ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors confront the rise of dietary trends premised upon primal, paleolithic, and so-called carnivore approaches to health and wellness. Our analysis has been provoked by the recent surge in popularity of the “all-meat diet” and the increasingly extreme influence that white male celebrity podcasters are having on their listeners. The thrifty gene hypothesis and the enduring figure of “man the hunter” has played a curious role in the creation of both scientific and popular discourses of health and wellness. The thrifty gene has, as predicted, acted as a trickster – whereas the hypothesis originally constructed the foodways of Indigenous peoples as a potential public health crisis of “Aboriginal Diabetes,” the discourse has oscillated wildly to the extent that eating like an Indigenous person of Turtle Island is now seen by many as the very best way to deal with excess adipose tissue and develop a lean, muscular, and fit body. Ironically, the ongoing erosion in the trust of public health authorities has facilitated these dietary movements in their most extreme and carnivorous variants. Ultimately, then, the “trickster” helps us to make sense of the all-meat diet as an inversion of the thrifty gene and as the ironic return of the primitive origins of modern science.
