A television report slamming celebrity chef Pete Evans as a dangeous fraud is making headlines this morning. So is that criticism fair?
“Unqualified and dangerous.”
They’re the words Channel 9’s A Current Affair used last night to describe celebrity chef Pete Evans.
The report, which featured interviews with numerous health professionals, slammed the My Kitchen Rules judge Pete Evans for his endorsement of the paleo diet. The show declared Evans had made “a fortune” from his popular fad diet, which now forms the basis of a TV show, an upcoming documentary, cookbooks and an even a recipe ebook for babies.
Many of Evans’ army of 1,000,000+ social media supporters immediately leapt online to defend him following the segment, and one Fairfax writer dismissed the segment as “a blatant commercial swipe by Nine at rival Seven”.
So today, we asked several health professionals whether criticism of Evans’ paleo diet is founded — and our research found the diet is, well, not exactly popular in expert circles. Here are five reasons health professionals aren’t supporting Pete Evans:
1. He claims that his diet can cure disease.
Pete Evans claims that eating paleo can cure serious health conditions including asthma, dementia and cancer.
Most recently, Evans claimed in a 2100-word Facebook post that a diet based on current Australian healthy eating guidelines is behind a rise in autism.
But as Professor Kerryn Phelps AM pointed out in the ACA segment, the diet in fact “has not been shown” to shrink tumours, lead to cancer remission, stop asthma, or stop dementia.
“I think the claims are at best, optomistic, and at worst, fraudulent,” she said.
Top Comments
Well as a follower of the Paleo diet (though I consume a little dairy in the form of Greek yoghurt, cheese and cream), I must say the claim that we are low in energy as a result of ditching grains is crap.
I'm more vibrant now at nearly 40 than I ever have been. Unsustainable? I've been living this way for about 4 years now. Unhealthy? Dangerous? I have a low body fat percentage, can knock off callisthenics like nobody's business, can jump high, run fast, rarely get sick...
I love this way of life but if it's not for you fair enough. Just don't try to tell me that what I'm doing is wrong when self-experimentation tells me otherwise.
Eating fresh meat, fish, vegetables, chicken, fruit - instead of a heap of man-made processed foods and recent additions to our diet? Yeah.. terrible idea. Australians are such unintelligable sheep sometimes. It saddens me. I try and avoid processed foods now (wheat, rice, juices, breads, potatoes etc) and i've never felt or looked better.. The funny thing is, ive never met anyone who eats 'Paleo' who is fat! funny that.
You missed kris's point by trying to put words in his/her mouth.
I'm not about to argue with somebody who firstly won't properly rebut and secondly thinks that Ethiopia is still stuck in 1985.