It seems there’s nothing sexy about the moderate approach. If you’re not vegan or paleo or at least left wing or right wing in the food stakes (pun!), you’re not interesting and you’re definitely not trying hard enough.
I disagree. If you eat nutritionally rich foods and you ‘do’ moderate well enough, you can get away with a few diet sins for the whole of your life. Your healthy life.
When I started searching for what might be the ideal diet, I looked at a broad spectrum of diets with as open a mind as I could manage. (I know we all have deeply seated beliefs that are hard to budge, but I tried.) I would read about others’ experiences and wonder if theirs was the optimal approach even though a lot of the food that they proposed wasn’t exactly food as our forefathers had known it. I don’t know how they thought neanderthal man actually survived (yes, even thrived) on the only choices he had available.
And lest you paleo types get too much pleasure from that last sentence, neanderthal man didn’t have protein shakes, supplements, clarified butter or the hundred and one non-natural things that you seem to think makes up a paleo lifestyle. Hello, neanderthal man. Have you even HEARD of some of the things that your latter-day brethren are consuming?
I aspire to be a moderationist. As a bit of a gourmand, I aspire especially to be moderate in the amount I eat. And not to swing too far to the left or the right, but to eat the highest quality food from all food groups. As I said, I love reading vegan and paleo ideas of what food should encompass. But I believe that by taking the best and most natural recipes from both camps rather than embracing either, I’ll be waaaaay ahead. Thanks guys.