The paleo diet, also known as paleolithic diet or caveman diet, is all about natural foods to help achieve great health and a perfect physique. The human body evolved for more than 2 million years with the food found in nature: game meat, fish, vegetables, wild fruits, eggs and nuts. The human race was thriving on this diet high in animal fat and proteins and low in carbohydrates, but things changed when we introduced unnatural foods to our bodies.
The idea is that our genes and physiology evolved through the process of natural selection and are most adapted to be nourished with the food that we evolved around. That includes the whole spectrum of animal food including their fat and organs as well as eggs, vegetables and limited amounts of fruits and nuts.
On the opposite side, some of the foods that we started eating in large quantity since the beginning of the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago are completely alien to our genes and metabolisms and wreak havoc in our body, often causing what we call the metabolic syndrome or diseases of civilization. That includes obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, auto-immune diseases, osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s and a host of other conditions that were unknown to our ancestors.
Some of the worst offenders in today’s diet are what’s actually recommended to consume by governments and nutritionists mainly because years of bad science and economic agendas have demonized things like saturated fat, cholesterol and red meat over the last decades. What we should really be eliminating in our diet are grain products, excess sugar, vegetable seed oils, legumes and dairy, some of which are at the core of the U.S. food pyramid.
The diet and lifestyle is not just based on imitating what our ancestors did, but also on real non-biased science and evidence. The habits of our healthy ancestors give us a good framework to study deeper and to try and find what our food really does to our bodies and how to live the longest and most vibrant lives.
