Paleolithic-style diet
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(Texts copied from the Paleolitic style Diet Wikipedia article)
A Paleolithic-style diet, popularly known as a Paleolithic diet, paleo diet, prehistoric diet, caveman die, stone age diet or hunter-gatherer diet, is a contemporary diet regime, consisting of commonly available modern foods, that emulates the diet of wild plants and animals that various human species (see Homo (genus)) habitually consumed during the Paleolithic (the Old Stone Age), a period of about 2 million years duration, ending about 10,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens invented agriculture. Advocates of this nutritional approach differ in their dietary prescriptions, but all agree that people today should eat mainly fresh fruits, vegetables, meats and seafood, and avoid as much as possible grains, legumes, dairy products, refined fat and refined sugar, as well as salt. Proponents of Paleolithic-style diets consider that the best foods for the human body are those that humans are best adapted to eat, arguing that many modern ailments are diet related and can be avoided using this nutritional approach. They believe that human genetics have scarcely changed since the Stone Age, and therefore that an ideal diet would be a reconstructed prehistoric diet such as the one human and Homo proto-humans consumed before the Neolithic Revolution.
Critics have taken issue with this evolutionary reasoning, and have disputed certain dietary prescriptions on the grounds that they do not reflect real Paleolithic diets. However, modern human populations subsisting on traditional diets consistent with this nutritional approach seem to be largely free of diseases of affluence and such diets appear to produce beneficial health outcomes in controlled medical experiments.
Theory
According to S. Boyd Eaton, MD, an associate clinical professor of radiology and an adjunct associate professor of anthropology at Emory University: "We are the heirs of inherited characteristics accrued over millions of years; the vast majority of our biochemistry and physiology are tuned to life conditions that existed prior to the advent of agriculture some 10,000 years ago. Genetically our bodies are virtually the same as they were at the end of the Paleolithic era some 20,000 years ago."
Paleolithic-style diets are based on the premise that natural selection had 2 million or more years to genetically adapt the metabolism and physiology of the various human species to such a diet, and that in the 10,000 years since the invention of agriculture and its consequent major change in the human diet, natural selection has had too little time to make the optimal genetic adaptations to the new diet. Physiological and metabolic maladaptations result from the suboptimal genetic adaptations to the contemporary human diet, which in turn contribute too many of the so-called Lifestyle diseases of civilization.
Loren Cordain, a member of the faculty of the Department of Health and Exercise Science at Colorado State University, argues that "today more than 70% of our dietary calories come from foods that our Paleolithic (Stone Age) ancestors rarely, if ever, ate. The result is epidemic levels of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis, gastrointestinal disease, acne, and more."
History
One of the first suggestions that following a diet similar to that of the late Paleolithic Era would improve a person's health was based on achieving the same proportions of nutrients (fat, protein, and carbohydrates, as well as vitamins and dietary minerals) as were present in the diets of late Paleolithic people, not on excluding foods that were not available before the development of agriculture. As such, this nutritional approach included skimmed milk, whole grain bread, brown rice, and potatoes prepared without fat, on the premise that such foods have the same nutritional properties as Paleolithic foods.
Recently popularized nutritional approaches based on Paleolithic dietary practices focus on eliminating more or less all foods that advocates believe were rarely or never consumed by humans before the Neolithic revolution, such as milk, dairy products, and grains. Proponents of such approaches have synthesized diets from commonly available modern foods that they believe would emulate the nutritional characteristics of the diets of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, allowing for some foods said to be unavailable to preagricultural peoples, such as Plant cultivated plants and domesticated animal meat, as well as certain processed oils and beverages.
