The "Paleo Diet"

During your time living upon this glorious earth, you might have realised that people are often not very satisfied with things. What frequently comes up, I'm sure, in one of those glossy magazine-styled lists of "Things You Should Really Do Because Your Life Is Evidently Lacking In Something", likely right up after "Get up off of your own middle class orchid-essenced arse", is "Go on a fad diet".

A Paleolithic Man, contemplating his own existence.
Or, more likely, wondering when best to beat their
neighbour's head in and steal their goat.

Now, I don't like to make assumptions (actually I love it but it's not good for the image), but if you are the kind of person who reads "Hello" magazine, or any of its counterparts (which I like to think are appropriately named "Aye O" in the north and "Feck Off" in Ireland) you've likely heard of something called the "Paleo Diet". Short for Paleolithic, it's probably something you've tried briefly to no avail, before shortly moving on to, no doubt, the Jurassic and Bronze Age Diets. It's based on the diet of Paleolithic Man, known to the layman as "Big Fucking Cavemen".

So, in order to try and gain some information about this diet, I typed in the name of it on Google and clicked on the first result that appeared. Like a Conservative politician on acid, I was greeted to a new world of colour and garishness, and it sickened me. I felt as if I had just entered a time machine which then spontaneously and disastrously exploded, catapulting me gag reflex-first into a version of The One Show from the 1970s. Next to the ribbons of colour at the top of the page, which I imagined weren't most likely used to represent the streaks of blood flowing out of a Paleolithic man's cracked skull, stood a pernicious logo, with a sneaky little "TM" in the corner, almost as a subliminal way of saying "we know how to make money". From behind this logo, the average consumer is greeted by the grin of the often cliched, amber-faced, centred parted doctor who looks far too happy to be on a face to face basis with real medically important cases.

In fact, according to the website, this happy orange man, who shall remain nameless hereon, is the self-proclaimed leader of the "Paleo Movement", which we can only pray does not involve the systematic cryogenic unfreezing of hundreds and thousands of cavemen in an attempt to amass an army that will remove world leaders to create a new global Stone Age. We can only hope.

Nevertheless, we shouldn't let these superficial details overshadow our opinions of the diet itself. The website claims that the Paleo Diet is the "world's healthiest diet". A bold claim. Bolder even, than the mighty Scotsman, who stands up to The United Kingdom, and says no to the British Heart Foundation's recommendations for five a day. Fair enough then, this diet likes to pride itself on the fact that it is based on the daily food intake of the average Paleolithic man, a people known for their great health and longevity.

'Wait a minute, that's not right', you might be thinking, 'this writer is just being sarcastic in an attempt to generate a humorous response'. And indeed I am. Yes, that's correct, after looking up some statistics, I was cleanly able to deduce that the average Stone Age citizen lived to the grand old age of thirty-three.

And thus, my dear old readers, the key to a healthy lifestyle is to ditch that Casio digital guitar (or whatever the youth these days are into), throw away your pathetic "refrigerated" food, and go and live in a ditch painting tits on the wall. You're welcome.