Every time Pete Evans opens his gotdang mouth, I feel an overwhelming urge to Van Gogh my ears.
The paleo-preaching celebrity chef is notorious for his shockingly stupid hot takes on diet and lifestyle.
First, he said sunscreen was poisonous. Then he said dairy actually somehow removes calcium from your bones. He’s also decried wifi (via Facebook, no less) and claimed that a Palaeolithic diet can treat autism.
His latest?
Evans has told his 1.5 million that the “whole notion of eating three meals a day” isn’t right.
He insisted that this way of living was “created to help the multinational food industry stay in business by keeping the population craving carbs and not being able to maintain a healthy weight or to stay healthy”.
But hold on a second: isn’t Pete a host of My Kitchen Rules? A show whose main sponsor is Coles? A company which, along with Woolworths, holds 80% share of the Australian food and beverage market?!
Anyway.
The paleo-truther also took aim at the Dietitians Association of Australia, asserting that they’re part of the problem for recommending people eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.
His throw down on traditional eating habits didn’t come completely out of nowhere. Instead, his post was used to announce that intermittent fasting would be a part of his new Paleo 10-week program, because eating one or two meals a day is supposedly a “cheaper and quicker” way to eat and lose weight.
Very convenient indeed.
And as News Corp point out, his new lifestyle suggestion is a far cry from his extra af “day on a plate” that went viral in 2012. Back then, he’d eat eight small meals a day including activated almonds, cultured vegetables and sprouted millet all rinsed down by alkalised water:
fuck!!! and he’s a weight watchers ambassador too! those multinationals!
“These days I generally eat 2 good meals a day and sometimes just one depending on how I feel (I eat when I am hungry.) The other thing to consider, is the more exercise you do, the more you generally want to eat,” he wrote in the post.
“Which is why we only recommend light gentle exercise on our program like a walk or swim for the first 10 weeks then, if and when you have the energy, then you can do the activities/exercises that make you happy including some resistance exercises instead of doing something un-natural for our bodies.”
Ultimately, some studies do show that fasting, like the famous 5:2 diet, can accelerate fat loss.
Other studies show that fasting can result in electrolyte imbalance, thinning hair and a twacked out metabolism, and can create or exacerbate eating disorders like bulimia.
It’s important to emphasise that fasting is helpful for fat loss, not for building muscle.
There have been approximately zero scientific studies that have supported intermittent fasting for gaining muscle while losing fat. This explains why Evans recommends his disciples go easy on the exercise while fasting; he wouldn’t want them fainting from lack of energy. How that is “natural” or “healthy”, I will never know.
Pete, pls.
