Thoughts on Paleo 1 - A reiteration of the narrative of the creation and fall

A number of people in the comments have asked for my thoughts on paleo.  This blog has been going for quite a few years and during its life, paleo has certainly been an interest and it has often been identified as a paleo blog.  Indeed I received a signed copy of Sisson's Primal Blueprint on its release as I was in the paleo gang, which was then much smaller.

However I am increasingly uncomfortable with "paleo" in its application, assumptions and adherents.  I may do a few posts on the issues at play here.  As a preliminary observation however, I want to comment on something that I have been thinking about recently:  Paleo as a reiteration of the biblical narrative of creation and fall.

Creation and Fall

If you are familiar with the biblical narrative man is created in the image of God  and placed in a perfect environment, the Garden of Eden.  He is given a prescribed diet and operates in a state of the social and spiritual ideal.  The Bible tells the story of how through man's choice - initially signified by a disobedience to God over food - he is excluded from this perfect ideal environment.  This is the Fall.  He is shut out from the Garden and there are consequences for his health (he now becomes mortal), his lifestyle (he now has to toil),  his social life - the marriage relationship is messed up - and his spirituality (he loses his relationship with God).  The whole world also suffers and is under the curse of this sin.

Jesus takes the punishment for man's sin and in Him - the second Adam - we gain what we lost, ultimately a place in a new recreated earth, a new environment.

Paleo and the fall

I find hints of this narrative in Paleo.  There is a perfect environment from which we have fallen through choices primarily about our food.   As a consequence we are suffering in terms of health, social life and even spirituality (the Primal Connection?)  The whole world is messed up because of agriculture.

This is perhaps why paleo offers such attraction - it appeals to the same deep hungers that are there in the Bible;  the feeling that we are somehow in a messed up and spoiled world, the desire for Eden.  Some recognition that all of our lives are ruined through our poor choices?  We long for better health, food, relationships and society.

Heretics

Maybe this is also why people become so sectarian and obsessed about their Paleo diet - it becomes their route to salvation.  What we used to find in religion we now try to get from diet  -  the hope, the community.  Those that disagree with us and our way are not just wrong....they are heretics destined not for a poor state of health but for damnation.

We need to ease up about all this