Of note: I’ve certainly altered my views over time, namely seeing the need for ruthless removal and reintroduction before being “sure” of how these things work with your body. I also do not advocate them being the base of a personal food pyramid. But a bit of quinoa in your salad a couple times a week, assuming the rest of your diet is meats, leaves, fruits, spices, real fat, and nuts/seeds, will get you kicked off paleo island but probably (probably) be OK in the long term.

Also of note: I hate quinoa.

I don’t disagree with anything in particular that you’ve said. I’d actually say that they’re an optimal expression of a sub-optimal diet. Understanding that they foods they eat have more than a little when it comes to anti-nutrients/gliadins/gut irritants also shows that, given enough time and relatively isolated generations, one can thrive on nearly anything, no matter how sub-optimal. That is in no way an endorsement of intentionally putting things in your diet that have clinically documented health-reducing outcomes ad libitum. That’s why you do a super-clean removal diet (“pure paleo”) and then reintroduce and see. Even then I’d stay clear of making any of these things the bulk of one’s diet.

I find sprouted bread even more addicting and hypoglycemia-inducing than regular bread, so there’s my n=1, Skyler. (Perhaps because sprouting converts more of the fibers into usable sugars.)

The paleo argument is not (or classically should not be thought of as), OMG YOU CANNOT EAT GRAINS, BEANS, OR LEGUMES! Nobody thinks small amounts of these things are going to kill anyone.

The argument is (or should be) one of optimization: yes, natural selection has given us the ability to be highly adaptable to suboptimal food supplies, but that doesn’t mean that anything we “can” eat will create the optimal health environment.

What I feel you’re saying in this article is that, because of the existence of these individuals in highly dietarily specialized areas of the world (and their health and longevity), that beans, grains, and legumes shouldn’t be thought of as “evil”… and that maybe we could or should eat them a little.

OK, fair enough. But just as most people wouldn’t do all that well eating a diet composed almost entirely of blubber, even though that is technically paleo and is also a diet that is successful for its population (Eskimo), most people also don’t do that well eating grains, beans, and legumes — UNLESS their ancestors were fully adapted (which is what you see in these “blue zones”).

So the paleo argument here would have to be that unless you know your ancestry and have been eating this grain- or bean-based diet for many years, and your family history shows no health consequences from it… you probably shouldn’t consider these non-paleo foods to be “healthy”.