Debunking The Paleo Diet by Christina Warinner (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript and summary of Christina Warinner’s talk titled “Debunking The Paleo Diet” at TEDxOU conference.

In this TEDxOU talk, Christina Warinner, an achaeological geneticist, here debunks the Paleo diet fads…below you can find the full transcript of the talk…

MP3 Audio:

TRANSCRIPT:

Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here. I’m an archaeological scientist and I study the health and dietary histories of ancient peoples using bone biochemistry and ancient DNA.

I’m here because I want to talk to you about the Paleo Diet. It’s one of America’s fastest growing diet fads. The main idea behind it is that the key to longevity and optimal health is to abandon our modern agricultural diets, which make us ill, and move far back in time to our Palaeolithic ancestors, more than 10,000 years ago, and eat like them.

Now, I’m really interested in this idea because it purports to put archaeology in action, to take information we know about the past and use it in the present to help us today.

Now, this idea was really started in the 1970s with this book, “The Stone Age Diet.” It’s diversified since then into several variants, including the Paleo Diet, the Primal Blueprint, the New Evolution Diet, and NeanderThin, and most of the language of these diets makes references to anthropology, nutrition science, and evolutionary medicine.

The diet does seem primarily targeted at men, so if you look at advertisements and descriptions, they have virile, cavemen-like images, things like “live primal,” lots of red meat. And basically, the idea behind it can be broken down into four parts.