Stripping out carbohydrates and touting a return to the eating habits of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, the paleo diet is one of the most widespread nutritional fads of the decade.
Its simple logic has sold tens of thousands of books and won over celebrities, apparently including the actors Matthew McConaughey and Uma Thurman and the pop singer Miley Cyrus.
Yet the central tenet of the paleo diet — that cooked starchy food is bad for us — is claimed to be a “rubbish” misreading of prehistory. Carbs were the secret that made Homo sapiens the most dominant species on the planet, scientists now believe.
The paleo diet, which appeared in the 1960s, is based on the assumption that Stone-Age people ate large quantities of meat, fruit