Sunday, March 20, 2011

Book Review - "The Paleo Solution" by Robb Wolf

If you've been in a bookstore lately, you might have seen a new book, "The Paleo Solution", by Robb Wolf (published by Victory Belt publishing in 2010). I was curious, so I picked up a copy. I don't always know when to shut up, so here's my review.

It's a moderately-sized book, under 300 pages (plus 30 pages of references) in thirteen chapters. Much of the information therein is probably old news to most paleo / primal adherents, although the comparison/contrast between the viewpoints of anthropologists and nutritional scientists was rather amusing to read. He goes through a lot of the underlying biology, explaining how and why our bodies work (or don't work, when we eat the wrong things), but in a fairly easy-to-read format. A minor quibble for me is that he spends a couple of chapters explaining why grains are super-bad, but then hand-waves to dismiss dairy and legumes in a couple of paragraphs (although he does provide references for follow-up). To be honest, this probably bugs me as much because we haven't cut dairy out of our diets as anything else. Cheese makes things good, that's all I'm saying.

He also includes both sample work-outs (with pictures) and sample menus. As such, I consider this book to be a relatively complete source for the paleo newbie, although I would encourage them to do follow-up reading after finishing this one. An additional plus is the inclusion of a section on dietary supplements, listed in order from "must-take" to "optional" (my words, not his).

For being an easy-to-read book with specific menus, good examples, and exercise instructions, but with no index at the back for easy browsing, and for the hand-waving I mentioned above, I'd give this book a solid "A-" if I was assigning letter grades to books. Buy this one for someone you want to nudge in the paleo direction.

(In other news, Fathead is now available in Canada via Chapters/Indigo - I'll be ordering a copy this week, and when I've had a chance to watch it I'll post a review up here.)