Customer Reviews

The Evolution Diet: What and How We Were Designed to Eat, Second Edition

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I just got this book from Amazon based on a couple of reviews and some of the pages I saw in the "Look Inside" option. When I opened it and read a few sections, I quickly realized it is a waste and a joke! I'm not sure, since I don't know anyone from the caveman days, but I'm pretty sure that fat-free ranch dressing and low calorie syrup are NOT things we were naturally evolved to eat. Those are just two of the examples, though, of things you should eat on this "natural diet". Morse himself tells you to stay away from processed food, but slightly processed food is okay, as long as it is made from natural ingredients. His examples are sweet almonds and broccoli, which were processed agriculturally to create a more nutritious and in the case of the almonds, less lethal food.

The author mentions the importance of avoiding AEFs, or Artificially Extreme Foods. He says that they are anything exceptionally dense in calories or any other ingredient... like coffee with caffeine! So, the natural caffeine in coffee is bad, but the artificial ingredients to create a low-calorie syrup, or no fat dressing are okay? No thanks. He says you can get a laugh from reading how a candy bar ingredient list hides sugars as different things, (corn syrup, HFCS, etc). So what is in Kraft Fat Free ranch? Ingredient 2 is corn syrup, behind water. Ingredient 4 is HFCS, behind vinegar. All we are eating is a tart tablespoon of diluted, processed sugar. Yet this is what Morse WANTS us to eat? Low-calories syrup is even worse. It is diluted HFCS and corn syrup with just a little artificial and natural flavoring. Some of them also add sorbitol, which is hydrogenated (a four letter word to Morse) sugar. At least the water and natural flavoring fall into his idea of good things to eat.

Morse also seems to use science to his own advantage. He tries to explain that carbs aren't bad because they are little molecules of carbon and water. Firstly, this is not the case. That statement would lead one to believe that water molecules would be bonded to carbon. The hydrogen and oxygen are not bonded together in the form of water. Secondly, based on that description, I could argue the very same fact about fats. They are carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. With spin like that, I find it difficult to take what he argues at face value.

My final gripe is about his idea of exercise. He expects people to run three miles by day eight of his diet plan. He wants you to achieve this by building up with a couple of twenty minute walks and a few hours of house cleaning. I can tell you from personal experience that the shin splints that would result from that type of regimen scare me!

All in all, I think there are plenty of better guides to proper nutrition out there. I was hoping for something new and revolutionary here, but it seems that Morse took some of the YOU diet series ideas, mixed them with the Paleo diet method, and added some processed foods because they sound good for you, despite his abhorrence for the very ingredients they contain.

The title of this book would make you think that it is about the diet that we were evolutionarily designed to eat, but it's not. This book is a cope-out version of the Paleolithic Diet. This book recommends eating wheat products and grains and beans which are not what we were designed to eat. All that we are made to eat is meat, fruits, nuts, and eggs. Don't waste your money on this book.

When I looked at the food recommendations in this book, I thought "hmm, that looks familiar." And then it hit me: this was the diet I ate when I was constantly bloated, suffered from GERD, asthmatic, overweight, and fatigued. This is become I started studying anthropology and biology, which opened my eyes to the diets of our healthy ancestors.

Morse gets the healthy ancestors part right, but he misses the biochemical and immunological context. He accuses Loren Cordain, a professor with many widely cited scientific peer-reviewed papers about the diets of our ancestors, of reenactment. He says that by eating the foods of our ancestors "we would be restricting our diet to a plan that lacks good health as much as it does variety." Oh and he accuses Cordain of inconsistency because he says wheat is bad, but recommend "neolithic" almonds and broccoli. Not eating gluten and not shunning fat has nothing to do with reenactment. All foods at the store are "neolithic," so we have to examine them both using anthropology AND biochemistry. Cordain and other scientists who have written books about the paleo diet, like Robb Wolf, cite ample amounts of actual research showing the harmful effects of gluten, dairy, soy oil, peanuts, and other foods recommended by this book. Morse is a "nutrionionist" but he doesn't mention any credentials. Sorry, I'm taking the words of actual researchers over this conventional wisdom nonsense. A great resource for the uniquely bad effects of wheat is the blog of Dr. William Davis. Whole Health Source is another blog with good info about soy oil and other junk foods.

He says that combining carbs and protein creates bad digestion/gas based on one out of context paper. Ha! Eating the diet he recommends, with things like soy milk, I had gas constantly...because soy contains indigestible compounds! Now I eat whatever I want out of truely evolutionary appropriate foods and my stomach is quiet.

Morse keeps tarnishing the low-carb diet, saying it's so bad, then why do the Inuit and numerous other tribes thrive on it? A true anthropological study reveals that eating evolutionary is carb-agnostic. There are healthy carbohydrate-eating cultures and healthy low carb cultures. What are they not eating? Wheat, soy, low fat yogurt, saltines, fat-free ranch dressing...all foods recommended by this book. It's just conventional diet nonsense dressed up in a paleo story.

If your knowledge of food and nutrition is absolutely zero, then you might get something out of this book. If you know a little bit about food and nutrition, then you could probably give the author some lessons.
The book, despite its title, is not about the Paleolithic Diet, nor is it about the foods that we have evolved to eat. Instead of focusing on what we eat, the main thrust of the book seems to be on when we eat, and even this--the main thrust of the book--is not based on solid research.
When a book purports to lay out a healthy diet, but then wraps up by pushing its very own multi-vitamin, of necessity it should be relegated to the fad diet section of the bookstore. Yes, the author is actually pushing the "Evolution Diet Multivitamin." So much for natural nutrition.

The author is very pleased with himself that he can offer a multivitamin for less than 10 cents per day. The cost is actually 9.996 cents per day plus shipping and handling.

Save yourself the mis-information, look for another book to read.

What you will learn from the book is that our ancestors foraged all day for nuts and berries; then they went on a hunt in the afternoon and had a lot of meat for dinner; therefore, you should eat a little carb all day, then mostly protein in the evening. This is more of a hypothesis (and not a bad one), given the lack of actual evidence of people trying it now. Various Paleo Diet books by authors like Cordain, Wolff or Sisson have more meat on the bone.

The Evolution Diet: What and How We Were Designed to Eat (2nd Edition) is very well written and extremely helpful! I read Morse's first edition of the Evolution Diet, but his 2nd Edition is even more thorough! He adds intelligent content and helpful information, which provides more clarity and substance to the book. I loved part 7 on how to live off the land, especially the section on eating specific foods in the different seasons. How clever! The Evolution Diet (2nd Edition) is easy to read, and has many useful facts and ideas that I can apply directly to my everyday life! This is an all around useful book as I can implement Morse's diet and exercise suggestions into my diet in a realistic way. I have already noticed changes in my energy level thanks to Morse's new edition on the Evolution Diet. I'm glad there is finally a book out there on how to improve my diet in a practical way that actually makes sense!

This book has a misleading title. The author fails to understand how evolution impacts diet. There are much better books such as Loren Cordain's Paleo Diet, Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint, Robb Wolf's The Paleo Solution and Paul Jaminet's Perfect Health Diet.

This along with You on a Diet is the best diet book out there. Easy-to-understand, good information, and light hearted to an extent. This is much better than the first edition

All around a great transaction, did not like this book as well as other paleo or evolution nutrition books I have read in the past.

Cool, this guy recommends eating grains! Way to try and disguise a neolithic diet into a paleolithic diet. Dead wrong. Don't listen to this sell-out. What a #fail.