Pete Evans

Pete Evans is pissed.

The celebrity chef – best-known for his starring role as judge on My Kitchen Rules – has published a 2100-word rant against two of Australia’s leading and most-trusted nutritional organisations: the Heart Foundation, and the Dietitians Association of Australia.

Evans – who recently gained himself a qualification as a health coach from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York – has been a longtime supporter of the paleo diet.

For those who are a bit lost with the whole paleo thing – paelo is short for “Paleolithic”, which translates to “Old Stone Age”. The entire concept behind the diet is that you stick with the type of food people ate back in the cave man days – meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, eggs and natural oils, and no dairy, no legumes, no grains, and no sugar.

In the past, both the Heart Foundation and the DAA have spoken out against the paleo diet. Neither association advocates cutting out any food groups – particularly not grains or dairy – and so the paleo trend isn’t quite their cup of tea.

Evans – motivated by a rude comment from a dietician on one of his Facebook posts – posted a Facebook rant to challenge the idea of the Heart Foundation’s tick, and also to question some of the underlying beliefs held by the DAA.

“Isn’t it interesting that the people trusted to be delivering health advice for the public have come out not once, not twice, but so many times over the last year or so that I can’t keep up with it, with a media campaign to bring down the paleo way of life by saying it is dangerous,” he wrote.

Evans continued with a list of issues that he believes need to be addressed by the DAA. In part, he wrote:

Evans finished up by writing that the DAA and Heart Foundation have “ignited a spark that has been inside me, which is now a raging fire in my belly”:

Understandably, after that passionate rant, we have a lot of questions.

Why is Pete Evans linking autism to the healthy eating guidelines? Surely that has the potential to be misleading and incredibly dangerous.

Also – where do his hardline paleo beliefs fall into place when he’s eating the food on My Kitchen Rules? Not everything cooked by the contestants falls into the acceptably-paleo category. Certainly not the desserts.

We asked both the DAA and the Heart Foundation to respond to Evans’ words.

The National Heart Foundation of Australia told Mamamia that they are choosing not to engage directly with the statements from Evans, but continue to advocate against diets such as the paleo diet.

In a statement, the CEO, Ms Mary Barry, said:

The DAA also confirmed to Mamamia they support the recommendations of the Australian Dietary Guidelines, and while they acknowledge there are some good aspects of the paleo diet, there are also some concerns to be had:

They have further stated their disappointment at being attacked by “vocal advocates of the Paleo diet”, and suggests that it would be more effective to work together to get Australians eating better:

At the end of the day, there’s no one-size-fits-all diet that is well-suited to everyone. And Mamamia believes that when it comes to diets and healthy eating lifestyles and all the rest of it, every single person is welcome to do whatever suits them best.

Attacking two of Australia’s most respected organisations isn’t really going to help.

What do you think about Pete Evans’ comments?