Assorted links

Nice item on Caro and Jane Jacobs, Tyler. Two of my favorite authors. If any of the people who read your blog haven’t read The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs or The Path to Power and Means of Ascent (both on LBJ) by Robert Caro, I highly recommend them. I lent one of the Caro books to a friend who had been one of McNamara’s whiz kids in DoD and who had admired LBJ. He came back to school the next day, having stayed up all night reading it, and said that he felt physically sick.

Greg Mankiw has an admirable sense of humor, but I have a serious question regarding the introductory textbook market. Does anyone have any reliable (public? I’m sure there’s privately held info.) information as to the actual size of the introductory economics textbook market and the market shares of the producers in said market? I have a shelf full of intro macro textbooks, and I suspect I have not scratched the surface of suppliers, but I imagine I have most of the major books.

[One more thing, Prof Cowen & Prof Tabarrok: I look forward to reading the latest market entrant!]

I think Seth Roberts misrepresents the “Paleolithic diet” in his piece.

I suppose he could be thinking about another kind of paleolithic diet, perhaps there are other varieties of the diet, but as far as I know the “paleo diet” generally is not how Seth portrays it.

The paleo diet is for the most part a “low carb diet” and drastically reduces grain, and refined grain, sugar, flour, sources of carbs. It promotes vegetables, mostly leafy greens, as the main source of carbs.

As for Seth’s first point about the paleo diet promoting foods in their whole, natural state, this is true. But the paleo diet does not prohibit or even discourage the use of supplements. Flaxseed oil, or fish oil, is something that the paleo diet would even recommend. Ideally, most or all of omega-3s would be obtained from seafood and meat, but the paleo diet acknowledges that the omega-3s are often deficient in grain fed animals, and thus can be hard to obtain by humans solely from eating seafood and meat. Grass fed meat is higher in omega-3s and nutrients than grain fed meet, but it is generally more expensive and more difficult to find. And so the paleo diet will often recommend flaxseed oil, fish oil, etc.

Regarding his second point about fermented food, I’m not sure about all paleo diets. I know some paleo diets are completely against all forms of dairy and fermented foods. But I know that many are not, and actually advocate certain cheeses and yogurt cultures precisely for the bacteria Seth talks about.

His third point about mothers’ advice is just silly. The paleo diet criticizes the mainstream dietary and nutritional advice that was passed onto mothers and then to children in the last generation, and advocates elements of the traditional diets that Seth says it doesn’t.

As for his last two points about eating a balance diet and a diversity of foods, these two points are some of the big reasons why paleo diets have been and are attacked by the mainstream. Paleo diets are criticized for not being comprehensive and balanced enough! Especially because of its drastic reduction of grains, and deemphasis of fruits and vegetables (relative to the mainstream’s advocacy of dramatically raising intake of fruits/veggies).

Seth seems to be much more closer to what’s often called the “paleo diet” these days. What he criticizes in his post as the “paleolithic diet” would be more accurately described as the mainstream, whole foods, vegetarian biased, balanced diet.