The Paleo Solution
So, I’ve had a copy of Robb Wolf’s new book The Paleo Solution since before it was technically available for the public to buy, and yet I’ve only recently finished reading it. I know, pretty pathetic right?
Besides the fact that I have a mountain of other books I’m trying to read, I’m also a notoriously slow reader. I do this thing where I have to reread entire sentences to make sure it means what I thought it did.
As it turns out, I found myself rereading several sentences in Robb’s book merely because I had to be sure that he actually wrote what I thought he did. (Yes, he actually recommends that your protein have a face and a soul, but I think he was just being funny. Maybe.)
I’ve met Robb in person, so I know about his trademark wit and sense of humor, but this book was ridiculous. Each section was prefaced with some sort of one-liner which usually introduced the next topic while inducing a mild laughter snort from my nose. The great thing was that after having been to one of his seminars and then reading this book, I can tell you with complete honesty that what you are getting is an extremely sincere and true to life version of Robb Wolf on paper.
I imagine that some people who “author” a book hire a writer to collaborate with and flesh out their notes for them. Not so in this case; the Paleo Solution is a high fidelity distillation of the Robb Wolf Paleo Nutrition seminar complete with his standard catch phrases like “holy cats!” and “paleo shenanigans”.
Along with the copious amounts of scientific explanations and client examples, the book also includes sample exercise workouts, a shopping list, and a meal planner. Robb really went the extra mile to try and help people to stop making excuses and to give the paleo diet a try for 30 days. It is expertly positioned as an introductory guide for somebody unfamiliar with ancestral health solutions, and has a lot of potential to improve the lives of many people.
As somebody who is already familiar with most of the material I found the book to be less of a revelation. Despite this, there were still nuggets of information to be found. Robb does a fantastic job of explaining the various biochemical and digestion components of human nutrition. I think if he had been my high school chemistry teacher I might have actually gotten higher than a B in that class. (By the way Robb, I’m still waiting for my 5th level lipid-Jedi decoder ring for managing to read through all of that technical material.)
Kindergartner hand-writing.
Regardless of your level of familiarity with the paleo diet, I encourage you to cough up the few dollars for the price of Robb’s book. Or steal/borrow a copy if you have to.
It was an informative and entertaining read, and well worth the 4 hour drive I took to get a signed copy. And yes, Robb’s handwriting looks like that of a kindergartner who is going to get held back a year.
You can buy Robb Wolf’s book online at Amazon.com
Also check out his fabulous website, RobbWolf.com
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4 Responses to Robb Wolf’s Paleo Solution: Get Healthy But Die Laughing
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David Recommends...
I am reading this book right now but with a lot of skepticism and I’m not sure why.
It is clear that he makes a compelling case, and there are a lot of scientific explanations to help the skeptic along. However, to be really sure of the science, I still feel I would have to study the sources myself and I’m not sure I have time to go do that.
Bread just seems to me, on a gut level, to be such a good food. I was willing to go with the processed white flour theories and ditch that. I was even willing to go with some of the ideas about it being hard to digest, and went on to sprouted grains — or soaking them, or eating them with raw honey — which breaks down the phytates, supposedly, But getting to the point of giving up grain altogether doesn’t seem completely right to me. The human action of harvesting the grain and the process of making it into the things we eat seem so beautiful.
But of course that is my gut feeling and not based on science. And many people, going by the way grain makes their guts feel, have gone the paleo way and their guts have felt much much better.
Still, I can’t take the leap. I’m still a Weston Price girl at heart.
.-= Frances aka “Barefoot Fresca” and “Avocational Singer”´s last blog ..A Practice Run HoBooken 5K Course Barefoot Mile 107 or so. =-.
Frances,
The great thing about all of this is that it doesn’t have to be dogmatic for it to work, it just seems that some marginal elements turn it into that way. I am sure that there are plenty of people out there who are blessed with a more adapted ability to handle grains. Over time, with continuous exposure to this feed source it is inevitable that this will happen. You might be one of those people.
The real question here is to what degree humans are adapted to grains? Over the last 10,000 years natural selection weeded out most of the people who were deathly allergic to grains, which is why such a smaller percentage of the population has overt celiac’s. So with the current population, we wonder if humans can receive optimal nutrition from grains, or are we just adapted enough so that we can survive on it. There seems to be a lot of anthropological evidence that hunter-gatherer’s who didn’t use grains seemed to do quite well.
Hopefully, in the next few years, more compelling evidence regarding the gastrointestinal effects of grain consumption will come out, and will help really determine the worth of all of this.
Having discovered the paleo diet a little over two years ago, I was wondering how much value I’d get out of Robb’s book. Through listening to his podcast, my personal anecdotal experience pseudoscience, and the mountains of research against gluten that’s been piling up, I’m already sold on the concept.
How much anthropological research and evolutionary biology is included? I’ll probably end up getting it for the biochemistry regarding the specific pathways/mechanisms, but the anthro/evo stuff would probably accelerate my timeframe.
.-= Andrew´s last blog ..The Adventure Gene =-.
He does have a chapter early one which presents some information on what we know about typical hunter-gatherers, a la Weston A Price type observations. There is a very detailed references list in the back which covers all the supporting research he drew upon for that chapter – it’s several pages worth of citations.