IN OUR information-saturated digital age, where we can pick and choose our own narrative about how the world works, I have often wondered if this has an impact on the rate of cultural change. As an ethnobotanist trained to study our cultural attitude towards plants and their uses, I have been witnessing with total fascination what seems to be a rapid shift in how plants are viewed in received nutritional wisdom. I wonder if this may be a sign of things to come. I first noticed the trend about 15 years ago with the emergence of the "paleo" diet movement. This largely repackaged ideas from the ultra-low carbohydrate diets that came before it, but underpinned them with a "return to nature" narrative. According to the paleo school of thought, in order to be truly healthy, we need to eat as our hunter-gatherer ancestors did, ditching as many carbohydrates as possible. This meant a diet based predominantly on meat, with a few low-carbohydrate vegetables like leaves, stems and flowers. Pretty much all fruit, however, was off limits due to its sugar content.
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