I'm much less confused now!

So I listened to the Paleo Podcaster Roundup on Sean Croxton's Underground Wellness podcast guest hosted by Jimmy Moore.  Here's the intro:

Guest host Jimmy Moore of the Livin' La Vida Low Carb Blog & Podcast returns to UW Radio for a roundtable with Paleo experts including Stefani Ruper, Dean Dwyer, Dr. Colin Champ, and Abel James. The gang discusses the importance of the Paleo and Real Food blogosphere, critiques of the low-carb diet, and important steps you can take to find the diet that is right for YOU.

Yeah, Sean's on vacation, so perhaps Jimmy wrote this up, but for starters, how in heck did this gang become experts in paleo all of a sudden?  But ...


Half of the podcast was about ... podcasting.

Diet?  What's paleo?  Whole food.  A low crap diet.  Heck, they didn't even repeat the no grains no legumes meme that at least 90% of paleo seems to agree on (or maybe they mentioned it but I cannot listen again).   I've gone to Ruper's site time and again and can find no definition what "paleo" even means to her.  Folks eating real whole foods that grow from the ground (this was either Champ or Abel) does not require us to harken back to the paleolithic era!!  

Controversy:  Carbs!  Champ gets all passionate:  Just get off the addictive carbohydrates.  Sugar is more  addictive than cocaine.  Carbs make you overeat.  Most importantly, the people who have problems on LC are doing it wrong!  Fer cryin' out loud, I'm SOOO sick of this nonsense.  Jimmy started doing LC more "right" circa 2008 and piling the fat on his food ... remind us how he's faring??  And please, the ketogenic diets are NOT whole foods.    Here's where paleo fantasy comes in again and again.

The money quote, asked by Jimmy about the popularity of paleo, Abel:

Now we have something to call it right, because you [Jimmy] started this long before paleo was known at least in this way as being what it is today as  low carb but it's also subsumed all these other little groups.  You know you have the real food people, body building,  cross fitters, the science crowd, and so many people in between and on the fringe.   So I think because we have all of these distinct groups banding together it gives us enormous power.  That's promising stuff.

Paleo is not low carb, and paleo cannot subsume other groups to form any sort of unified vision.  This is why the symbolic gesture at AHS, where Robb Wolf and Mark Sisson joined WAPF was a hollow farce.  But Abel, here's a newsflash:  You DON'T have the science crowd.  You don't want to address the science.  Remember Jack Kruse Abel?  Yeah, Abel's podcast shot to #2 on iTunes in one month for one reason, and one reason only:  his podcast with known liar, scammer and science fictionist Jack Kruse.  And he did make an appearance here at the Asylum (I guess he just has a really really long list of guests and hasn't gotten to me yet -- grin!).  Ancestral could be a big tent to include paleo, but paleo can NEVER be a big tent to include "all those little fringe groups".   This is the problem because those groups and personalities are NOT banding together, they're being asked to suck it up for the sake of the community and just STFU if they have anything but praise for its leaders.  Nevermind that paleo and non-paleo types alike mangle and/or misrepresent science all the time and just flat out make sheet up.

And now there's newcomer to the party, Stefani Ruper, out to enlighten us on the science of the paleo diet for women-specific issues, right?  Sorry, she just doesn't count when it comes to science.  She did one post on fasting for women, but one would be hard pressed to wade through the PFW site to find it under all the kickass womanhoodedness.   More recently she got all excited that Mark Sisson is talking about female body fat.  (There are some claims in his post that don't add up, but ...).   Since Stefani started out the podcast discussing how she now felt confident bringing "honest science" and a voice to women in paleo, this is relevant.  So in her recent post on female body fat we get:

Women store fat in their abdomens during menopause fairly frequently. This is because estrogen levels are dropping sharply. Many women supplement with bio-identical hormones, in fact, and see their weight gain / weight shift minimize. Another great way to mitigate this problem is to eat a diet consisting of whole foods, which will minimize insulin spiking that can also contribute to abdominal fat gain, and which will also keep hormone levels fairly well-balanced.

I don't blog much about abdominal fat in menopause, not because I don't have an interest in it, or haven't tried to research it, but because I've come across very little evidence in all of that research that diet can change much.  Indeed my biggest disappointment with Eades 6 Week Cure was that it did not deliver on its promise of all the latest research on dietary interventions for abdominal fat, but rather that we learned offhand that Mary Dan used (uses) bioidentical hormones to address her middle aged middle.  Whole foods and insulin spikes?  Sigh.   But gee ... where have I heard about female fat before?  Why from Melissa McEwen at Hunt Gather Love .  Indeed Mark cites that post, so it becomes increasingly odd how Ms. Paleo for Women, and Ms. Rise Up & Roar encouraging women to speak up for our issues, ignores women's voices and turns her back on them when there's male attentions, accolades and acknowledgement to be had instead.  No blogroll of female paleo voices at PFW either, but I've gone on a bit of a tangent there ...

I'll wrap this up discussing the paleo podcaster in chief, Jimmy Moore.  What?  You say he's not paleo?  What?  You say paleo is not low carb?  Well, he is the biggest problem in the paleo=LC problem, antagonism, and all that jazz.  Melissa Hartwig of Whole9 recently tweeted dismay about this presumed equivalence.  I say to her and all paleos who have a problem with it, STOP going on his podcast!!   Jimmy mentions how he used to be surprised how many of those who listen to one of his podcasts don't listen to another, or read his blog, etc.  This is important ... because what picture did he send Sean to put on the podcast?  Why the 2005 "thinker pose" ... and as he sat around discussing real food and even addressing crappy ingredients in LC foods, how many of these paleo peeps that may be called upon as guests realize their podcasts are being sponsored by Leaner Living and now Diets to Go prepackaged LC crap.

Do they care?  It would appear not, and I'll leave you to ponder as to why that is. But thanks for clearing up any confusion I might have had ...