Michael Allen Smith of Critical MAS has an interesting idea: approach “nutrition from the mindset of an investor.”
Nutritional gurus love to wrap themselves in their PubMed blankets and dish out narratives that they believe work for everyone, but a simple observation shows that isn’t working. The fact that some succeed on any plan is not proof that it works for everyone. There are are too many failures.
How does one succeed in nutrition when nobody seems to agree on anything? How can one get the benefits that arrive in the early stages of a diet without staying too long and compromising their health? What has worked well for me is thinking about nutrition like an investor thinks about investment opportunities.
There are lots of interesting concepts there (like “stop loss nutrition”), but the one that resonates with me right now is hedging. For example, if you’re trying to decide between fructose and glucose as a better sugar, you could choose one or the other, limit both or, you could hedge and consume both “evenly.”
Hmmm. So maybe if you like paleo but don’t want to give up grains? Maybe you hedge and do part paleo, part Weston Price. Like meat, but want to cut calories? Do part paleo, part vegan.
Crazy? Or crazy like a fox?
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health, & food policy. And cats! 
Ugh! Crazy like a crazy person! (Sorry for the knee-jerk passion.)
Part paleo, part vegan is neither, no? Same with the others.
I am of the mind that some substances, more so the more processed they are, are not healthful and should be avoided, no matter how tasty they’ve been engineered to be. (Antifreeze is sweet, I’m told, but doesn’t mean I should ingest it.)
Even closer to my point, I’m also of the mind that unhealthful substances should be eliminated, rather than reduced. Never mind the obvious parallel of addicts, who are never advised just to cut back. If something is unhealthful — causes inflammation, triggers a desire for more of the same, or “merely” leads to persistent weight gain — the smarter course is to avoid, not reduce.
When an allergic person gives up peanuts, or shellfish, or strawberries, they may feel deprived by the loss, but on balance, she or he has decided they’re better off without, not just cutting down.
I’m not doctrinaire about this, but it’s a perspective I think a lot more people who struggle with eating should consider. Just like the allergics, they might discover they like life better without some substances, even if they also miss the yumminess. There’s more to life than yumminess, no?
Perhaps Beth, the most Paleo thing we can do is stop eating. Just for a bit.
This is more or less what I do. I have refused all efforts to get me to take supplments, or adhere to anybody’s far out diets. I assume some things are not healthy, but not harmful in small amounts, and the benefit of including them (for example, a bit of sausage in a bowl of beans and veg) because if I don’t, I may not like the beans and veg enough to eat it, and will trash it and go running for a deli sandwich. I am not allergic to anything, and see no reason to give up things I like just because some people really don’t like moderation. I am not an aspiring ascetic. I’m not giving up music, sex, wine, or exercise, nor brownies. I’m very happy eating them very infrequently.
I think a well-rounded lifestyle, with more of some things, less of others, is best. Except for cigarettes, which I wish I could smoke very infrequently, but cannot smoke at all. It happens. But why abuse myself giving up other things that may or may not be healthy, based on someone’s possibly scientific, but more likely, moral opinion? No thanks!
YUMMINESS IS AWESOME! Why do without?