Forget Paleo, Here’s a Genuinely Ancient Diet

Has the Paleo Diet lost its luster? Are you looking for a new ancient diet to seize upon? Then ponder the ancient wisdom of Roger Bacon, Doctor Mirabilis of thirteenth-century England. Bacon was a Franciscan friar and natural philosopher who advocated for empirical study of natural phenomena.

In his Opus Majus (vol 2, p 625) he describes the secret to a long and healthy life. It is the consumption of dragon flesh:

For it is certain that wise men of Aethiopia have come to Italy, Spain, France, England and those lands of the Christians in which there are good flying dragons, and by secret art they possess lure the dragons from their caverns. They have saddles and bridles in readiness, and they ride these dragons and drive them in the air at high speed, so that the rigidity of their flesh may be overcome and its hardness tempered. Just as in the case of boars and bears and bulls that are driven about by dogs and beaten in various ways before they are killed for food.

After they have domesticated them in this way they have the art of preparing their flesh, similar to the art of preparing the flesh of the Tyrian snake, and they use the flesh against the accidents of old age, and they prolong life and sharpen their intellect beyond all conception.

For details, including references on how to cook your dragon, we advise you to read more here from Thijs Porck of Leiden University.

But you might have a hard time acquiring dragon flesh. If so, the next best thing might be to adopt a healthy Mediterranean diet. True, it has less magic, but it does have more evidence behind it. And it has other advantages. It’s a pretty pleasant, sustainable way to eat for the rest of your days. You won’t have to worry about driving dragons into extinction, either.

Meanwhile, forget Paleo. The fad has gone stale.

Dragon Fruit, photograph © Michael Canavan / flickr

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January 14, 2017