Paleofantasy: Week 5

I really enjoyed reading Paleofantasy and especially liked Zuk’s easy to read yet informative writing style. Zuk did an exceptional job presenting information to support her view that there is not really a specific way to emulate a perfect paleo lifestyle that humans are supposedly better suited to because this never really existed in the first place, hence the name “Paleofantasy”. She provided numerous great examples throughout the book to support her claims and I really learned a lot about human evolution from reading this. I especially liked “The Perfect Paleofantasy Diet” chapter where she stated that “the notion that humans got to a point in evolutionary history when their bodies were somehow in sync with the environment, and that sometime later we went astray from those roots…reflects a misunderstanding of evolution. What we are able to eat and thrive on depends on our more than 30 million years of history as primates, not on a single arbitrarily more recent moment in time” (120). I felt like this quote summarized not only how she viewed the idea of a paleofantasy diet but also the basis of what she described as other paleofantasies, whether it be in the realm of exercise, family, or how to deal with sickness and health. Overall, I am glad that I chose to read this book. I was not expecting Zuk to take the stand she did but really liked how she presented her information and the interesting examples she gave to support her claim that humans are still evolving and are not the same as they were in the past.