Palaeo!

As this is the first post of a new blog, I'll begin by explaining a bit about me, and the name of the blog. I am not new to blogging - over at my other blog, Castles and Coprolites, I've been blogging there for 5 years now, mostly work related. I am an archaeologist, I work at Newcastle University, and I blog about my research, field work and topics related to academia. Archaeology is a very diverse subject, and my own work comes under the heading of environmental archaeology, which means I look at how people interacted with the environment in the past, how they selected and used different resources, and the impact this had on the environment. One of the ways I do this is by looking at ancient diets. What types of food were people consuming, how did it relate to what was available in the environment, and how does it link in with other things that rely on environmental resources, such as cooking and fuel use. And also, how did all of this vary in different parts of the world, and how did it change over time?

So this is where 'palaeo' comes from. In archaeology the word 'palaeo' means old or ancient. So when I look at what the environment was like in the past, it's the palaeoenvironment, when I look at what people were eating in the past, it's palaeodiet. But the reason I started this new blog is because of my non-work interests. At the beginning of 2016 I decided to take up bodybuilding. I'll be posting more in future how and why I made that decision! I've learnt that a huge part of weight and strength training is diet, more than I ever realized. There is a lot of talk in the fitness world about Palaeo Diet, based on the types of foods that are presumed to have been eaten by early humans, but largely separate from archaeological research as far as I can tell. This seems to be based largely on meant and fish, with certain vegetables and fruits, and excluding cereals, dairy and processed food. I've been fascinated how popular the Palaeo Diet is, and how it relates to my academic research. There has been a lot of criticism from archaeologists about the justification for Palaeo Diet not being wrong, but that is not the point of this blog. I am more interested in why people are into Palaeo and the mechanisms behind why it really works (or possibly not, for everyone?). So a lot of what I'll be talking about in this blog is related to the modern idea of Palaeo Diet, in what ways it relates to the 'real' paleodiets that we know about through archaeological research, and also how it differs. Importantly I'll be thinking about geographic variability. We have a tendency to talk about the past as if everything was the same everywhere, which is obviously not true today and wasn't true in the past either!

As I learn more about fitness and nutrition, I'll be incorporating this into the blog as well. So basically this is a place for me to discuss my thoughts informally about diet, fitness and nutrition, with less of the serious stuff about academia!