... Zuk parades a series of straw men rather than searching for the more sophisticated arguments of Paleo advocates. Many chapters begin with misspelled comments that Zuk found under blog posts. While Zuk shoots the fish in the barrel, the more interesting targets are not addressed.I had almost chosen as title: debunking a book that promotes a diet full of processed "foods", grains and sugar and warns for a diet of meat, nuts, fruit and vegetables. Fortunately, that super straw man title was too long. This one, Maybe eating meat, nuts, fruit and vegetables is okay, is straw manly enough; it can be hard find a good concise title.
My paleofantasy
To me, paleo is not much more than a productive generator of hypothesis and a good story that helps to bundle several suggests for life-style changes.Although you can say, that it would be very surprising that a diet humans were eating for a such long time, a time largely without chronic decease, would be unhealthy in this modern age. Not impossible, but you would expect very strong proof, much stronger as, for example, the epidemiological study promoted by T. Colin Campbell in his vegan bible: The China Study.
And the narrative is good enough to encourage people to try a range of different diets and life-style options to see on which one they feel best and not stick to the officially healthy one, if it is not working for them. Just play and experiment, that is what defines us as humans.