80/20 IS Moderation Folks!

I'll have another followup post to the War on Moderation, but just some random thoughts in response to some of the reaction to the first one.   Most of the knee-jerk reactions come down to:

• I can't eat X because I have Y-syndrome so I can't eat everything in moderation.
• Oh you're just using this as an excuse to eat crap
• OK so just go stuff yourself with SAD Cheetos and Twinkies.

On Facebook, the following caught my eye

This past weekend, Emily Deans spoke on eating disorders at AHS13 and one of the tweeted quotes was:  

Now, to be fair, this is likely taken out of context, but in one of the posts on her series on orthorexia, Deans wrote:  

That's also why I tend to prefer the Paleo 2.0 ancestral "real food" approach which includes dairy (particularly fermented) and cooked legumes (except most soy and peanuts), potatoes, and rice for everyday eating and things like 80/20 rules so we can enjoy anything we want from time to time and not wig out about it.

Bravo!  There are a lot of people who call themselves some percent paleo or primal.   And then there are those like Nell Stephenson who compromised her deeply held beliefs on cheating and paleo when she went on the Dr. Oz show and made a rule out of 3 Cheat Meals a Week (I enhanced that on the screenshot) ... Of course she does say "give it the 30 days", but this came after the "no inflammatory foods" edict of no grains, no legumes, no dairy, no sugar and no fun ... the Ozzies must have been like "this audience isn't going to go for that".  The Paleoista is on a serious One True Paleo kick lately...  Incidentally she did sort of specify this was out of 21 meals per week.  This works out to 86/14 and is actually quite *moderate*.

The 80/20 Rule is about as nebulous as Hartwig fussed over with moderation and cookies.  

Twenty percent is 1 in 5, that's 6 days or almost a full week out of your Whole30.   But to her query, what does 80% mean?  (Or whatever percent)  Does that mean one of every 5 meals?  One full day out of every five?  Or 20% of the food at each meal?    On Twitter, someone took me to task in this exchange:

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Jscott's link was to this post where the Whole9 gang was taken to task by a few readers for their verbiage ... ahem ... in their Whole30 propaganda guidelines.   

One of the points of my War on Moderation post is that the Hartwigs are WELL AWARE of the propensity for uber restrictive regimes to trigger eating disorders.  Melissa snarks against Zone for it's "moderation" while accusing that diet of triggering her own eating disorder.  She then lifted the wording about her ZoneED and attributed it to those who don't fare well on Whole30.  

Where is this verbiage front and center?  Is it in their book?  NO.  Their book is billed as one to change your relationship with food.  Indeed they are very busy "helping people" change their lives and call anyone that dare block their path a bit a troll.  Here is the graphic I responded to Jscott with (the bottom quote comes from his link):

Whole30 NEEDS a cautionary disclaimer.  

Readers might be interested in the conversation that interspersed mine and Jscott's.   

Ummm ... this is what I'm saying when I take these gurus to task for their irresponsible behavior.  The Whole30 verbiage is the intro to their It Starts with Food book.   In the moderation post Deans' position was raised.  I have to say, that there were other ways to endorse the book on the back of the jacket than this:

Some may wonder who this Amy Kubal is.  She is *the* paleo nutritionist.  Ringleader at Robbwolf.com, consultant on Whole9, on the editorial staff of that Paleo Living magazine, coordinating support for PaleoFX, and more recently she's appeared at Sisson's PrimalCONs.   Here are Melissa's and Amy's bios on the Whole9 Consulting page.

She recently wrote a post on hunger for Robb's website, and before that on how she's still broken despite being paleo.  At other times other advice on weight management such as The "Weighting" Game and her own take on paleo purity:  90/10, 80/20, 40/60… What’s Your Paleo Percentage?   Pertinent to these conversations is the fact that this is Amy Kubal today (at right this past weekend, I believe the one below is from AHS12).  I wonder if there's a person reading this who does NOT see the obvious here.                                                                                                      .

As Melissa and company dine in oh so paleo luxury.  Yeah right.  Paleo schmaleo.

How about let's have an HONEST dialog about eating disorders, dietary regimes, restriction and moderation.  Shall we?