Health-conscious folks all over the western world maintain that the key to a long, salubrious life is kicking it old school – at least 12,000 years old-school. It’s called the Paleo diet.

Well everybody’s favourite bespectacled scientist, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, is here to tell us that it’s all a load of old baloney.

“The paleo diet claims that the period of 12,000 years since we invented agriculture is far too short for our bodies to have evolved to cope with the new foods that agriculture has given us,” Dr Karl said.

“There are major problems at every possible level, from theatrical to practical.”

The Paleo concept (heroed by celebrity chef Pete Evans) centres around the idea that our bodies weren’t designed to consume processed foods, or indeed anything produced by agriculture, leaving you to make your meals out of little more than meat, fish, vegetables and fruit. That means no grains, no dairy, no table salt, nothing at all processed.

Responding to a listener’s question during his weekly radio segment onTriple J, Dr Karl crushed the whole ‘caveman’ culinary philosophy in four simple points.

He went on to clarify that last point, by saying: “Now, I’m not talking about somebody whose job is being a professional celebrity, but somebody’s whose job is to spend four years at university to get their bachelor’s degree, then their master’s degree.”

Ouch.

One of those well-educated experts is his co-host nutrition and dietetics expert Professor Clare Collins, who chimed in to point out “the paleo man isn’t here today for a reason.”

“The positive is the big diversity of vegetables and fruit, so that’s one of the most positive things, and it’d be a pretty high-fibre diet,” said Prof Collins. “But there isn’t actually any evidence for paleo-specific.”