I’m delighted to announce the launch of a new project: Modern Paleo. The following description is taken from the the introductory post on its blog.

What will you find on Modern Paleo?

Modern Paleo offers writings and other resources by Objectivists on the principles and practices of nutrition, fitness, and health most conducive to human flourishing.

Here are the highlights:

• This Modern Paleo Blog contains writings on those topics by people who seek the best that modern life has to offer, informed by a broadly paleo approach. It is managed by Christian W., and its contributors are paleo-eating Objectivists. (Christian will introduce himself in the next few days.)
• Modern Paleo hosts three e-mail lists: PaleoBloggers, SousVide, and PaleoThyroid. The first two lists have associated blog carnivals, to help paleo and sous vide bloggers promote their work.
• I’ve written a fairly detailed list of core paleo principles, each with a slew of links for additional reading.

We’ll be adding more resources to Modern Paleo with time.

What does Modern Paleo advocate?

We — the contributors to Modern Paleo — advocate a “paleo” perspective on nutrition, fitness, and health. We use the evolutionary history of mankind, plus the best of modern science, as a broad framework to guide our daily choices about diet, exercise, supplementation, and medicine. The core of the paleo approach to health is the diet: we eschew grains, sugars, and modern vegetable oils in favor of high-quality meat, fish, eggs, and vegetables.

In addition, we advocate and practice “a philosophy for living on earth”: Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. In the postscript to her epic novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand wrote:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

We live by that philosophy. We do not seek to return to the past: we want to fully enjoy the amazing benefits of modern life. We do not cling to dogmas or submit to authority: we think and act for ourselves, based on our best grasp of the relevant facts. We do not sacrifice our judgment or our values to others, nor ask others to sacrifice to us. We seek the best for ourselves by producing and trading voluntarily with other rational, productive people. We reject government controls and welfare on principle: every person should be free to live as he pleases, so long as he respects the rights of others.

As a philosophy, Objectivism is silent on scientific questions about nutrition, fitness, and health. Yet we regard Objectivism as compatible with a paleo approach.

For more details, go check out Modern Paleo!