"Caveman", "paleo", and "grok" are just shorthand. They are terms with meanings that are agreed upon so they can be used in discussion in place of more cumbersome descriptions. Without a common understnading of what they represent they are meaningless. I agree they have started to become cliches, but they are still useful.

The real danger in these terms is in how they are used by people who have little or no idea of what we are doing, especially the media. It is easy for lazy journalists to latch on to simplistic ideas like modern city dwellers yearning to live like caveman. Which is not what most of us are after.

Simplifying complex things through the concept of a caveman may open the door to better decisions and, thus, greater health for the population-at-large.

The need for this simplification for the population-at-large is the true issue -- an issue separate from the adoption of Paleo itself, but has everything to do with the intellectual capacity of an entire nation. A completely separate discussion.

Perhaps some people invest their intellectual resources elsewhere and would prefer to see diet and exercise through the eye of a caveman, making life simpler as they focus on the cure for cancer or write the next American novel. Whatever it is, it's not always a bad thing.

But it's the few people who attempt to substitute the true science with a theoretical caveman who are bastardizing the Paleo lifestyle.

Grok, Caveman, Paleo... Don't pass it off as science, but don't ignore its utility.

Best,

No. Don't forget that science brought us the SAD and CW. It's entirely possible to lose sight of the forest because you're examining bark under a magnifying glass...

I've been running my take on Paleo on caveman logic. It works.

Regarding the "how's" and "what's":

"What" would a caveman do is a great place to start. And, for many people, that might even be as far as they need to go. If they don't want to eat salt because caveman didn't, that's fine. When I first followed a paleo diet a few years ago, this was as far as I got in my education because I was seeing great results and feeling better than ever. If it was working for me as it was, why would I care what the scientific reasoning was? Because, as Fearsclave said, since science brought us SAD and CW, I wasn't in any particular hurry to understand paleo from a scientific standpoint.

These days, with more and more research in the area, the "how" and "why" are starting to be important (and more accessible) to many of us. When you're trying to convince friends, family, or society at large of the benefits and safety of a "new" way of eating, it's often important to provide scientific backing to what you are telling them. Remember, they don't necessarily believe that CW is false and they believe that it is backed with science of its own. And, CW tells them that paleo, with it's higher fat and lower carb content, is dangerous so they may need that expert advice based on science.

My girlfriend is always telling me 'my science' is sometimes a little too far ahead of the curve for her and the rest of the world. I like when CNN puts up a story that says we are right, but it is easier to use the 'caveman' analogy rather than studies because there is just to much accepted CW out there to argue with.

I like to remember that the Earth was once flat and the Sun revolved around us. One day perhaps eating meat will be proven healthy again and eating plants will be frowned upon. Until then, my argument is based on a caveman.

Although it is called the paleo diet for something, I understand what you mean. That's why I agree with 'pfw's answer.

One other thing I think people often forget, is that evolution is not about health, it is about replication of genes, about reproduction. And health (or happiness) are only important if they help reproduction. See effects of insulin, caloric restriction on health and reproduction.

A good read on this is the book 'Why we get sick' by Nesse and Williams. (although they are wrong on the fat hypothesis).

It's not a bad idea in principle. However very few people ever seem to bother finding out what our ancestors actually did, on the best scientific evidence we currently have.

A more common trend seems to be projecting back onto paleolithic man what he did or didn't do as a justification for personal opinions. For this reason some people would not do things for which there is evidence that cavemen did do.

Scientific thinking is the only reason we know anything about cavemen at all.

It is more officially referred to as "Paleo Reenactment" and I am ever increasingly inclined to shun it in favor of Dr. Kurt Harris's approach of evaluating actual benefit regardless of historical usage.

I wouldn't say I'm "tired of" it. I think it's a good heuristic and it's a positive thing that people use it as a first rule of thumb. I do very strongly disagree with any attempts to privilege such hypothetical reasoning over nuts and bolts scientific analysis though. When the hard science is available either in terms of rigorous tests showing actual outcomes or in terms of identifiable concrete mechanisms then it's that that counts.

There might seem to be cases where 'caveman reasoning' (e.g. humans would have had to burn their own saturated body fat, for extended periods throughout their evolutionary history) might seem to trump 'hard science' (e.g. SFA->cholesterol->CVD) but clearly enough, in such cases, the science is simply and tangibly at fault. It's also on the basis of hard science that we can recognise that human metabolism is often run primarily on fat, rather than on the basis of typically historical reasoning (e.g. did cavemen eat mostly animal fat, or lots of plants).

Grok is a symbol- there is more sound science behind Paleo than the grainetarians ever produced.

I find the Grok heuristic more useful than the science, to be honest. The science, while nice to have, seems to act mostly as a feel-good security blanket for most people. If Taubes showed us nothing else, he showed us how easily and how pervasively experts can get things wrong in their scientific fields based on invisible biases and unquestioned assumptions; and for lay-people (I include myself) the problem of judging the science is even worse. If I were willing to devote a great deal of my time to this particular field, I might be able to reasonably judge the science being done as a peer, but frankly I am not willing to devote that time and I think few people are, even among the paleo-blogger crowd. The Grok rule, by comparison, is more general and abstract reasoning about significantly less controversial ideas.

Grok metaphor can be a great guidance when dealing with simpler things. cavemen were not some kind of geniuses or gods, they had no idea how to deal with a lot of things or didn't understand why things happened. Their lives were based on intuition and evolutionary behavior, replicated generation after generation... we have lost this intuition and need a guidance to get back to it, to relearn.

BUT I love my science. I learn about paleolithic times from scientific books, I read modern research and so on. I will not give up on brushing my teeth or wearing clothing protecting me from the elements just b/c they didn't have that. I still use my asthma meds and use the help of doctors and a therapist. I know more about cause and effect and am happy with using this knowledge.

I find the paleo lifestyle as the best for human beings, I don't believe in it as if it were a religion, there is no spirituality attached to it, I don't feel superior by following it... and I don't feel the obligation to replicate the lives of cavemen! Science taken critically and with open mind wins in my world.

The point remains the same. People live ~75 years living an anti-grok existence. Grok didn't have the medical advances we have today. Does that mean we shouldn't use them because Grok didn't? Where do you draw the line? Hell, everyone on this message board uses a computer, probably drives a car, lives in an air conditioned home, etc, etc, etc. If you truly want to live like grok, sell your possessions and move to a South American jungle or the plains of Africa. See how Grok really lived. I'm not trying to be a jerk...I just think people are taking this Grok thing WAAAAAAAY too far.

The emphasis on science and the caveman metaphor are just two different levels of magnification of the problem of what to eat. Alan Watts contrasts the two types of thinking in this animation produced by the South Park creators: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXi_ldNRNtM Why get annoyed with either side? The grok metaphor can provide general guidelines for living and create hypotheses to be tested with science.

It's just one angle on issues. I wouldn't just think "what would a caveman do?", but would certainly bring it into my considerations of any issue. It has more relevance in certain scenarios (what should I eat?) than others (how shall I get from A to B (cars, planes, trains not very paleo!), so should be used sparingly, but certainly has value.

I doubt that cavemen were brewing green tea, but that won't stop me from drinking it.

I'm pro-paleo/low carb/anti-processed foods but I do find it interesting that many folks are trying to base their entire existence on an era where the average lifespan was ~30 years.