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Eat Like a Caveman with the Paleo Diet

If you’ve been involved in fitness and nutrition for a while, or have done any dieting or nutrition research, you’ve probably heard of the Paleo Diet, also called the Caveman diet, Stone Age Diet, and Hunter-Gathere diet. The theory behind this diet is based around the biology of our evolution.

The human species has been around in its present configuration for about 2 million (give or take a few hundred thousand years or so), yet modern agricultural and framing techniques have only been around about 12,000 years.  What that means is that for the vast majority of our evolution, we lived as hunter-gatherers, not as farmers.

Advocates of the Caveman diet are proponets of the theory that our optimum diet is that same diet we ate for the vast majority of our existence. The claim has been made that this is the diet encoded into our genes, the diet that will provide the best nutrition and health benefits possible.

As hunter-gathers for two million years, humans ate meat, fish, fowl and the leaves, roots and fruits of many plants. We did not eat grains, beans and potatoes – they are full of energy but contain many toxins in their raw state. Grains include wheat, corn, barley, rice, sorghum, millet and oats. Grain based foods also include products such as flour, bread, noodles and pasta.

About 12,000 years ago a discovery was made: heat destroyed enough of the toxins to allow use to eat these items. What this meant was we now had access to many more calories in our diet and had otehr advantages as well. These foods could be stored for long periods of time, they were dense in calories, and in the case of seeds they could also be used to prodice more of the plant.

All of this made it easy to store and transport these ‘new’ foods, alowing for hte expansion of population and the development of settlements, since humans sisn’t have to be constantly on the move to look for food. This then led to animal husbandry, which meant dairy and farmed meats, wnd, well, the rest is history (so to speak).

Grains, beans and potatoes share the following:

• They are toxic when raw. They can be dangerous should never be eaten raw or undercooked.
• Cooking destroys most but not all of the toxins. Insufficient cooking can lead to sickness.
• They all carbohydrate dense, and once cooked are easily digestible, resulting in a high glycemic index (sugar spike).
• They are poor sources of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytosterols.

Avoiding grains, beans and potatoes is the primary guideline of the Caveman Diet.

Simply put, the Caveman diet says you should eat:

• Meat, chicken and fish, prefereable grilled. This includes oran meats such as liver and kidneys
• Eggs
• Fresh fruit
• Fresh raw vegetables, especially root vegetables, but not potatoes or sweet potatoes
• Nuts such as walnuts, brazil nuts, macadamia, and almonds. Don’t eat peanuts (a bean) or cashews (a family of their own)
• Berries, including strawberries, blueberries, raspberries etc.
• Root vegetables such as carrots, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, Swedes

And not eat:

• Grains, including bread, pasta, and noodles
• Beans, including string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas and peas
• Potatoes
• Dairy products
• Sugar
• Salt

And that’s the Caveman diet in a nutshell.

If you’re looking for a way to eat that will increase your energy, add more vitamins and minerals to your diet, and ultimately result in you being in the best shape of your life, the Caveman diet is it.

It might take a while to get adjusted – recent research has shown  carbohydrates are as addicting as any drug, but two million years of evolution can’t be wrong.

If you want to read more, tehre are several good books on the topic available at Amazon:

1. The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat
2. The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram your genes for effortless weight loss, vibrant health, and boundless energy
3. NeanderThin: Eat Like a Caveman to Achieve a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body

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