The real paleo diet

[lph]

Methinks the "debate" is also there because sciency types are obsessed with causality, while journalists trying to make a point just want a good story, and the rest of us just want to stay healthy. So if anyone says anything even resembling "this food is good for you because it's what we ate in the paleolithic" a paleo scientist will cringe at the "because" and proceed to debunk part 2. While the point is rather part 1 "this food is good for you", and the reason isn't particularly important.

If people feel better eating no grains, or no legumes, or no meat for that matter, more power to them.

eta: the wikipedia page on the paleo diet has a couple of points that are interesting, if not particularly appetizing...
"humans are established to conditionally require certain long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFAs), such as AA and DHA, from the diet.[109] Human LC-PUFA requirements are much greater than chimpanzees' because of humans' larger brain mass, and humans' abilities to synthesize them from other nutrients are poor, suggesting readily available external sources.[110] Pregnant and lactating females require 100 mg of DHA per day.[111] But LC-PUFAs are almost nonexistent in plants and in most tissues of warm-climate animals.

The main sources of DHA in the modern human diet are fish and the fatty organs of animals, such as brains, eyes and viscera; microalgae is a plant-based source. Despite the general shortage of evidence for extensive fishing, thought to require relatively sophisticated tools which have become available only in the last 30–50 thousand years, it has been argued that exploitation of coastal fauna somehow provided hominids with abundant LC-PUFAs.[110] Alternatively, it has been proposed that early hominids frequently scavenged predators' kills and consumed parts which were left untouched by predators, most commonly the brain, which is very high in AA and DHA.[111] Just 100 g of scavenged African ruminant brain matter provide more DHA than is consumed by a typical modern U.S. adult in the course of a week."