I think the "paleos", as it were, are quite serious and don't think of this as just a "silly trend".
That said, whether or not there truly is any nutritional benefit over eating, say 80% vegetables, and going to the gym is probably hard to prove. I'm willing to bet that most of the benefit these people see is from the commitment to a regimented diet and exercise program, and not the specific diet they are eating. But that's just my uninformed, naive guess.
Well, there are two issues in my post. 1.) Is the Paleo diet legitimate, and 2.) Is it attracting some douche bag followers.
The answer to the question of whether the movement is attracting idiots is, as evidenced by this article, a clear yes. This is shown in silly comments like: “Another caveman trick involves donating blood frequently. The idea is that various hardships might have occasionally left ancient humans a pint short.”.
The answer to whether the diet is legitimate is I don't quite know. My suspicion is there are things to learn from it, but let's not forget, we aren't cavemen anymore.
The big question for me is does the caveman diet (and there are more than one at this point) work without the caveman lifestyle, and that really would require long term studies, not anecdotes, which is all we see so far.
That being said, it's almost certainly better than the highly processed food most Americans eat right now, but that hardly makes it a first choice for a diet.
As for #2, imho, the article is deliberately written to caricaturize, which may well be appropriate for a mainstream lifestyle section of a newspaper. IIRC, an earlier article in the same paper on the crossfit exercise plan was quite alarmist (implied neophytes would by dying like flies) and dismissive. Vegan and yoga are the accepted modes of the NYC healthy lifestyle :-)
> we aren't cavemen anymore
In behavior and lifestyle, no. But in terms of the evolutionary stage of our digestive systems? Lactose tolerance [Lactose], for example is quite new (and beneficial enough that it spread rapidly).
The mechanisms described in the "Expensive tissue hypothesis" still apply. [Eades] has a nice description.
Regular blood donations? Yep, that's crazy. People who lost a lot of blood tended to get infections, then die. Which is why the average life expectancy was about 30.
There is some evidence that high blood iron levels increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. So donating blood regularly may actually be good for you.
"Average" life expectancy is deceiving. Much of the gains in human life expectancy have come from reductions in infant and childhood mortality, which alters the average substantially.
I'm up above nine gallons donated, lifetime, and I'm ready to give more as the occasion allows. I'm much above the age of thirty, considerably above the model age of most readers of HN.
That said, whether or not there truly is any nutritional benefit over eating, say 80% vegetables, and going to the gym is probably hard to prove. I'm willing to bet that most of the benefit these people see is from the commitment to a regimented diet and exercise program, and not the specific diet they are eating. But that's just my uninformed, naive guess.