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Look. Paleo dick. Whoever you are, there is a very good chance you need to fuck off. For some weeks now, I have been visited and contacted by you, a rubbish thinker who cannot even spell the names of their Big Pharma Agro-Industrial Complex adversaries let alone meaningfully decry them. I would like this to stop. I don’t know which tedious tank of raw human mind-waste it was that dumped this stink on my blog and nor do I care but let it be said: fuck off. Fuck off and stop linking to me and shitting in my inbox. We have nothing to say to each other.
To be very clear, I am not interested in remediating your behaviour. I do not personally care if you ascribe healing powers to a crystal, believe that We Are All One or think that some of the problems of contemporary medical practice can be addressed by a celebrity chef whose primary labour it otherwise is to tell unpleasant, boring people on the television their haloumi appetiser lacks appropriate tang. Go for it. Join whichever cult you fancy, pray to the gourmet non-dairy cheese god and pin your hopes for salvation on reality TV. It is your defensible right to consume any nonsense upchucked to your mouth by a critically deluded mass-culture mummybird you wish. If this sick-feed allays the hunger for meaning we both know would starve you if you took even a short break from feeding your suggestible face with easy pseudo-knowledge, fine. FINE.
Eat Like Your Ancestors, even though they demonstrably didn’t eat that way. Fill the heads of your children with irrational suspicion of science, even though it is exactly this irrational suspicion that actively stops meaningful address of climate change. Pretend that measles is the goddess’ own special way of rewarding humanity and that immunisation is not a marvel of medical science but a blight. Just stay out of my way.
Even if we agree, and I believe that sometimes we do, that late agricultural practice is wanting and medicalisation can create as much disease as it cures, we cannot agree that you could find your arse with two hands. With two hands, Google Maps and a year of intensive arse-finding workshops.
It is not your stated goal but you that is fundamentally stupid. No good can come of you and no good can come of our communications. So, please stop troubling me with notes about A Wholesome Future as my opinion that you are a dick whose failure to see beyond the picture-book caricature of good and evil would be cause in a just world for incarceration is unlikely to change.
To call your intellectual weakness childish would do disservice to kindergarten. I do not wish to understand your views because it is my view that your views do not require understanding. They just require faith. Your “views” are useful to me only insofar as they reinforce the fact of my good sense in electing not to have children. If my Little Harriet attended daycare with your Little Sanskrit, I would certainly be arrested for spiking her almond milk with triple antigen and disinfectant.
And, don’t give me “But Helen. Paleo is a long way from anti-vax. Don’t tar us with the same brush”. The intellectual journey from a belief that we need to “get back” to “natural” eating to that which holds that infection with measles is “natural” and, therefore, implicitly good takes about ten seconds. Even if you never take that brief unfortunate tumble into seriously bad behaviour, what you have begun to do is fundamentally rotten. And I can’t abide this stench.
You Paleo people have claimed that you believe in “science” and that it is “science” that provided you with the means to manfully argue with my claim that you are, in fact, monumentally deluded cocks. Now, I am not a scientist and I have not previously, nor shall I ever, argue with your nonsense chiefly in the terms of scientific evidence. Yet, when you are not hurling shit at my inbox, it is you who throws globs of what you mistake for scientific evidence.
In many cases, this “evidence” is simply personal anecdote. One nong told me that he had run a marathon without carbohydrates. That we know that life itself cannot be sustained without carbohydrates aside: personal anecdote is not “evidence” and can be undone by other personal anecdote. I have also recently run a marathon and I was largely fuelled by jelly beans. This is not “evidence” of anything aside from my partiality to jelly beans.
Other mildly less touched antagonists have said to me, “but I have lost weight on the Paleo Diet”. This personal anecdote is evidence of nothing new and just informally affirms the rather ordinary truth that a reduction in calories will often result in a reduction of body fat. I am happy you have attained a hip-to-waist ratio that pleases you. I am not happy that you mistake either this or the sensation that “I just feel better!” as proofs of the “science” of Paleo.
To those many of you who have sent me sometimes specious and often small-scale studies on the benefits of Paleo: a fragment of science is not the same thing as science itself. When isolated and underdone studies are presented as theory, that’s when the trouble begins. This is not science. This is not established scientific theory. This is something you read on the internet that appears to confirm your bias.
I am not deriding your belief so much as I am terribly impatient with your belief that belief is the same as fact. This does not mean I am opposed to wholesome foods and it does not mean that I believe that we should spray everything with glyphosate. This does not mean I think eating vegetables and unprocessed foods is a terrible idea—a recommendation made by dietary science for decades, by the way and hardly a Paleo first. It is, however, to say that bits of science that suit your thinking are not fact or scientific theory.
Other things that are not scientific theory are (a) moving personal stories about your weight loss and improved bowel motions and (b) instinct. Which is to say, you may feel that Getting Back To Nature is the right thing to do—and let’s remind ourselves that palaeoanthropology does not confirm the fancy of Paleo Diet books that no pre-industrial hominid ever ate dairy etc—but you cannot make the legitimate claim that this instinct is backed by science.
You can have your instincts. I have mine. For what little it matters, I eat a diet which, while it is largely meat-free due to a personal and ethical dislike for eating creatures, is high in vegetables that are fertilised and managed without recourse to synthesised chemicals and grown from always open-pollinated and often heirloom seed. My own diet happens to be Paleo-ish in that it tends to whole-foods and is derived from small-scale pre-industrial era agricultural techniques. I am prepared to bet that my veg are more “Paleo” than most. FFS, I wiz on my compost and use microbial and solar heat to help remove pathogens from the soil. In other words, my own dietary life is a dreary hippy experiment in sloppy ethics and pseudo-knowledge. I understand this urge.
For the most part, I keep this organic noodling to myself and the bees. I don’t claim it as science or proof. I know only slightly north of fuck-all about domestic horticulture and its ability to effect meaningful local or widespread change. My food production is a hobby and a means to calm myself the fuck down. But, that’s all it is. It is not science. It is not a retort to science. It is not a “lifestyle” and if I ever begin evangelising about food production and diet as you do, may I be doomed to an eternal McDonald’s drive-thru meal.
Jesus shat, we all know that eating crap is probably a terrible idea. And those who either do not know it or cannot escape it are likely to be those actually consigned to the culinary and nutritional hell of a McDonald’s drive-thru. And, what about such people? How do they figure in your expensive Paleo plan?
There are people who simply do not have the wealth of time or dollars to eat anything but convenient shit and if you DARE fucking pull a supercilious Jamie Oliver and tell me that The Poor only eat that way because they’re ignorant and lazy, then you are a mindless greedy piece of innumerate shit-burger who cannot face the simple calculation that having no money plus having no time equals poor nutrition.
Much of the “developing” world is newly cursed with obesity related illness and the least wealthy citizens of first-world nations are more likely to pork up to a potentially debilitating degree. There are nearly one billion medically obese people in the world, peculiarly, almost the same number there are of starving people on the planet. Obesity has overwhelmingly become a marker of poverty. And you want to tell me that the way to fix this is to listen to some dill in a chef’s hat ladling out non-knowledge on the telly? Two billion people aren’t eating right. And this is just because they didn’t read Paleo Poison For Bubs With Idiot Mums? There are very complex reasons some of us shove shit in our faces. And the way to address these complex problems is not in the bottom of your bowl of bone broth.
No one planned it this way. But, one of the most unfortunate by-products of capitalism, which does not have a human face, is that it fucks the poor.
Another unfortunate by-product of capitalism is that it produces stupid idiots who (a) blame the materially poor for their own plight and (b) confuse anecdata for science. And then, come to my blog, find my email address and ruin my fucking inbox with their raging arrogance which they mistake for informed anger.
Paleo is, at this time, nothing but bullshit. It might “work” for you just as my insect-infested veg patch works for me. And that’s as a sedative diversion. But, you don’t get to say that it is a scientific or ethical cure for the world’s many food and nutrition problems. Well, you can say that but not to me without being told to get fucked. A response you can, and have and likely will, tell me is the angry talk of someone who eats too much sugar. But, leaving aside the fact that I rarely eat sugar, me telling you to get fucked is nothing compared to the idiotic abuse I have received these past weeks from fans of Pete Evans.
When I tell you to get fucked, what I mean is that you must choose. You must either truly examine the veracity of your claims, which currently have no real basis in evidence, or keep your possibly dangerous ideas to yourself.
Yes. Dangerous. Advice by our primary dietetic scientists that the Pete Evans diet for “bubs” is potentially fatal is one worth heeding. And if your answer is “that’s just Big Food talking”, then be aware that that is just big arse talking. You narcissistic, beef-stinking bore.
Go and become the climate science denier you just know is itching to get out. Either that, or have a think.
Now for the sake of sweet sugar, leave me alone. If you persist in saying that science is something that it is not and that Paleo is something like science, we have nowhere to go. Which is why I am now off to the garden.
(If you enjoyed this post and/or you are someone with an interest in exploring the various and widespread kinds of Stupid that infect our era, please consider purchase of this recently published book I wrote with my friend Bernard Keane. And if you hated this post, buy it anyhow because the royalties may serve to keep me relatively quiet. You could also come and listen to me talk about the end of reason next Tuesday, April 28 in Sydney’s Glebe. Book here.)
160 thoughts on “Fuck Off”
Thanks for adding “anecdata” to my lexicon. I have a feeling it is going to come in handy. Also, great piece!
Clap, clap.
If the paleo fools could confine themselves to making the rather yummy peanut-butter-and-cacao balls I had yesterday and didn’t make ridiculous claims for their practices, I would be happy. Nice one, Helen.
Paleo Diet pushers, as with all diets based on the ‘I’m right you’re wrong’ approach or the more convincing ‘I’ll yell my point louder than you’ approach, base their assumptions on nothing more than guess work. There is absolutely no evidence that meat was the food of choice in the Palaeolithic Era. Apart from the fact that hunting and killing animals with a stick isn’t as easy as it looks on TV, plant based foods were more accessible to Paleo Man and therefore it stands to reason that they were consumed in more abundance. Every credible scientific study concludes that carbohydrates are the preferred food for the brain and our teeth and digestive system were not designed to eat meat in large amounts. That said, I’m a firm believer that you can eat anything in moderation. The difference between me and fad diet pushers is I don’t try to convert people to my way of thinking. The danger lies with Celebrity diet pushers who use their fame to influence others through social media, printed media, TV, writing books… and hurtling shit into others inbox.
Paleo Diet pushers, as with all diets based on the ‘I’m right you’re wrong’ approach or the more convincing ‘I’ll yell my point louder than you’ approach, base their assumptions on nothing more than guess work. There is absolutely no evidence that meat was the food of choice in the Palaeolithic Era. Apart from the fact that hunting and killing animals with a stick isn’t as easy as it looks on TV, plant based foods were more accessible to Paleo Man and therefore it stands to reason that they were consumed in more abundance. Every credible scientific study concludes that carbohydrates are the preferred food for the brain and our teeth and digestive system were not designed to eat meat in large amounts. That said, I’m a firm believer that you can eat anything in moderation. The difference between me and fad diet pushers is I don’t try to convert people to my way of thinking. The danger lies with Celebrities diet pushers who use their fame to influence others through social media, printed media, TV, writing books… and hurtling shit into others inbox.
Whilst I enjoyed your witty tales from the conservative bastions of the 80s, you also seem to have the same argument that the cigarette companies had for smoking. Of course there are many improvements in food but paleo diet is about fruit, veg & various meats. That they should be clean is without even thought requirements. The issues of high glycaemics & their effects on the our blood sugars & therefore diabetes (jellybeans etc) & their auto-addictive response of wanting more is where the paleo diet has its scientific base. The no-milk products & no grains are because we’re not cows (perhaps Gina), nor are we true vegetarians that can digest these things. So, your non-scientific catch-cry in this argument, whilst amusing is not really relevant…
I love it! Well directed and, more importantly, well articulated anger done right. When people say that “eating paleo” or “do what this person says” and “you’ll feel better” is only proof that people who pay a bit more attention to the crap they shove into their foodholes have a little edge on health.
Usually. Being afraid of every little thing because of a picture on facebook probably causes enough stress in some people to outweigh any health benefits of dietary changes. Avoiding the doctor because “they’re out to get you” can’t help, either.
A bit off subject…but….. As a long term Queenslander, I find that a little odd. Noone here thinks daylight savings /adds/ an hour to the day. Queensland does not want daylight savings. Queensland doesn’t need daylight savings. Queensland had a referendum to show this. And I am personally a bit tired of people /moving/ to Queensland and then telling us we are wrong. I have lived in NSW and had to endure the change of hours but certainly never insisted that the state change it’s policy just because I didn’t like it.
Very well said.
One of my favourite quotes may be appropriate: The plural of anecdotes is not data!
Ignore the moron trying to tell you how you must write your blog. Ignore them, and say you’ll marry me.
Another case of, “the computer made me do it …”
Dang paleo
I feel so much better after having read your article, I almost feel as if I wrote it myself. Only I’m not as funny. Thank you.
I have to agree. The whole time I was reading this i was just astounded at her ability to remain so impressively and brilliantly articulate in a state of undeniable (and justifiable) rage. I never comment on anything on the Internet, but this was just pure awesomeness.
Nothing irks me than the Paleo tribe eschewing the “science” behind their fad, and their online doctorate “credentials “to support their bogus scientific pseudo science. And the horror of feeding newborns bone broth, that there are actual real people out there that aspire to this nonsense
Absolutely could not stop laughing at the eloquence in the way you are telling them to “fuck off”, love your work Helen
Now to get a copy of your book
It’s fascinating that the unfiltered response of many is “i love…” this/you[Helen]. It was mine too. This just cuts through so brilliantly.
It was….. Hard to read….. Your comment…… Due to so…… Much fucking pointless……….. Ellipsis……..
And ps I personally go on my authority as a nutrition scientist. This is an opinion piece, so all that is required is her opinion. And her opinion is not that the paleo diet itself deserves her wrath (apart from feeding infants a paleo diet, which, duh, is incredibly bad for them) but that the attitudes of its followers and advocates is damaging to public health. And her opinion is pretty on the money, And at the very least legible as opposed to your bizarre offering.
The ellipsis is the lowest form of punctuation.
Science, I’m pretty sure Helen’s got that behind her. Whereas paleo has got some fad diet aficionados with money and clout. It’s a pity then that science doesn’t attract as much money and attention as bullshit does.
Guys. I’d like to thank those of you who offer support to my opinions but I would ask that in my loungeroom, you do so without recourse to personal insults.
Odd, I know, when I have just told an amorphous bunch to “get fucked”. But, there is, I think a clear and important difference between pillorying a bad idea held by a lot of people and pillorying an individual.
Some of the pro-Paleo people here are now, as they have so often in recent weeks, attacking my person and asking “what is wrong with you?” rather than attacking my argument. Please don’t do that.
It doesn’t matter if your argument is *correct”. If you present in terms of what we call ad hominem, you have lost it. This is not a matter of nice manners. It’s just a matter of upholding informal logic. Saying that someone is a pussy or looks unhealthy is not valid reason.
Try to think abut how the defence of reason itself is what is at stake, here. This means using reason. Reason is only undermined by telling an argument that it is wrong not because of its weaknesses but because of the person who uttered it.
As for the guy who offers little morsels of pseudo-evidence to “prove” that Paleo is “science”. You didn’t read the article.
that was one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever read .
Truly what’s eating you .
Serious question ,you’re dirty about something and it ain’t paleo Pete .
And the people that think it’s great ,same goes for you ,pathetic and infantile .
Well put, Helen, fabulous rant! But now you’ve made me want to eat a bowl of fucken sausages
Fark, that is brilliantly written :)
Grown ups swear. A lot. Especially about things they care about. Passion is not fucking polite. Obsession with avoiding “rude” words in childhood evolves into an obsession with “tone” and “presentation”, and all that style-over-substance, conservatrollish bullshit. I can’t find the source of the quote (Malcolm Tucker maybe? Dunno) but I’ll give it to you anyway, Mr-or-Ms Hmmm: “Fuck off. And then fuck off again. Fuck off from there too. Keep fucking off until you find yourself right back here. Then fuck off all over again.”
Well said.
What a delightful read this is Helen …….you have made my a day a happier place with your vitriol ….
You might like the meme I did about paleo Pete
https://www.facebook.com/australianrationalist/photos/a.887021144674979.1073741828.886888728021554/907586479285112/
Paleo is a buzzword…. it basically incorporates two other ideas….. quitting sugar and going Low Carb High Fat……. If you think that all this is unscientific bullshit perhaps you should look up a few of the following…… the highly respected Dr Robert Lustig …. look at his work with obese children…. why not ask Dr Peter Attia and his Nutritional science initiative…. or Professor Tim Noakes…. or Dr Peter Brukner… the medico to the Australian cricket team…. or even Dr Andreas Eenfeldt from Sweden …. then see if they are all crackpots…. Paleo is popular because it sounds hip and trendy and cool…and as always these trends will attract the usual bunch of crackpots movie stars and celebrities which unfortunately havent helped its cause……. the reality is that the science behind this and in particular, Low carb High fat actually stands up….regardless of your personal opinion as to whether it does or not….You havent even mentioned where you get your information. Why do you believe that the science is bogus…….on whose authority?
So the question here is why…. why the real hatred…whats the real gripe.. what exactly has pissed you off….?????
Id be surprised if you bothered to look these people up because this simply seems to be nothing more than a self indulgent rant…..prove me wrong…….
Proof that paleo is everything it’s said to be, “because I said so and I can make a shit load of of cash out of it.”
Why am I not surprised? But the argument is not really the point is it! It is really about ego and attention seeking.
Hi Helen- loved your first piece on the subject and snorted and nodded along to this follow up. I’m far too poor (time poor and money poor) to indulge in the modern caveman diet and it’s beyond me why people are taking serious health advice from chefs and bloggers. What ever happened to qualified dietitians? I wrote about it myself recently. Anyhoo, thanks for the laugh and all the lovely swears,-made my night!
Allow me to paraphrase that most excellent of essays, Helen.
1. Paleo is for cunts.
2. See point 1.
Top quality ranting, backed up by science and good sense. Love it.
Well, fuck me. I can’t believe what you just wrote. Helen Razer, you are simply an articulate legend!
Articulated what I, and possibly most people, are thinking. Thanks
You are verbally gifted. And I am seriously envious of this talent. These Paleo people drive me insane and I wonder daily how they justify eating as if they lived thousands of years ago and then jump into their Mercedes 4WD…. Not really how the dinosaurs got to their personal trainers and nail appointments.
Someone at work asked what Paleo was. No idea. Lard sandwiches, pigs feet, and eating stones to stop the hunger pains. Or a new hybrid car. We couldn’t decide.
that pete Evans looks as sick as a mangy dog. You can see from his face he is missing something from his diet. Looks like he has cancer or a chronic disease. Will he be alive in 10 years? Even five???
Britt. While I appreciate your opposition to Paleo, I don’t appreciate the way you got there. “Pete Evans looks like shit” is not a scientific approach. He is not “evidence” just as Paleo people saying, as they have very often to me over the last few weeks, that I look like shit is “evidence” that I lack nutrition.
You are welcome to say these things, of course. But I would prefer that you did not do so here where my discussion is a plea for reason.
I stopped reading about half way through. You are clearly a great writer and gave a way with words. However, your writing demonstrats anger and bitterness with nothing to substantiate your position
You are unable to substantiate your position that I am unable to substantiate my position if you did not read the piece.
You just inspired me to order pork ribs and key lime pie. Take that paleo pete!
I concur with your philosophy Helen, good. Your show off, abusive and nasty tirades demonstrate an unoriginal, crass,over zealous, entertainment industry score pointing that diminishes your validity. Revenge has two victims. Grow up.
I am unlikely to do so.
Thank you Helen, just thank you!
ah Helen, I have loved you since listening to three hours of power late at night on my Walkman whilst I was supposed to be asleep. Thank you for articulating what we are all thinking. Well, those of us who are capable of thinking anyway – I now live in Queensland and recently had to explain the day light saving did not involve magically increasing the hours in day from 24 to 25
I still can’t work out why people get themselves so worked up when someone calls out their pseudo science as b.s. Maybe it’s just ego: they’re feeling great because they, the special few set apart from the masses, know the real truth about… Carbs or whatever…. Then a party pooper with a medical or science discipline behind them presents a different viewpoint and it makes them feel silly. Cue frothing, outrage, browbeating and futile attempts at point scoring.
Exquisite and articulate anger I can only aspire to. I get stuck at “fuck off”.
I tried Paleo eating for a while last year. I was always in the kitchen and spend hundreds of dollars a week on food, for just one person. Needless to say, it didn’t last long. Some of them reckon it isn’t that much to eat that way. What bollocks. I also did a nutritional analysis of what I ate – sadly lacking in Vitamin E and calcium. It’s just not feasible to eat Paleo or even auto-immune Paleo (which I did) unless you’re a kept woman on a CEO’s salary. Which excludes all but the 1%.
oh Helen, thank you. That’s everything I wish I could say
Nailed it Razer!
How do I love thee Helen – let me count the ways.
Fuck off paleo – just fuck the fuck off. :-)
Probably the same lunatics who became obsessed with the admins of the #blockedbypete page.
Nutshell version: if you wanna eat paleo style, knock yourself out.
If it’s working out well for you, cool we’re happy for you. That doesn’t mean everyone else in the world needs to get on board with you if it doesn’t suit them and they’re happier doing something else. It certainly doesn’t mean there’s any factual basis that anyone else “should” do paleo or their health is going to suffer if they don’t. By no means does it mean the Healthy Eating Guidelines or individual advice from dietitians should be changed to exclude “non paleo” foods, either.
Do what makes you happy but quit thinking it makes everyone else wrong for doing something different.
Oh Helen, I think I’m in love. I’m so excited every time you post and this was my favourite yet. I won’t pretend to have anything intellectual to add, you said it so perfectly.
I love you and your articulate anger Helen Razer. Very, very much.