Local Neanderthal Pretty Sure This Paleo Diet Is Overly Complicated
'We ate what didn't eat us first,' says man confused by $14 bone broth.
Thawed out after an estimated 40,000 years and handed a copy of a bestselling Paleo cookbook, local Neanderthal Thog Brannigan said Thursday that he was “pretty sure” the modern version of his diet had gotten away from everyone.
“Look, I’m just a simple caveman, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s my diet,” said Brannigan, flipping past a recipe for cauliflower rice with grass-fed ghee and MCT oil. “We ate what didn’t eat us first. Sometimes a bird. Mostly a root. Once, a guy named Grunk. We don’t talk about Grunk.”
Brannigan expressed particular confusion about the products sold under his name, including Paleo-certified protein bars, $14 jars of bone broth, and a collagen peptide powder whose label features a cave painting he says is “not how mammoth look.”
“Where in cave is collagen peptide?” he asked. “Where in cave is almond flour? To make almond flour, you need many almonds and a machine. We had a rock. Rock was also dinner plate, and sometimes weapon, and once, Grunk.”
Paleo coach Brittany Saltzman, who sells a 12-week ancestral eating program for $499, said Brannigan simply wasn’t doing it right. “Our ancestors would have used a macros-tracking app if they’d had one,” she said. “We’re just finishing their work.”
Brannigan noted that most members of his tribe died at about 31, a figure Saltzman described as “an incredible longevity story, if you look at it the right way.”
At press time, Brannigan had been offered an endorsement deal, which he accepted in exchange for one root.
This article is satire. It is fiction. Nothing in it happened, though some of it probably should not have.