The Paleolithic diet, Paleo diet, caveman diet, or stone-age diet is a modern fad diet consisting of foods thought to mirror those eaten during the Paleolithic era. There are different variants of the diet; some are predominantly plant-based but the most recent popular variants focus on animal products.
The Paleo diet is designed to resemble what human hunter-gatherer ancestors ate thousands of years ago. It is widely believed that human digestion hasn’t evolved much and hence it is better to follow what our early humans ate.
Although it’s impossible to know exactly what human ancestors ate in different parts of the world, researchers believe their diets consisted of whole foods. By following a whole-food-based diet and leading physically active lives, hunter-gatherers presumably had much lower rates of lifestyle diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
The Paleolithic diet is promoted as a way of improving health. There is some evidence that following it may lead to improvements in body composition and metabolism compared with the typical Western diet or compare with diets recommended by some European nutritional guidelines.
On the other hand, following the diet can lead to nutritional deficiencies such as an inadequate calcium intake. And side effects can include weakness, diarrhea, and headaches.
History of Paleo:
The diet started to become popular in the 21st century, where it attracted a largely internet-based following using websites, forums, and social media. But, the idea that the primitive diet was superior to current dietary habits dates back to the 1890s with writers such as Emmet Densmore and John Harvey Kellogg.
This was the earliest known example of the concept of the Paleo Diet, and over time multiple books were published on this diet.
And In 1985 Stanley Boyd Eaton and Melvin Konner published a controversial article in the New England Journal of Medicine proposing that modern humans were biologically very similar their primitive ancestors and so "Genetically programmed" to consume pre-agricultural foods.
Eaton and Konner proposed a "Discordance hypothesis" by which the mismatch between modern diet and human biology gave rise to lifestyle diseases, such as obesity and diabetes. The diet eventually became popular in the 2000s.
Food We Can Eat:
Anything the early Hunter-Gatherers ate we can eat. And we have to look for whole unprocessed versions of these foods, and it's alright for us to cook.
Meat: Beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, pork, and others.
Fish and seafood: Salmon, trout, haddock, shrimp, shellfish, etc. Choose wild-caught if you can.
Eggs: Choose free-range, pastured, or omega-3 enriched eggs.
Vegetables: Broccoli, kale, peppers, onions, carrots, tomatoes, etc.
Fruits: Apples, bananas, oranges, pears, avocados, strawberries, blueberries and more.
Tubers: Potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, turnips, etc.
Nuts and seeds: Almonds, macadamia nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and more.
Food We Cannot Eat:
Foods that were incorporated into the human diet after are what you should look to avoid.
Sugar and high-fructose corn syrup: Soft drinks, fruit juices, table sugar, candy, pastries, ice cream and many others.
Grains: Includes breads and pastas, wheat, spelt, rye, barley, etc.
Legumes: Beans, lentils and many more.
Dairy: Avoid most dairy, especially low-fat (some versions of Paleo do include full-fat dairy like butter and cheese).
Some vegetable oils: Soybean oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil, corn oil, grape seed oil, safflower oil and others.
Trans fats: Found in margarine and various processed foods. Usually referred to as “Hydrogenated” or “Partially hydrogenated” oils.
Artificial sweeteners: Aspartame, sucralose, cyclamates, saccharin, acesulfame potassium. Use natural sweeteners instead.
Highly processed foods: Everything labeled “diet” or “Low-fat” or that has many additives. Includes artificial meal replacements.
A simple guideline: If it looks like it was made in a factory, don’t eat it.
The Special Cases:
The following drinks aren’t exactly Paleo, but most people drink them anyway:
Tea: Tea is very healthy and loaded with antioxidants and various beneficial compounds. Green tea is best.
Coffee: Coffee is actually very high in antioxidants as well. Studies show that it has many health benefits.
Controversies and Health:
The Paleolithic diet is controversial in part because of the exaggerated health claims made for it by its supporters. There is some evidence the diet helps achieve weight loss, possibly because of the increased satiety from the foods typically eaten.
One trial of obese postmenopausal women found improvements in weight and fat loss after six months, but the benefits had ceased by 24 months. There is no good evidence that following a Paleolithic diet lessens the risk of cardiovascular disease or metabolic syndrome. And Paleo Diet is also highly damaging for the environment.
Written By - Joshua
Edited By - Dana Asnan
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