Waste Free Living

If you are diet and nutrition savvy and spend time browsing related forums and blogs, you may be familiar with the Paleolithic Diet.  It’s also called the Caveman Diet, Warrior Diet, and sometimes the Paleo Diet for short.  One thing you can call it with a great amount of certainty, however, is controversial.

This is the first in a series of articles that will explore the controversy, look at both sides of the coin, and separate the fact from the fury in the raging Paleolithic Diet debate.

What is the Paleo Diet?

With almost a cult like following, the Paleo Way of Life (as it’s also referred to) prescribes a diet similar to what is perceived to be the ancient diet of cavemen of the Paleolithic period – a period in history that began approximately 2.5 million years ago and ended when agricultural development began around 10,000 years ago.  Based on the premise that cavemen of that era were sustained by a diet of wild animals and plants, the Paleolithic Diet of today is predominately centered on meat, fish, vegetables, nuts, fruit and roots.  According to the Paleo Diet guidelines, As much as 65% of all calories should come from animal sources and the remaining 35% should come from plant-based food.  Dairy, grains, legumes, refined sugar, starchy tubers, and processed oils are excluded. That means no bread and potatoes but you can eat all the eggs you want.  Fat gets the green light as well.

Many proponents are as staunch as religious zealots when it comes to the health benefits of the Paleo diet.  They claim by following its precepts, America could cut out obesity, diabetes, heart disease and a host of other chronic ailments.  Certainly by following a select few of the principles, it could surely help.

Why all the hate for grains?

Perhaps one of the most decisive elements of the Paleo Diet is restrictions on the consumption of grains. One of the fundamental pillars of Paleo nutrition is the idea that our genetic makeup has changed very little since the dawn of agriculture so we’re clearly best suited to the diet of our Paleolithic ancestors; in other words, no grains. However, there is very little technical data to support a total exclusion of grains from a healthy diet. 

As it turns out, the cavemen didn’t exclude them, either. Interestingly, archaeologists have determined that grains were indeed part of the Paleolithic Diet.

Julio Mercader, an archeologist from the University of Calgary, found stone tools in a cave in Mozambique dating back from a period over 100,000 years ago.  These Stone Age tools contained tiny amounts of starch from wild sorghum.  According to Mercader, “”This happened during the Middle Stone Age, a time when the collecting of wild grains has conventionally been perceived as an irrelevant activity and not as important as that of roots, fruits and nuts.” 

Apparently, the caveman diet was a bit more sophisticated than wild animals, nuts, and berries.

The problems with exclusion.

Obviously, eating more vegetables and fruits as prescribed in the Paleo Diet is a positive thing.  However, some experts believe the exclusion of an entire food group such as grains, dairy, and legumes – to the point of claiming they’re actually dangerous – can lead not only to confusion, but also to serious nutritional deficiencies.

The next article in the series will discuss the good, bad, and the ugly of the carbohydrate restrictions of the Paleolithic Diet.  Interesting points from both sides of the debate are coming soon.

by Sylvia Anderson, author, Insiders Health