Thoughts on #AHS12

One of those posts I need to apologize in advance for the length of ...

A goodly portion of this post was written around a week ago, and I was conflicted on whether or not to hit the publish button.  I'm not sure the wisdom of posting this ... but in the end I decided to, and I've interspersed some additional thoughts now that AHS12 is over.  I apologize for the various awkward wordings, typos and case changes that resulted that I just don't have the time or patience to correct.

Let me start by saying that I am amused by the predictable reactions of some about the web to my not going to AHS12.  If I had a dollar for every time I've been accused of  "not having a life" I'd be rich, but when my life outside this blog actually gets in the way?  Well then, now there's really got to be some other reason, ulterior motivation or nefarious cause for my "backing out" of attending the paleo event of the year.  Well folks, it really is as simple as my husband starting a new job, this throwing a monkey wrench in my travel plans, and all sorts of things that now need to get done in August before my own job starts back up.    I have far more scheduling flexibility than most, like my husband who has a "real job" and not a whole heckuvalot of vacation time.  I'm glad I forgot to purchase his ticket to the Barefoot Ball which would have been our only "us" time.  We planned to take a friend of his along so he would have someone to hang out with about Boston while I was doing my thing.  I also wanted to stay at least through Monday as it's been a long time since I've been, and I dunno about y'all, but if I'm spending like $1000 for 4 days and 3 nights that don't include relaxing with my husband, I'm wanting to spend just a bit more to make a true vacation of sorts out of it.  Maybe that's just me, but I'm thinking not. 


But someone even asked the question of whether I had jumped the shark over on Paleo Hacks.  The PH folks deleted that question, but I remembered I get all questions in my feed reader, so I went to look.  First let me say that I always thought the phrase "jump the shark" meant going off the deep end into woo woo terroir, but apparently it's a reference to an episode of Happy Days that epitomized when a TV series had gone on too long and declined in quality and popularity.  So here is the PH question by Tastes Like Chicken:
Not many people seem to have noticed - or cared - but CarbSane's long-promised, much-hyped appearance at AHS12 was cancelled at the eleventh hour for reasons that appear sketchy at best.  [linked to my announcement]
First of all, I got my ticket early and announced at the time that I would be attending AHS12.  Promised?  I'm not aware that I made some sort of sacred promise, and I certainly am not obligated to attend any of these types of events.  The only obligation I felt remains to those who specifically donated towards AHS and that is being handled and made right.  I know there were readers who were looking forward to meeting me, or to my getting in a challenging question or two to some of the low carbers and purveyors of Science Krispies, and some live blogging.  Now, hyped?  Hyped by whom?  Certainly not me.  I've not mentioned it much if at all except to answer the occasional question in the comments here.  It's not like I was regularly tweeting and blogging about going to AHS and eluding to all these showdowns of sorts.  TLC continued:
So we will now forever be deprived of the chance to witness the greatest - or at least most vocal - critic of both Gary Taubes and Jimmy Moore actually come face-to-face with her arch-rivals. It more than likely would have made for quite a show - and it may have even made last year's mini-AHS scandals seem tame by comparison.
I'm not really sure what some were expecting of me at AHS, or whether or not it would even be possible.  Clearly Taubes was going to get in his question to Stephan last year, to the point he famously cut in line to make sure.  I am not that kind of person so unless I camped out at the Q&A mic, getting in a question was never guaranteed.  Unless I missed it (I usually do a search on the page to be sure, but that isn't fool proof) Gary Taubes was not even on the original speaker schedule when I signed up to go, and some names that were slated to speak, did not make it.  Heck, if one of the main organizers himself can cavalierly tweet on July 5 that he's unable to speak at his own symposium ....
  Brent Pottenger ‏@epistemocrat I can't make it to #AHS12 but Professor Daniel Lieberman will be there presenting in my place: http://goo.gl/hghER
While I was looking forward to meeting and chatting with many people, I can assure you neither Gary nor Jimmy were among them.  You think either of those men were going to seek me out?  LOL.  Jimmy was only moderating a panel -- a way to attend for free -- so there would not have been any venue for "professional" contact.   I'm not into PR photo moments and such.  There would have been no teeth gritting photos of me and Jimmy or Gary, though I think you might have been surprised by some of those I have criticized here whom I planned to connect up with.  

Does anyone care? OK, so once upon a time CarbSane nearly single-handedly demolished the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis - but is anyone listening anymore? More importantly, is the age of muckraking blogging over?
Is the age of misrepresenting this blog as purely muckraking over yet?   Now that AHS12 is over and one can tally up the hours devoted to speakers who still believe and promote TWICHOO, it seems the debunking work here will have to continue.   If exposing gimmickry and fraudulence and fraudulent gimmickry upsets you, or you don't care about taking advice from folks who make up "science" to sell you something or promote lifestyles that are not working for the advocate (for one reason or another, matters not), then this isn't the blog for you.  My readership fluctuates, but the trend continues upward. 

I realized long ago ... or I most certainly wouldn't still be around ... that you can never please all of the people all of the time, some of the people all of the time, or some people even one time.  And that's OK.  But I do take exception to being lumped in with Durian Rider and even Anthony Colpo and Matt Stone in terms of my blogging style.   It's no secret I'm a fan of and respect AC for his work on cholesterol and his Fat Bible, and while I feel Matt Stone regrettably crossed into woo-ville with his RBTI stuff, I still have a soft spot for the guy whom I believe is well-meaning at heart.   But my style may be comparable in its irreverance, there are some clear differences.  Every now and then I'll use profanity and when I do it is to make a point.  I'll never forget the first time I heard my own mother drop an eff bomb.  It left an impression on me just exactly how effed up the situation she was referring to had to be to elicit the expletive!  Some how folks equate my calling Jimmy Moore (and various other low carbers) obese to others calling him a fat eff, and my mocking of his delusions over calories and his various metabolic mysteries with others' mocking of his weight per se.   Obese is a medical term not a descriptive.    There is nothing hateful or improper about pointing out that those who are famous for their low carb weight loss success perhaps ought not to be any more, as low carb is no longer successful for them.  Someone wrote recently that I have been having a bad summer because Jimmy is losing weight.  Ummm ... my stats say otherwise, and all I have to say is that Jimmy has lost weight on his "latest extreme challenge" many many many many many to the nth=many times before.  The only thing different this time is that he's reporting after the fact rather than throwing down the challenge gauntlet and laying out his intentions ahead of time.   I wish him well that this time he'll succeed in getting the weight off and keeping it off.  Maintenance may be boring, and it is danged difficult (sometimes more than others), but when you have no other qualifications for doing what you do, it is the only thing that ultimately matters ... I'm just not getting excited over it or rushing out to get my ketone meter and flush money down the toilet on expensive blood ketone strips.

Back to me and AHS ... 

The folks behind AHS have some thinking to do.  On their website, they have now communicated publicly that which Jack Kruse hinted at a while back -- founding a scientific journal.  I'll say this without apology ... this thing is (or should be) dead on arrival if they could not even put out an August 2012 Proceedings of AHS12 issue.  And they couldn't.  Too many of the presentations did not even pay lip service to ancestral diet/health/lifestyle, and the selection of speakers was based far more on popularity/celebrity draw than on credentials and content.  I get the whole anti- or outside-the-establishment bent ... but at some point you have to recognize that there's a reason people spend time to earn letters in legitimate academic study, and that means something.  And I say that as an often regretful (because life got in the way) all-but-thesis would be PhD.  Still, my academic study WAS in fields directly related to what I blog most about.  If you're going to have some sort of journal to mimic "peer review" -- what defines, and who are the peers? 

Speaking of credibility and seriousness -- AHS has tried to infer such on this event by managing to hold them at prestigious academic institutions.  But as "recently" as a month ago -- before my husband's job change was a done deal -- I had some other scheduling issues that would have resulted in missing the Barefoot Ball and perhaps at least some of the Thursday talks.  I was always aware that Friday & Saturday were two-track talks/panels, so I went to the website to check the schedule.  If too many of the talks I wanted to attend were scheduled simultaneously or early on Thursday, I may well have had to back out then ... it just would not have been worth it.  When I checked then was the first I noticed that Taubes was even on the agenda ... and he and Peter Attia were scheduled in a time slot together with no topic.  Also at that time, there was TBD in the hour time slot on the track across from the Safe Starches panel.  I wish I'd saved the schedule, but the titles of the talks were also different from what ended up in the final version.  Mat Lalonde was going to talk about something with gliadins in the title, and Nora Gedgaudas to discuss starches.  I'm trying to recall exactly ... stuff changed so many times ... but Lucas Tafur was unable to attend (no doubt at least partially due to prohibitive travel costs).  Lustig didn't provide an abstract at all!!??!!  My point being that this is far different from the way the conferences AHS is trying to emulate work and undercuts its legitimacy pretty severely.  

I know that had I decided to attend I would have been pissed off as all hell when the ultimate schedule came out and they scheduled Chris Masterjohn across from Gary Taubes.  I tweeted that this was a diss to Chris, but this was, IMO, a huge middle finger to a large portion of the attendees as well.  No doubt many speakers were chosen for their attendance draw-factor -- but how dare you schedule one of the few legitimate (now) PhD's who specifically addressed ancestral diets across from someone many would like to attend ... at least to challenge???  For the record, I would have attended Chris' lecture ... hands down and with no deliberation at that.  I suppose the likes of Tastes Like Chicken would have found a way to read into that as well??

WRT Taubes, his title and abstract hinted he'd discuss Ebbeling et.al. quite a bit, but the tweets seem to indicate he rehashed much of the same Adiposity 101 lecture one can see any day and probably all day on YouTube.  Not a single person in attendance learned anything new -- which is usually what happens at such conferences in the real science world.  If the organizers were really interested in simulated academic discourse ... how about a 40 minute Q&A session with Gary Taubes instead (heck, I can dream the man might ever answer his critics on the science).  But how great would that have been?  And schedule that against two 20 minute talks on the mind and/or exercise and/or policy/law so folks could come and gone or not felt conflicted with two talks on the same topic they might be interested in. 

In the end, it came down to this for me:  there were a number of people I was really looking forward to meeting ... and this was really the only reason I was even going.  Even being relatively "local" (it would be a 3-4 hr drive each way, depending on traffic) and staying at a slightly cheaper than The Charles hotel, it would have cost me around $1000 to attend.  While that appears to be chump change to some people,  it would amount to an awfully expensive meet-and-greet that didn't seem remotely worth the money -- whether it be mine or a donor's.  That's where I started thinking along the lines of what if it was all my money, and the decision was a no-brainer.  I've not seen much in the way of comments on how smoothly the 20 minute talks went, but I also imagined that those especially, with only 5 minutes between sessions, there wouldn't even even be much of an opportunity for any Q&A at all.    So in the end, I was quite relieved to have a reason not to attend ... I can think of far more productive ways to spend the time and money and energy.
According to the website:
The Ancestral Health Symposium is a scientific conference serving to foster collaboration among scientists, healthcare professionals as well as laypersons who study and communicate about health from an evolutionary perspective, in an effort to develop solutions to our modern health challenges.
While I certainly "get" the idea of involving laypersons, there just isn't much in the way of delineating who is what there.  If I may offer some unsolicited (and likely unwanted) advice ... why not just have a session or two for meet and greet, Q&A and personal testimonials billed as such?  And you have simply got to ditch the low carb crapola.  The only ancestral bent of Mr. Taubes is his love for pre-WWII obesity researchers and the Black Age of endocrinology science.  You can't get much worse when it comes to discussing ancestral diets vs. modern diets than his continued misrepresentation of the Pima in Arizona ... this alone should disqualify him!  That Taubes is in any way, shape or form associated with paleo is truly a joke.  Peanut oil (roughly 1/3rd O6) is, after all, listed alongside olive oil as an "especially healthy oil" in WWGF.  There's a reason, besides his condescending attitude towards them, that scientists in the field do not take TWICHOO seriously, and it's past time the paleo community wake up and realize this before low carb sinks the paleo ship.  One really has to wonder how it is that someone like Nora Gedgaudas gets elevated to the level of "expert".  What has she done?  Any relevant academic study?  No.  She read a bunch of diet books and a few articles, and wrote and self-published a book incorporating the pop-culture interpretations of these books.  Her renditions of biochemistry and physiology are easily discounted by basic and non-controversial knowledge.  Her image on the AHS page alongside Cordain's is truly what is wrong with AHS!

Which sets the stage to discuss that Safe Starches panel.  After his data dump post on safe starches, Jimmy Moore pitched a panel on the topic to the AHS group.  To be moderated by himself, it was to include Paul Jaminet, Ron Rosedale, Jack Kruse and Cate Shanahan.  C'mon ... is this anyone's idea of a serious panel regardless of one's position on carbs?  In its initial form, it would be 4 against a half.  I say that not to disparage Paul's obvious intellect, but because he is still of the school that carbohydrates should be minimized, just not eliminated, and the other three plus the moderator are staunchly low carb (despite Jack's boasting of carb consumption in the summer).   Here we have 3 MD's, and an astrophysicist moderated by a blogger/podcaster discussing the role of starch in the human diet ... presumably from an ancestral viewpoint?   With all due respect to Paul, why is not Shou-Ching the one who sits on these panels and such?  Her background is at least in a related field.  Could not she have reached out to her Harvard colleagues to find just one scientist that studies metabolic syndromes who might provide some balance to this panel?  I don't see how anyone learns anything when the same old same old is just repeated without substantiation or reasonably balanced challenge.  While I imagine Nathaniel Dominy would probably not travel across the country to participate in such a symposium sans honorarium, surely there's someone of his bent more locally who might consider it?  

The original SS panel epitomizes what is wrong with "the community" and this, the most celebrated event of the year.  It was a gathering mostly of those who agree on just about everything and just look the other way (because paleo is so nebulous anyway) and/or are unwilling to call each other out on where they disagree.  That's how we ever even had a Jack Kruse in the first place.

It is long past time to discuss the final outcome of Krusegate.   For all the hub bub, flurry of emails, phone calls and whatnot, ultimately there was just deafening silence ... well ... but for the sound of the broom sweeping of the whole debacle under the rug.  Only in a community dominated by Science Krispology does a Jack Kruse catapult to the fore in the way that he did in the first place.  Of course "haters" like myself had been speaking out about that quack for quite some time.  I didn't speak much at first, because I found it unfathomable that anyone would take the man seriously so hardly worth the time.  In his first podcast with Jimmy Moore, Kruse made more than enough statements for there to be cause for concern.  Yet this podcast was the springboard for his rise in the community.  There's an important lesson here about celebrity and king makers.  For a very long time Kruse spoke of two things -- 1.  His Jimmy Moore podcast, and 2.  His mega thread on Mark Sisson's forum from which a book deal was in the works.   By the time Jack had made enough gaffes for many to take notice, it appeared too late as the Kruse missile had been launched and appeared out of control.   And, after all, he was "helping people" with his free advice, so what was the harm anyway, right?

Now I understand that controversy in these sort of times in this community is a tricky thing, but that doesn't excuse Krusegate.  Many had a hand in it.  Now I'm not sure what all he said or did at PaleoFX, but that TEDx talk should have been the end of it.  Period.  Look, I don't care what you think of modern medicine and conventional wisdom, the claims made in that talk were just plain over-the-top and nobody need understand a thing about leptin, cold thermogenesis, or any of the science to get that.  Jack Kruse should have been unceremoniously disinvited from being on the LC Cruise and at AHS.   Whoever was behind the ShitKruseSays twitter account was actually doing the community a favor by highlighting the crap this guy was spouting ... and Jimmy Moore followed that account too.  Yet he still just didn't get it, and I suspect he and countless others just didn't want to.  This guy was toxic and magic all in one package ... everyone hoped to trade off the magic and that the toxicity wouldn't bite them in the ass. 

I doubt we'll ever know what really happened with Kruse and the cruise, but Jimmy owes people the truth as he knows it -- and he knows more than he's told because his cabin was five doors down from Jack's.  But nah, despite a tweeted promise of a blog post ... silence.   And Mark Sisson's public response left much to be desired as well.    I know these people have businesses and livelihoods to protect, and certainly Jack's misbehavior cannot be blamed on them, but a definitive, unequivocal denunciation would have been the more appropriate response.  I guess time will tell what happens to the community as a whole as the low carbers still hold positions of prominence and influence.  I dunno, I'm the last person these folks are going to take advice from on this, but if they're too busy to vet the various purveyors of wisdom and science, perhaps I'm just the person they should be listening to.  I wonder sometimes what goes on in the brain of a Tom Naughton as he blogs well past the point when it was obvious Kruse was full of it just to disparage me.  You just don't do shit like that, no matter how much you hate a person.  This includes Kruse's fingerpointing actions as well.

The organizers of AHS would have done well by themselves and the community to publicly disinvite Jack Kruse, expressing in no uncertain terms the reasons why.  That would signal seriousness of purpose and integrity.  They chose not to.  This was a strategic error in my opinion.

Which brings me to Richard Nikoley.  If the Safe Starches panel highlights what's wrong with the community in terms of its blinkered low carb bias, Angry Dick speaking epitomizes what's wrong with the rest.  I get the layperson angle, I don't get the celebration of crude.   After the fallout from Krusegate -- that included various threatening tweets, posts and comments -- it should have been a no-brainer to disinvite him as well.   I'm trying to imagine Taubes calling Kolata any of the names I was called and still being invited to speak at another serious venue once organizers were made aware of the behavior.   I wrote Brent Pottenger and Aaron Blaisdell about this and included many of the tweets and comments.  I received no response -- not even a patronizing dismissal.

What these people don't seem to realize is that people are paying for their conference and it's not chump change for most either.   Even if I lived a stone's throw from the venue, as the person who purchased my ticket does, the registration fee + ball came to over $300.  While that is considerably less than many real conferences, it's still boils down to the fact that attendees are paying -- supposedly for quality content from reputable presenters.   Taking this out of the realm of nutrition, it's like having an irreverent political blogger come speak at your university -- you wouldn't want that individual to be one who would be fired or expelled from that institution for behavior that doesn't comply with their code of conduct.  That's pretty much what the vulgar and threatening rants unleashed against me by Nikoley boil down to.  It shouldn't have mattered that I was a ticket holding potential attendee, he should have been disinvited.  But that I was, and another target of his vulgarity (Emily Deans) was a scheduled speaker, and still he's on the docket?  Well, it doesn't look good for AHS.  Not as a serious symposium anyway.   To the best of my knowledge, volunteers and speakers are only waived the attendance fee (and perhaps the ball?) but pay their own travel -- oh they are treated to a reception.  I'd say the organizers owe all who have invested considerable funds to attend  far better than 20 minutes of Angry Dick.   YMMV in terms of his involvement with AHS, but no amount of lessons in the fine art of working nasty words into conversations will change the fact that his behavior was simply unacceptable.

I don't know how well attended his talk was, but it was sparsely tweeted on the #AHS12 hashtag.  Apparently he admonished the audience to tune out the news, it will come to you, and that voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.  Man that makes me long for plagiarized Krusims!  A few folks seemed to think it was fab that RN talked about the mind.  Huh?  Last I checked, the majority of humans to this day don't get to vote in meaningful fashion and 24hr cable news and such is a relatively recent invention.  But no, a slot for this man had to be slated from the very inception.  Yes, I know, I'm fat and ugly and a bitch who has no value to add to Nikoley's world.   I'm also not selling a book curated from my blogging on losing fat eating a paleo diet. 


The image above is screenshot & rearranged from this pic.  You need to be an approved follower of Jimmy Moore to view any direct links, but on the #AHS12 feed (search #AHS12+Nikoley and narrow the hits down big time!) you can view it w/o following.

Talk about images worth 1000 words in so many ways.


So, the past two days I found myself unexpectedly with far less time on my hands to blog and work on the Palisades Shore series.  I kept a few tabs on the #AHS12 hashtag on Twitter, and boy oh boy most of what I was reading assured me I wasn't missing out on too much that attending would have made any different.  As already mentioned, I would not have attended the 1000th rendering of Adiposity 101, and Rosedale apparently hogged the A of the Q&A part of that Safe Starches panel.  Sounds like Chris & Paul made the more convincing argument to the tweeters ... kudos!  Apparently many were disappointed in the food, or rather lack thereof at the Barefoot Ball.  Lustig delivered some conglomeration of his various YouTube videos and assorted interviews with a dose of defending El Bloombito's soda cup size nonsense.  Many tweeted the ridiculous nonsense that Eenfeldt talked about constipation being an imbalance of eating and defecation.  Sheesh how silly.

A few other observations on the twitter feed.  How many handles had some sort of paleo or caveman or such in them?  Lots.  But what IS paleo anymore?  It seems to be whatever someone wants to define it as.  What it is most certainly not is anything resembling how paleolithic humans ate -- even if one were to average out the estimated diets.  You see dairy is OK by some, but not grains or legumes.  And fat is super controversial.  As Charles noted in comments recently, Terry Wahls' diet is (was?) low fat ... heck ... the single most cited man in paleo -- S.Boyd Eaton -- apparently gave a rather endearing talk on his n=1 30 years eating paleo.  "Where's the bacon" many asked!  Many lamented how they could not live without their bacon ... totally missing the point that bacon ain't paleo either.  Meanwhile, the number of tweets about coffee consumption and tables giving away/selling chocolate -- and chocolate covered bacon if I read correctly -- is astounding.  These are not paleo foods.  Period.  I also thought ancestral was not intended to be synonymous with paleo, and yet not to the attendees.

Where does this leave me and the community?  Well, since I'll probably never be invited to speak at such events, it's highly unlikely (though not out of the question) that I'll sign on to attend any if there's nothing to be learned or truly professional networking to be had.  If we're just meeting and greeting, perhaps as I travel for recreation I can organize meet-and-greets of my own or just arrange to meet up with individual internet acquaintances here or there.  Sounds like way more fun to me!   And I can spend time out in the sun working on my own content rather than in darkened rooms likely gnashing my teeth  in frustration over the repetitive chant of "insulin sucks".  Seems a much more productive use of my time, all the way around. 

But if AHS and similar are truly sincere about trying to spread some message to the mainstream, they will need to start with cleaning some serious house.  I understand the need to balance "meat" with name-recognition draw and all that.  But if AHS13, wherever it is held,  is just 70% AHS12 + 20% AHS11 who didn't make it to Cambridge and 10% new folks including some blogger who rises to fame on the paleo flag, this will forever solidify AHS as a non-serious pow-wow.  I understand the organizers are not in the position to offer honoraria and such, but cast your net out to the local academic community and you may well be pleasantly surprised.  I'm willing to bet there would have been  any number of academics within a 2-3 hour radius drive of Cambridge who would have come to give a talk and mix that with a family vacation down to the Cape or up to Portsmouth.  But you'll never know because you didn't really ask.  There was never even an up front, easy to find, clear call for abstracts complete with guidelines and deadlines.  That's not how serious conferences operate.  Heck I received emails telling me I could be a volunteer and there wasn't even a straightforward way to go about doing that.  I felt like it was high school yearbook time all over again when it came to who was voted what and what pictures from which activities made it to the final copy -- e.g. friends of the yearbook committee were heavily featured any opportunity that presented.  It makes no real difference to me ... I'm not invested in this.  But for those that are, some deeper thinking on this is sorely in order.

Before signing off, a quick programming note on Palisades Shore.  I will have two more episodes and then do a data dump out-takes style post for the rest.  I didnt end up with the time to do what I wanted after all, and I'd rather pursue other content here.  Still, the Swedish heritage one uncovered some very interesting informtion of personal interest to me (I am of Bavarian German and Scandanavian descent) and I was about 2/3rds done with other content that included a great paper that looked at the digestion of starches in native plant foods that is worth finishing up. 

Comments

Unknown said…
My number one question is this - when did paleo become synonymous with VLCHF??

My number two question is this - who voted Jimmy Moore as a head honcho of the movement?

Nathaniel Dominy PhD and John McDougall MD make a very persuasive case that man is a starch eater and that the true human diet is based on starches and not on animal protein.

This is what I would like to see discussed and debated - McDougall & Dominy on one side and perhapes Chris Masterjohn PhD on the other side.

That would be a truly interesting panel and the Q&A afterwards would be interesting as well.

As to Nikoley how can they let him in barefoot?? He also says he never showers and never washes his hair - remind me never to sit near him - BTW - in the photo it looks like no one is sitting near him - hint, hint, hint
I had an outlier experience at AHS12 since I worked the event more than attended it, but a few comments given that.

First, I am sorry to have missed meeting you! I wound up spending the bulk of the event sitting at the registration desk, but that was fine with me. I got to schmooze with a lot of folks courtesy of the fact I knew I could see the presentations online afterwards. The venue was *fabulous* and Harvard Square/Cambridge was a great destination. Being able to meet so many folks I knew only via blogs or Twitter was well worth the trip.

Re the science, I think the idea of serving an academic, clinician, and lay audience at the same time is admirable, but ultimately impractical. I suspect that PaleoFX is going to come to the rescue and serve the latter, leaving AHS to serve the former. The announcement of electing more traditional officers may help in this regard.

Re the journal, I think there are people in AHS who can certainly put out a highly regarded scientific journal. My concern is whether there is space for two such journals. The folks at Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health have a head start and clearly overlap the space.

Re Chris Masterjohn, not to worry. I had the privilege of introducing Chris as a newly minted PhD to a very enthusiastic audience. He actually had the larger headliner room (which was quite full) while Taubes got the smaller room.

Re Nikoley, more than one person commented to me that Richard seemed to be alone a LOT. So perhaps there was some fall out from the whole c-word Kruse fiasco this past spring.
Paleolite said…
Don't apologize, this is like X-mas... ;-)
Danny Roddy said…
Evelyn,

Come to Wise Traditions. We can split a handle of Tequila and talk mitochondria.
Wright Mind said…
Kruse should have participated in the AHS, for the reasons you laid out, but was there any comment as to why he did not participate? Did he back out himself, or was he dropped?
Kamal said…
If the conference becomes a real academic conference, we might not be allowed to wear t-shirts. Have you considered that Evelyn? Have you???

In all seriousness, I think you make several (~15) good points. Most of all, I'd like to see non-paleo-bloggers invited. There are thousands of people out there who know lots about health that don't affiliate with the paleo community, and maybe one or more would be willing to speak on their expertise.
Lea said…
I think you've outlined some valid criticisms of the conference. I attribute some of the weaknesses to growing pains and to the inexperience of the organizers. I'm confident that things will be better next year. I do wish, at the very least, that the organizers had taken advantage of the conference location to recruit speakers from Harvard, MIT, etc. who could have made novel contributions to AHS.

As for Jack Kruse, yes, it is staggering (STAGGERING!) to think that he was originally slated to present at AHS. I was thoroughly entertained by his attempts to insert himself into the conference via Twitter. Did you catch this exchange?

Robb Wolf: Holy cats! @ChrisMasterjohn =smartest dude in the room. Any room.

TheCombatist: @robbwolf @ChrisMasterjohn Not according to Kruse. #epipaleoscam

Robb Wolf: “@TheCombatist: @robbwolf @ChrisMasterjohn Not according to Kruse. #epipaleoscam” my dinero is on masterjohn.

Kruse (DigiSurg): @robbwolf @TheCombatist @ChrisMasterjohn love when words get jammed in my mouth #supposedleader

TheCombatist went on to badger Kruse about Kruse-gate a bit. Frankly, I'm glad someone is willing to bring up that whole debacle with him. Of course, now Kruse is using these tweets to portray himself as some sort of Epi-Paleo martyr on his forum, defending his followers against the paleo "insurgents." He says, "And Mr Wolf tweeted to me this hashtag: #epipaleoscam Looks like the old franchise might have a big dent in the quarter panel. Terry Wahl's, Kuiper's. Cunnane and me all in the same boat........us or a Gym owner who is popular?" Fighting words! Granted, it probably wasn't very prudent of Robb to retweet TheCombatist's hashtag, but Kruse always ups the ante while still claiming to be above the fray: "It should not be about us......it should be about the science. The science of what is optimal for humans........not what sells crap" (says the man who is clearly attempting to create an Epi-Paleo brand and will soon be charging $399 for 30-minute "educational consults"). Ugh. I'd go on if I didn't become ill just thinking of how much damage that man has caused in the ancestral health community.
Zbig said…
in the gossipy mood: was JM present? was he in a better shape than Carbsane now that he's in the "nutritional ketosis"? :)

if so, this could have been a little embarassing even though he wouldn't point that out, thankful for making him famous :)
CarbSane said…
Ooh tequila! Probably no can do but that's tempting. It's in November right?
CarbSane said…
I know from reliable sources that he was disinvited, but according to Jack's tweets, he's claiming he "needed a break". I think it is unfortunate this rebuke was not done more publicly. I see from tweets it's epi-paleo now. Whatta farce!
CarbSane said…
Umm someone should tell Jack that Wahls and Kuipers were given a collective hour. It makes me sick that Jack talks about the science. It's also just mind-boggling that he pretty much made a name for himself in print when his writing is so rife with error as to be unreadable. Something tells me he's no longer practicing medicine ... Epi-paleo martyr ... LOL!

Hopefully they'll do a real call for abstracts and do some outreach with that at least to the local academic community of wherever they choose next year. Maybe it's just me, but somehow a symposium called the Ancestral Health symposium should have talks that are more aligned with its namesake.
CarbSane said…
Even at 230 lbs, Jimmy was never in better shape than me :-)
CarbSane said…
So if it were a real academic conference we'd go shirtless? ;p

Yep, as I commented below to Lea, they'll need to do some outreach, but I do believe they'll get some takers. The question is if that is what they're really after. I was being darned serious with my high school yearbook quip. All high schools are cliquish, but mine seemed particularly so and since it was such a small district and there wasn't a lot of moving in and out back in my day, everyone knew everyone, many since kindergarten. This is how AHS seems to me as an "outsider" of sorts.
Wright Mind said…
Woops, my sentence above should read, "Kruse should not have..."
CarbSane said…
There was always a low carb bent in the paleo world. Back when I found the LC web in 2009 was when Primal Blueprint came out and Sisson was decidedly LC. Kurt Harris was as well with PaNu. But I find it very strange that paleo has let the non-paleo LC faction muscle in on their action while most paleos are eating more and more carbs these days. It's an odd disconnect that can only be explained by following the money.

Jimmy's podcasts are widely listened to, score an interview and it can put you on the map or increase your exposure. But in exchange you get these absurd debates over the safety of starch and whatnot. Sigh.

FWIW, Chris is WAPF affiliated so I'm not sure he's on the other side of that argument per se. I see Sisson joined WAPF at AHS. Huh????
CarbSane said…
Hey Beth! Thanks for chiming in here, and you were definitely high on my list of people to meet. As to Chris, that's cool :D ... there were lots of nice tweets about him as well. Still think it was cheesy to slot them as they did. My timeline is fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure Taubes & Attia were scheduled to share a 40 min slot like 2 weeks out and there were some big holes -- like the hour opposing the safe starches panel -- on there. When you consider that most of the attendees would probably have wanted to attend both of those talks for one reason or another and likely never heard of some of the others it just seemed an odd choice.

I forgot about the EMPH journal, yes, clear overlap there. My quip on the hypothetical Proceedings for this conference is that there were so many talks and panels that wouldn't really fit in their own journal. They need to address that! Ancestral can be a very flexible term if used to full advantage, but it's stretched a bit too far IMO.

Yeah, I've received quite a few Inbox birdie tweets about Nikoley. Heck, he tweeted that he was skipping the banquet and drinking in his room. We know he's a fan of redemption ... perhaps he had more time than he expected to think on that? One can hope, but ...

I think they could structure AHS to serve both the academic and lay-community groups -- it's a simple matter of structuring the conference to draw clear distinctions.

There was a lot of Twitter buzz over where AHS13 will be held ... do you know anything on that front? Next year would definitely be different for me. My hubs will have more vacation and I expect our situation overall will be quite a bit better than currently. If it's some place I'd like to go on vacation, I could work the conference into a 10 day vacation ... then it will really be just the cost of the conference itself to consider in weighing the options. If it's back in CA somewhere I'd definitely consider it ... only been to CA once back in 1998. We were going to make a short vaca out of this trip, but that just wasn't going to happen ... this is where it became all of the cost for just for the conference. It just seems like so many don't even think people consider such things. I know I don't really owe any explanations, but even Nikoley seemed a bit disgruntled in a tweet about spending $1500 for travel/accomodations for the privilege of speaking at AHS. I never thought I'd say it, but I can relate! LOL

I sure do hope some of the folks who came from overseas stayed a few days over to enjoy Boston and/or took a road trip to the shore. Would be such a shame not to have. I just wish it wasn't so dang humid this whole time here in the NE!! August is usually humid, but this has been the worst I can remember in many years. I would have had a hard time with my fashion choices as my animal print tops are long sleeve hoodies.

CarbSane said…
I figured as much!
They haven't chosen the venue for 2013 and, per their FB page, are actively soliciting proposals from individuals or groups who'd be the local presence (i.e., doing the leg work on the ground and not just saying 'hey, come to Podunk.'
Unknown said…
http://jackkruse.com/brain-gut-6-epi-paleo-rx/

THE BASE OF THE PROTEIN/FAT PYRAMID of the EPI PALEO Rx:



The levels of the pyramid are ordered from best choice for the human brain to next best.



1. The base of the Pyramid is shellfish other than crustaceans: Provides the most nutrient density of any food source for optimal functioning of the human brain.

2. The second level of the Pyramid: crustaceans

3. The third level of the pyramid: Fish

4. The fourth level of the pyramid: Offal/organ meat of pastured/grassfed animals.

5. The fifth level of the pyramid is where ‘modern day paleo’ begins its pyramid base at our 4th level: grass fed skeletal meats.

6. Pastured eggs if there are no medical contraindications of inflammation like an AI*

7. Seeds and nuts* shading to omega 3 nuts is fine but this becomes important if there is a serious EFA imbalance only on direct testing


FATS: (in order of Optimal)


1. Spring and summer: Coconut oil, ghee, palm oil, duck fat, beef tallow, bacon fat, duck fat, pastured butter if there are no medical issue precluding its use, olive or avocado oils for salads, macadamia nut oils for mayonaise, raw cream if there are no contraindications* When you eat seafood try to use MUFA’s as the added fat.



2. Fall and Winter: ghee, pastured butter, duck fat, beef tallow, bacon fat, non hydrogenated lard, raw cream* Stick to animal fats in colder months. When you eat seafood try to use MUFA’s as the added fat.*

3. When you eat non seafood protein this is when you should add your saturated fats to your diet to the greatest degree!! Grass fed red meat and offal come packed with saturated fats by nature and fish do not, by design as well as I laid out in the webinar. When I eat non seafood protein and saturated fats, I tend to also add sea vegetables to the meal. What are the Epi-paleo sea vegetables? That comes later in the blog. In the healthy human colon complex carbohydrates get converted to SCFA to increase our omega three content in our colon to diminish the risk of diverticulitis and colon cancer. This is only done when the gut microflora is functioning well. This can be re engineered by evolutionary dietary modifications to be covered in later blog in this series.

Foods that I would totally eliminate from the Epi-Paleo Rx:



1. All grains no matter how they are prepared culturally.



2. All US dairy (including raw US dairy) because of the A1 casein problem and its tie to BCM-7 and its massive link to Hashimoto’s and disease. Hashimoto’s in not a static disease but a dynamic one. This means you must pay attention to your thyroid panels and AB’s as you evolve through your life too. One can use French or New Zealand dairy products if you can source them.



3. All nightshades vegetables if you have chronic elevated inflammation and a low Vitamin D level: Datura, Mandragora (mandrake), Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), Lycium barbarum (wolfberry), Physalis philadelphica (tomatillo) , Physalis peruviana (Cape gooseberry flower), Capsicum (chili pepper, bell pepper), Solanum (potato, tomato, eggplant), Nicotiana (tobacco), and Petunia. With the exception of tobacco (Nicotianoideae) and petunia (Petunioideae), most of the economically important genera are contained in the subfamily Solanoideae. READ MY CAVEAT BELOW ABOUT THE DIETARY USES!

Lerner said…
"following the money"

begin and end every discussion of the current Paleo with that and you've got it mostly nailed.
Lerner said…
Why is moderation on? It stunts conversation, to say the least.

Also, Evelyn: are you going to be switching away from google/blogspot anytime soon? It gets irritating having to be adding to google's never-ending attempts at building privacy-invading databases on everybody and everything on the planet. Now they have us verifying house numbers to go along with their street views - under the pretense of "proving you're not a robot" before being allowed to post. Yeah, right.
Unknown said…
AHS12 had far more people outside the LC circlejerk like Stanford and Lindeberg.

It's hard to attract these academics instead of people who are hitching their LC wagon to the paleo star for the $$$ because the conference doesn't pay presenters. I am using my own $$$ to attend an academic conference instead. It would have been worth attending if I had been a presenter, but otherwise, I don't see much value.

Also you may have noticed I have quite Paleohacks because it is a digusting cesspool of a place that's impossible to moderate.
river rance said…
Nick belly on Nikoley…sooo..how's that LC Paleo high fat etc working for ya?
rr
CarbSane said…
Hi Lerner,

Right now I'm extremely busy, and while it might appear I'm here quite a bit, the wonders of modern technology allow me to check in on my phone and I get to the rest when I can. I do try and check in to approve as quickly as possible. I cannot and will not allow profanity laced racist rants by one Razwell who lives to troll folks like myself to fill the comments on this blog. Blogger deleted his blog and user name, but he's back in business with a new one of each. I'll take the word recognition off though to make it easier to post.

Yes, one of the plans is to migrate to WordPress where I'll have much better options to police comments than I do now. Blogger is just so the eff more user friendly it's not even funny though. Still, this is probably a good time to migrate if I'm going to do it.
Unknown said…
Re "disgusting cesspool of a place"

Yeah there are way too much conversations about bodily secretions at that site.
Unknown said…
It's good he is telling people not to eat deadly nightshade :D I feel like almost all of this is cribbed from the posts Chris Masterjohn and I did after we read Cunanne. Although we didn't take all of Cunanne's stuff as truth and didn't build a strange diet (I think Cunanne would find it a bit odd) out of it.
CarbSane said…
As a sprightly and healthy kid, back in the day when you could only get real tasting tomatoes in the summertime, I ate the ones my mom grew aplenty in our garden like apples. So you all can tear the tomatoes from my cold dead hands before I sign on to the anti-nightshade brigade! :p ;)
CarbSane said…
So let's see Charles (and all) ... a year ago everyone was doing the leptin reset which was how Jack claimed to have lost his weight circa 2006. A ton of protein, fatty was AOK, within 30 minutes of rising. Nothing that I recall over a preference for seafood only that he preferred if folks didn't use whey. My oh my ...
CarbSane said…
Hiya Melissa! AHS11 (sic) did have more diversity it would seem on that front, but it also had the LC big guns, and let's not forget Jimmy was supposed to speak (to what?) and gave his slot up to the Swedish Diet Doctor. I get they don't pay or otherwise compensate presenters, which is why it's still ever-the-more frustrating they didn't at least use local networking to recruit from the Boston area. It's not like there aren't like a zillion colleges and universities, and for sure there are some scientists -- particularly younger ones -- who would love this sort of exposure and recognition!

Didn't notice that about PH. I've been very sparse there myself as for a good long while I would check on questions and see nothing worth contributing to so why bother. The ads for crapola diet aids and such really cheapened the place as well. Too bad Patrik didn't pursue sponsorship from paleo types. Ah well. His baby, not mine.
CarbSane said…
LOL Nick belly! One wonders what Jimmy is thinking when he looks at a picture like that, realizes it's unflattering, then tweets it away. Or did he not realize?
Nate said…
"AHS12 [sic] had far more people outside the LC circlejerk like Stanford and Lindeberg."

There are a lot of legitimate points being made here, but this is silly. Lindeberg wasn't able to come this year, but Maelan Fontes and Remko Kuipers both presented for the first time (in 40 min. time slots). Stanford didn't present, but Dan Lieberman and David Sloan Wilson were given prime speaking slots during the plenary session. There were also a much larger number of presentations by people outside of the paleo/ancestral community that spoke about issues other than nutrition, including folks like Peter Gray and Jennifer Pomeranz - both leaders in their respective fields. I hope more people offer feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of AHS12, but let's try to keep the discussion grounded in reality.

You can still access the 2011 program here if you want to compare the make up of the symposia yourself:

http://ancestryfoundation.org/Schedule.html
Derek H said…
I've been cheating on the "community" by listening to a few McDougall/Dominy lectures since reading this post...

It's painful to have strong biases challenged. Why do we have such a desire to be "right", or be on the right side of the "truth"?

I remember Don Matesz presentation at last year's AHS (I think), I found it the most compelling, yet buried it in the closet.

I chuckled when McDougall shared his "star McDougallers" all sharing similar testimonies - better health, reversed autoimmunity, etc. etc.

I may just have to perform a Jimmy Moore like experiment, sans glucometer...
Lesley Scott said…
what...no tee shirts allowed?? forget that! @Evelyn - we Kraken's Angels need to stick together & show the love!
perishedcore said…
Power on, Evelyn! I dunno how we got disconnected (again), but I sure as hector enjoyed our convo. And again, I'd like to shout out that Beth is the reason that attendees' and presenters' experiences were so super dooper!

The one thing you didn't mention (and not being from the local environs would be why) is the total failure for AHS12 to have provided any sort of networking venue. I raced around looking for known and respected (key difference) locals who could help with putting a proposal together to go after high $ demo grant money for a quality of life community development effort. The RFP was announced late last week, and the deadline is Aug 20. Didn't get a single taker w/ the possible tepid exception by Mat LaLonde. I ended up submitting an idea solo, which will be the worse for its failure to incorporate interdisciplinary perspectives and interventions.

My thinking was that getting ancestral health principles and practices more eyes would help. The "demographic" at AHS12 is extremely homogenous - and I am glad that Kamal and others observed it. But if that demographic remains insular and arrogant, it will die within a short generation. For all its emphasis on fecundity, it's acting in a Shaker like celibate manner. Lots of singing and activity, but no procreation of ideas and recruitment of members.

~aek
river rance said…
Evelyn,
Passive-agressive personalities always know what they are doing, always. That's the beauty of P/A…even when he was n-oneing that silly "nutritional ketosis" stuff a couple months ago, he threw his wife under the bus cause his cortisol levels had risen because of his stressing over her surgery. Pretty classic P/A stuff there…it couldn't possibly be an 80% fat diet,anabolic steroids, no exercise, etc. causing weight stalls it had to be something else,…all of Jimmy's failures come with a but this and a but that. He saw that "sweet-wheat" Nikoley belly and took full advantage of it, the "bad boy" reference is the counter weight for posting a very unflattering image…you better believe he knew what he was doing…
aek is too kind. The volunteers rocked, and I helped them do their thing. But the conference was fab because our team helped the presenters do their thing. I personally think Katherine Morrison (@cillakat) was the hero of AHS12! #behindthescenes
Unknown said…
Nate, I respect you a lot, but while Fontes and Kuipers are great, there were ~11 sessions primarily devoted to low-carb or ketosis. And 4 evolutionary-medicine/anthropology sessions, one of them given by a graduate student.

-evolutionary medicine-
Eaton
Kuipers
Fontes

-anth-
Liberman
Miki Ben Dor


-keto-
Klement/Lemke
Seyfried
Thiele
Rosedale
Gedgaudas

-carbs blab blah blah-
Taubes
Safe Starch panel
J Stanton
Eugene Fine
Seyfried
Lustig

So are you the keto as medical treatment conference or the ancestral health conference?

And it's going to be hard to attract academics as long as AHS continues to include people like Nora Gedgaudas who has her own version of human evolution that makes no sense whatsoever. And did you provide grants to attract people who work in human evolution? It's also scheduled during when most field anthropologists are in the field.

I'm going to this instead
http://evmedreview.com/?page_id=5


P2ZR said…
It's rather pathetic that Kurt Harris voiced a lot of your criticisms re: woo and credibility wrt. AHS11, as the lead-in to his skewering of Don Matesz ('people like Matesz was why I couldn't entertain the thought of attending'). While his words perhaps constituted more dismissal than admonishment, the fact is that the organizers chose to ignore this critique from one they regarded highly (perhaps KGH even got an invite to speak last year?). Ironically, Dickoley proudly provided a platform for KGH to continue his (not unjustified) lambasting of Matesz, standing squarely behind KGH in his fight against woo. Oh, but Kruseyboy is a buddy, so, y'know, we gotta maximize buy-in and all....

This leads me to the much-abused Pareto rule. Here's a lesser abuse of it: if you are 80% solid info and 20% woo, but your 20% woo is causing 80% of the abject overwhelming sh*ttiness a not-insignificant number of people experience on your WOE (or way of being, as in, for being a rah-rah paleolithic specimen), then it is not OK!!! Let the people who don't thrive fall by the wayside--make them believe it's their fault for not successfully morphing into a fat-burning beeeeast--after all, it's survival of the fittest, right? (<--no Social Darwinism insinuations there, really, none at all ~whistling along~)

Which brings me to Paleohacks. AKA, 'We'll help you troubleshoot and dissect all your paleo problems ad infinitum, *as long as you subscribe to the TRUTH that the Holy Solution is a paleo one*.' I still can't believe there was a thread about whether women shaving their legs is paleo--and the none-too-subtle implication was that women who enjoyed having smooth legs had their sensibilities utterly warped by misogyny...which is an unforgivable neolithic social construct. And yet non-trivial questions about why something isn't working--awful skin, abysmal energy levels, etc.--must come with the acknowledgement that paleo will have (nay, *be*) the solution. Gee, it must be not enough coconut oil or animal fats to endow that healthy glow (don't you dare suggest starch and sugar lower stress and reduce acne and alleviate dryness); crap energy levels are just due to not being in royal purple-ketostix-deep ketosis, and you must be lyingggg if you tried LCHF long-term and you didn't feel like a turbocharged athletic Einstein (BTW, he smoked tobacco, which is no less paleo than coffee).

Anyway, it seems that MD's like Emily Deans really did find the networking helpful (which is good news for the rest of us). But they're a small, small part of the attendees and target audience, and that by no means justifies how AHS was carried out.
S SD said…
As the outsider that I am, I would have liked to get a view of the, ya know, the 'other' peeps at AHS, as in the audience and/or attendees who aren't either a twit from Australia or hawking a book or blogger of the year or, as said previously, with the "Paleo" namesake attached to or part and parcel of their online persona. If there is only a small portion of the world who is in on this gig, which ones were attending? Did they Tweet like mad? Were they interviewed? Are their pics showing up anywhere?
Josh said…
Derek said: It's painful to have strong biases challenged. Why do we have such a desire to be "right", or be on the right side of the "truth"?

This article has some interesting insights on the topic - http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/wellbeing/6628224/Unhappy-brains-are-better-brains
Dracil said…
Re: Richard, from his latest post, it looks like he was basically preoccupied with a family medical emergency.
Jason Sandeman said…
If you ever need a hand doing so, let me know, and I'll help you out there!
Unknown said…
If I'm going to an academic conference, I'm expecting it to be boring and to garner me CME. AHS is neither, and that's all right by me. For the record, I didn't mind Nikoley being there and we exchanged some hellos. All that low carb cruse debacle seems so long ago, and I'm not really one to hold grudges. I'm not going to be linking or commenting on his blog again, but c'est la vie. I was impressed with the differences between '11 and '12, and am eager for '13. I don't know that AHS could quite be AHS without the fringe blog addition, though I for one am incredibly sick of the carbohydrate debate. I would say it was a sideshow here. Anthropology and medicine seem to be coming to the forefront, and a couple dozen (at least) medical doctors were there, which thrills me no end. I don't know that a strictly academic conference could bring so much interest. But I'm a cynic.
Unknown said…
given the allergic burden to shellfish in the general population I'm frankly shocked at these recommendations. Anti-inflammatory diet?
CarbSane said…
It's called making it up as he goes along ... :D

I find his nightshade demonization interesting in light of his AHS-martyrdom tweets invoking Terry Wahls' name. Her website sports a picture of her with a basket of stuff -- pretty sure there are evil nightshades in there!
CarbSane said…
Welcome Sid! You can go to twitter and search on #AHS12 to see for yourself ... at times it was quite the tweetstorm. A lot of the folks in attendance were bloggers or regular participants/commenters on forums and blogs ... it's a big wide blogosphere out there! It would be interesting to know if there was much if any attendance by locals not previously affiliated in some way with the community beforehand. Somehow I doubt it. That's OK, but it's why in my head I've been calling this the Incestral something-or-other >:)
CarbSane said…
Kruse is still around using that paleo label, though with his own "Epi" (lady? since you mentioned shaving, I always think of the epilady when I hear that prefix) twist.

I do think such conferences have worth (I'll comment further in response to Emily when I get a chance) even with most of the current lineup of speakers/participants. Just more delineation is needed, and when someone is a proven quack, they just gotta go!
S SD said…
Incestral something or other -- why didn't I think of that!? Nice!

Oh, and I indulged! On the distant-outside of the periphery of this whole thing, I've been a social scientist of one, watching and contemplating, and commenting here and there. The Dick-Kruise debacle was just so full of fodder! It's been a whole lotta fun and now, The Ancestry Of Our Lives (or Incestry). Priceless. Thank you for offering one of the best views -- your commenters are a wonderful addition to my ultimate enjoyment (my personal deficiency is a science mind -- only a social observational one suits me, I'm afraid).

SD
Anonymous said…
"Also you may have noticed I have quit Paleohacks because it is a digusting cesspool of a place that's impossible to moderate."

Your stock (already high) just went up in my book. PH is infested with wackos and and is a swamp of bad advice.
Lea said…
He's definitely just trying to create a brand for himself with this Epi-paleo stuff. And, as always, he's being incredibly divisive in the process. You'd think that he was the first person in the paleo world (and perhaps on earth?) to recommend the regular consumption of fish. He continues to make disparaging comments about the "so-called paleo leaders" and "paleo insurgents." The whole thing would be comical if there weren't a lot of people taking him seriously, and if he hadn't been so vicious about taking down his "enemies" a few months ago.
Sanjeev said…
I'll be fragmenting the paleo market myself, just working up the marketing now - it will be
Real Paleo Tribal Fusion©® [0]
for Real Women©®,
Real Men©®
and Real fuzzy little creatures from Betlegeuce©® [1]

it's the "waging war on the next tribe over and enslaving their children and women for fun, profit, weight loss and all kinds of good stuff©®

[0] or tribble fusion, if I can get the rights from the Star Trek people.
[1] yeah I stole it. Sue me. Or read some Vogon poetry (from gc,bc) at me
Harry's Acolyte said…
Wait, what?! Anabolic steroids?
Harry's Acolyte said…
Does McDougall have "starfish"?
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