The Opposite of Paleo (In a Can)

On a shopping trip to 99 Ranch this morning, M and I stumbled upon the most stunningly anti-Paleo canned food product we've ever seen: FRIED GLUTEN WITH PEANUTS.

The ingredients of this Taiwanese delicacy? "Wheat gluten, peanuts, water, soy sauce (soybean, wheat, salt), sugar, salt, soybean oil, monosodium glutamate, spices."

Gluten? Check. Legumes? Check. Sugar? Check. Soy? Check. Omega-6-packed oil? Check.

It's like someone decided to pick everything that Paleo eaters avoid and then mash 'em all into a little can.

Seriously: Can you think of another product on a supermarket shelf that's more off-the-charts anti-Paleo? I can't.

There's not a single ingredient in the can (except water, salt, and maybe "spices") that isn't anathema to folks who eat Paleo.

On the plus side, it's vegetarian-friendly, and the can makes a nice paperweight.

Link Dump: Food-That-Will-Kill-You Edition

Food linkage from around the Interwebs:

The Daily Beast presents a gallery of the "20 Unhealthiest Cereals." (As if any of 'em are healthy.)

The most shoplifted food in the world? Cheese.

Rainn Wilson loves Del Taco for a reason.

Speaking of fast food tacos, it's not a good idea to firebomb your local Taco Bell because your Chalupa was insufficiently meaty. (Besides, it's debatable how much of Taco Bell's "meat" is actually meat in the first place.)

Okay -- one more taco-related item: Why the hell would anyone propose marriage with a cake made to look like a packet of Taco Bell hot sauce?

Professor Mark Post is being paid €300,000 to create a hamburger without using any meat from an animal. Instead, he's trying to grow meat in a lab using muscle stem cells. "We want to turn meat production from a farming process to a factory process," he says. Barf.

Dr. William Davis, the author of "Wheat Belly," summarizes his case against triticum aestivum, or modern wheat, on Boing Boing. "Wheat-consuming people are fatter than those who don't eat wheat," he concludes.

But is Davis overstating the case against wheat? Check out what Dr. Emily Deans has to say about "Wheat Belly," and also Chris Masterjohn's detailed review of Davis's book.

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race?

Almost twenty-five years ago, Pulitzer Prize- and National Medal of Science-winner Jared Diamond denounced agriculture as humanity's worst mistake ever:

There are at least three sets of reasons to explain the findings that agriculture was bad for health. 

First, hunter-gatherers enjoyed a varied diet, while early fanners obtained most of their food from one or a few starchy crops. The farmers gained cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition, (today just three high-carbohydrate plants -- wheat, rice, and corn -- provide the bulk of the calories consumed by the human species, yet each one is deficient in certain vitamins or amino acids essential to life.) 

Second, because of dependence on a limited number of crops, farmers ran the risk of starvation if one crop failed. 

Finally, the mere fact that agriculture encouraged people to clump together in crowded societies, many of which then carried on trade with other crowded societies, led to the spread of parasites and infectious disease. (Some archaeologists think it was the crowding, rather than agriculture, that promoted disease, but this is a chicken-and-egg argument, because crowding encourages agriculture and vice versa.)

Even without reference to the evils of gluten, Diamond hit a bullseye. As he put it, "[h]unter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we're still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it's unclear whether we can solve it."

[Image]

Happy Beer Day

If you woke up this morning and your first thought was "I'M GETTIN MY DRINK ON!", then check out Serious Eat's taste-test of various gluten-free beers.

(The verdict, by the way: Go with St. Peter's Sorghum Beer.)

But if you're like me, you're more worried about being assaulted for neglecting to wear green today.