1978); and Jana Evans Braziel and Kathleen LeBesco, eds., Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001) 36
35. David Schwartz and Hamilton Stapell, “Modern Cavemen? Stereotypes and Reality of the Ancestral Health Movement,” Journal of Evolution and Health 1, no. 1 (2013): article 3, 2–10
36. Nell Stephenson, Paleoista: Gain Energy, Get Lean, and Feel Fabulous with the Diet You Were Born to Eat (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 4
37. Hugh Campbell, Michael Bell, and Margaret Finney, Country Boys: Masculinity and Rural Life (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 159
38. itcutsbothways, May 21, 2012 (1:59 a.m.), comment on Matt_18, “Is There a Gender Bias Inherent in a Meat-Heavy (Paleo) Diet?” PaleoHacks, May 21, 2012, accessed June 10, 2014, http://paleohacks.com/paleo/is-there-a-gender-bias-inherent-in-a-meat-heavypaleo- diet-16107
39. Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 130
40. Summer Innanen, “Breaking the Diet-Sabotage Cycle” (poster and program presented at the Ancestral Health Society Symposium, Berkeley, August 2014)
41. See Shari Dworkin and Faye Wachs’s study of the historical shift toward the “fit ideal” in their Body Panic: Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness (New York: New York University Press, 2009)
42. Arthur De Vany, The New Evolution Diet: What Our Paleolithic Ancestors Can Teach Us About Weight Loss, Fitness, and Aging (Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Press, 2010), 2
43. Claire Yates, Optimum Health the Paleo Way (Wollombi, Australia: Exisle Publishing, 2013), 5; Brian Collins, The Paleo Miracle, ed. Joseph Salama and Christina Lianos (San Bernardino: Paleo Miracle, 2012), 153
44. Martha McCaughey, The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates over Sex, Violence, and Science (New York: Routledge, 2008), 12–14
45. John Pettegrew, Brutes in Suits: Male Sensibility in America, 1890–1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 321
46. Eaton, Shostak, and Konner, Paleolithic Prescription, 260–61
47. Cordain, Paleo Diet, 135
48. Dana Carpender, Five Hundred Paleo Recipes: Hundreds of Delicious Recipes for Weight Loss and Super Health (Beverly: Fair Winds Press, 2012), 13
49. Jean Hofve and Celeste Yarnall, Paleo Dog: Give Your Best Friend a Long Life, Healthy Weight, and Freedom from Illness by Nurturing His Inner Wolf (Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Press, 2014), 143
50. Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 49
51. Tatiana Teslenko, Feminist Utopian Novels of the 1970s: Joanna Russ and Dorothy Bryant (New York: Routledge, 2003), 28
52. Eaton, Shostak, and Konner, Paleolithic Prescription, 24
53. Loren Cordain and Joe Friel, The Paleo Diet for Athletes: The Ancient Nutritional Formula for Peak Athletic Performance (Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale Press, 2012), xv; A. Friedman, interview by the author, Berkeley, August 2014
54. G. Kim, interview by the author, Stanford, Calif., January 2013
55. Ruth Levitas, “Educated Hope: Ernst Bloch on Abstract and Concrete Utopia,” Utopian Studies 1, no. 2 (1990): 18
56. Victoria Pitts, In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 31
57. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991), 281
58. Meg Cannon, “Women of Crossfit = Strong,” Facebook post, September 4, 2014, accessed September 16, 2014, https://www.facebook.com/CFStrongWomen/timeline?ref=page_internal
59. Paleo Foundation, “Our Mission,” accessed March 11, 2014, http://paleofoundation.org/about-us/
60. Wild Man Foods, “Mission,” accessed March 12, 2014, http://www.wildmanfoods.org/mission
61. Esther Blum, Cavewomen Don’t Get Fat (New York: Gallery Books, 2013), 114
62. Melissa Joulwan and Kellyann Petrucci, Living Paleo for Dummies (Hoboken: John Wily and Sons, 2013), iii
63. Somer, Origin Diet, front matter
64. Friedman, interview by the author, August 2014; Pauli Halstead, Primal Cuisine (Rochester, Vt.: Healing Arts Press, 2012), 19
65. Jane Barthelemy, Paleo Desserts (Boston: Da Capo Press, 2012), 5
66. See Henning Steinfeld’s Livestock’s Long Shadow—Environmental Issues and Options (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2006) for a comprehensive and well-received assessment of the environmental costs of meat
67. James J. Kopp, “Cosimo Noto’s The Ideal City (1903): New Orleans as Medical Utopia,” Utopian Studies 1, no. 2 (1990): 115–22
68. Others define the period more generously, including the Upper and Lower Paleolithic eras; for example, Joulwan and Petrucci in Living Paleo for Dummies define their diet by the 2.49 million-year period when, they write, “early man was called a hunter-gatherer” (10)
69. Bob Smeja, “Adam and Eve: The Father and Mother of the Paleo Diet,” Paleo by God’s Design (blog), July 10, 2012, accessed January 12, 2014, http://designerpaleo.blogspot.com/2012/07/adam-and-eve-father-and-mother-of-paleo.html
70. Roy Mankovitz, The Original Diet: The Omnivore’s Solution Designed by Nature, Researched by a Rocket Scientist (Santa Barbara: Montecito Wellness, 2008), 8
71. Eaton, Shostak, and Konner, Paleolithic Prescription, 3
72. Mark Sisson, The Primal Connection: Follow Your Genetic Blueprint to Health and Happiness (Malibu, Calif.: Primal Blueprint Publishing, 2013), 66
73. Of Sargent’s eight characteristics of mythic eutopias, the paradise described in the caveman diet only violates this feature: “no enmity between homo sapiens and the other animals” (Lyman Tower Sargent, “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited,” Utopian Studies 5, no. 1 [1994]: 10). Not only do cavemen regularly hunt (usually big animals with spears or arrows), but animals are also described as similarly terrorizing human prey in the “eat or get eaten!” predacious world (Mark Sisson, The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram Your Genes for Effortless Weight Loss, Vibrant Health, and Boundless Energy [Malibu, Calif.: Primal Nutrition, 2012], 14)
74. M. Usman and John Davidson, Paleo Diet—Good or Bad? An Analysis of Arguments and Counter-arguments (JD-Biz Publishing, Health Learning Series, 2013), https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/paleo-diet-good-or-bad-analysis/id810932962?mt=11; see also Brenda Garrett, “England, Colonialism, and ‘The Land of Cokaygne,’” Utopian Studies 15, no. 1 (2004): 1–12
75. Sargent, “Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited,” 10
76. Kate Fredericks, What Is Paleo Diet? (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, eBook, 2012), 18
77. Darryl Edwards, Paleo Fitness (Berkeley: Ulysses Press, 2013), front matter, 41
78. Somer, Origin Diet, 9
79. Jeanne Floresca, Paleo Traveler; Old World Recipes Flipped NeoPaleo (Bookbaby eBook, 2014), 2, http://tinyurl.com/q5ja29f
80. Wolf, Paleo Solution, 120
81. Joulwan and Petrucci, Living Paleo for Dummies, 12
82. Kenneth Russ, The Palm Springs Diet: An Old Stone Age Diet for Modern Times (Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2007), http://www.amazon.com/The-Palm-Springs-Diet-Russ/dp/1434300366
83. Oliver Selway, Instinctive Fitness: A Re-evolutionary Approach to Ageless Health and Fitness Based on a 2.5 Million Year Experiment (Herts, U.K.: Ecademy Press, 2012), ix
84. Ori Hofmekler and Diana Holtzberg, The Warrior Diet (Saint Paul: Dragon Door Publications, 2001), xxxiv
85. Voegtlin, Stone Age Diet, 161
86. Blum, Cavewomen Don’t Get Fat, 79
87. The Paleo Weight Loss Plan: A Proven Method to Lose Weight with a Paleo Diet (Berkeley: Telamon Press, 2013), http://tinyurl.com/l4xjgyp
88. Robert S. Fogarty, “Editorial: An Imaginary Country,” Antioch Review 63, no. 4 (Autumn 2005): 613–14
89. Sargent, “Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited,” 12
90. Garrett, “England, Colonialism, and ‘The Land of Cokaygne,’” 2
91. Jennie Harrell, “Is Paleo Expensive?” EasyPaleo (blog), January 28, 2012, http://www.easypaleo.com/2012/01/28/is-paleo-expensive-my-thoughts-money-saving-tips/
92. In the tradition set by that fateful apple, many Christian diets have similarly decried “deceitful foods.” A 1976 diet book, More of Jesus, Less of Me, argues that “cakes and milkshakes won’t lose their calories because you pray over them! In addition to being loaded with calories, these sweet gooeyes are ‘deceitful foods’ because they cause addiction to themselves” (Joan Cavanaugh and Pat Forseth, More of Jesus, Less of Me [Plainfield: Logos International, 1976], 96)
93. Sarah Hill, Paleo Diet: The Lifestyle for Weight Loss and Healthy Living (MaxHouse e-book, 2013), 7, http://tinyurl.com/qc2npka
94. Stuart Berger, Dr. Berger’s Immune Power Diet (New York: New American Library, 1985), 71
95. Loren Cordain, The Paleo Diet Cookbook (Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2011), 184
96. Voegtlin, Stone Age Diet, 4
97. Jean-Pierre de Villiers, Seventy-Seven Ways to Reshape Your Life (Herts, U.K: Ecademy Press, 2011), n.p
98. Cordain, Paleo Diet Cookbook, 184
99. Cordain, Paleo Diet, 127
100. Cordain, Paleo Diet Cookbook, 3
101. Ray Audette and Troy Gilchrist, NeanderThin: Eat Like a Caveman to Achieve a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999), 71
102. Jodie Cohen and Gilaad Cohen, The Everything Paleolithic Diet Book: An All-Natural, Easy to Follow Plan to Improve Health, Lose Weight, Increase Endurance, Prevent Disease (Avon, Mass.: Adams Media, 2011), 23
103. Etta M. Madden and Martha L. Finch, “Introduction,” in Eating in Eden: Food and American Utopias, ed. Etta M. Madden and Martha L. Finch (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 4
104. Levitas, Concept of Utopia, 141
105. Steven R. Gundry, Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution (New York: Crown, 2008), 1
106. Blum, Cavewomen Don’t Get Fat, 24
107. Eaton, Shostak, and Konner, Paleolithic Prescription, 132
108. Joseph Winters, “Toward an Embodied Utopia: Marcuse, the Re-ordering of Desire, and the ‘Broken’ Promise of Post-liberal Practices,” telos no. 165 (Winter 2013): 168
109. James Villepigue and Rick Collins, Alpha Male Challenge: The Ten-Week Plan to Burn Fat, Gain Muscle, and Build True Alpha Attitude (Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, 2009), 91
110. Anthony J. Burlay, The Foundation Diet: Your Body Was Designed to Eat (West Hollywood: Zen-Fusion Publishing, 2004), 45
111. Kim, interview by the author, January 2013
112. Boston Medical Center, “Weight Management,” accessed June 13, 2014, http://www.bmc.org/nutritionweight/services/weightmanagement.htm. Adding to the irony, yo-yo dieting (technically, “weight cycling”) has been shown to increase the difficulty of warding off weight regain after initial periods of dramatic loss. Put another way, the more one diets, the harder it is to get and stay thin
113. Durant, Paleo Manifesto, 290