Eating
like our Ancestors
The
Paleolithic Diet
The first
thing to remember is that there is no one Paleolithic
/ Primal / Neanderthal / Warrior
/ Stone Age / Caveman
diet. The Paleo way is
NOT some diet invented by some guy who wrote a book, (although
several books have been written on the subject.) Ancient man
lived in diverse climates and conditions and no one is absolutely
certain of what they actually ate and in what percentages.
The Paleolithic
diet is based on our best guess about how our shared ancestors
ate.
Basically
the premise is this: for about 2 million years man ate
what he killed, found, or gathered. When he found food; killed
an animal or located a fruit bearing tree, for example; he gorged himself,
then moved on when the supply ran out, going without until he could make another killl or find more growing things to forage on. For hundreds of thousands
of years he had only simple tools - sharpened sticks and rocks to help him secure food for himself.
He discovered
fire relatively late in that timespan and so couldn't eat any
foods that could not be consumed raw like tubers and legumes
(beans, peas, peanuts) for the majority of the paleolithic period.
Then, only
10,000 years ago, we figured out agriculture.
Man 'suddenly'
(in the great scheme of things) went from a hunter gatherer
guy who ate mostly meat and whatever veggie/ fruit/ seeds he
scavenged, to a farmer. He stayed put, ate more frequently during the day, augmented his diet
with grains (bread, rice, corn), and quickly fell victim to everything
from heart disease to gingivitis.
Additionally,
in the last 50 years or so, something insidious has occured
in America. Something that we are doing, with our diet, with
our lifestyle, something, has changed and we are suddenly
getting sicker and sicker and more and more obese.
Many feel
that it's the flood of high carbohydrate, high sugar, processed
foods that we now consume in gaggingly large quantities. We
are a nation of people who gorge on cake, cookies, candies,
chips, crackers, cereal, bagels, muffins, etc. We think nothing
of eating a 4-serving-sized baked potato loaded with high-carb
low-fat sour cream, soybean oil filled margerine, and sprinkled
with fake 'bacon bits'. We don't pause at all at a triple caramel
latte with fat-free whipped cream and a 3-serving-sized honey
wheat bagel slathered with low-fat blueberry cream cheese. We
gladly down insane quantities of carbohydrates and sugars with
every meal and eschew simple meats and veg. Add to this the
fact that high fructose corn syrup is in a huge proportion of
what we consume all day, sauces, soft drinks, even our catsup.
So the
Paleo theory is that by eating closer to the way our bodies
evolved (over 2 million years) to eat: simple foods, unprocessed
foods, foods available and consumable prior to the advent of
agriculture are better for us.
So what
are those food believed to be? Here ya go:
What our
ancestors did NOT eat were those things produced by later agriculture
(grains, dairy); those things that must be cooked to be eaten
(legumes, potatoes); processed anything including foods made
palatable in modern times (cashews, olives), distilled, brewed
or aged liquids (liquor,beer,wine); sugar (soft drinks, candy,
cakes, cookies); and of course, any processed "Frankenfoods"
(frozen dinners, diet bars, diet shakes, '100 cal' snacks, etc,
etc.)
SIMPLE
is the watchword of Paleo. Meats and eggs cooked with just oil
and dry spices, veggies and fruits eaten raw, steamed, or grilled.
No sugar, refined or otherwise, no carbs from bread, rice, corn,
potatoes, or legumes.
Paleo is
also highly adaptable. If your one sin is chocolate, then have
chocolate in moderation while sticking to the basic primal lifestyle.
If you love beans, then add legumes in to your Way Of Eating.
It will be your one "paleo-exception".
I myself
am Lacto-Paleo and eat small amounts of cream, butter and cheese.
|
Vegetables:
Remember that not everything you think of as a veg IS. Potatoes
are starchy tubers. Corn is a grain. Neither one of these was
eaten by our ancestors for the better part of 2 million years
- potatoes because they cannot be eaten raw in any quantity,
and corn because it didn't exist. In additon, both of these
are almost nutritionally empty carbohydrate bombs.
Fruits:
Bear in mind that the fruits that paleolithic man ate, while
still being , say, apples, bore almost no resemblance to today's
apples. Modern fruit is bred to be HUGE and sweet. Most fruits
are packed with a particularly bad sugar, fructose, and are often 3-4 servings in a single
fruit. Because of this, many paleos only eat berries for the
most part.
New
World vegetables and fruits: Avocados, cucurbits (cucumbers,
squash, zucchini), and the nightshades (see below) are all New
World foods. Since there were no humans in the Americas until
25,000 years ago, they cannot be Paleolithic food. Since we
haven't been eating them for very long (in the great scheme
of things) it follows that our bodies might not be evolved yet
to accept them. Many paleos, including myself, eschew the new
world foods.
Nightshades:
Most nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers) are New World
foods and so were not eaten by our paleolithic ancestors. There
is a single old world representative food of the family: eggplant.
However,
nightshades were long thought to be poisonous (indeed, the old
world Deadly Nightshade lives up to its name), and one member
of the family, tobbacco, is definately a poison. All
nightshades contain nicotine, eggplant most of all of the edibles.
Nightshades were thought for hundreds of years to be fit only
for animal fodder.
Additionally,
there is strong evidence that nightshades exacerbate the symptoms
of arthritis and skin problems. I myself gave nightshades up
for this very reason and my arthritis is markedly
improved and my rosacia is gone altogether.
Again,
make your own decisons about these.:)
|
