Stone Age Eating
Take a time machine back to 2 million years ago. You are in the Paleolithic era surrounded by early hominids. They probably grunt at you or something maybe even poke you with a stick. Nonetheless, they accept you into their primitive society. There you observe what we have been taught in history class since 1st grade; there are hunters and there are gatherers. At the end of the day the hunters bring in the fresh kill of the day and the gatherers present plates of berries and vegetables. This is as fresh as it gets, right.
Fast forward through 2 million years of human evolution. The loud speaker calls number 23, you stand up walk towards the counter and the employee hands you your Big Mac, welcome back to 2018. You scarf it down in 3 bites. Just as you finish you remember your time back with the cavemen and wonder how we went from kill of the day to frozen meat substance. You wonder, is it possible to go back to eating like a caveman?
Yes you can. It is a popular diet called the paleo diet or caveman diet.
Its probably simple to deduce, but this diet has you eating like our early human friends. So what are the rules?
You are allowed to eat: lean meats, eggs (but no more than 6 per week), fruits, nuts and seeds.
You are not allowed to eat: dairy products, sugary drinks and juices, beans, and any highly processed food.
The reasoning behind this diet is that our modern inactive life is filled with fatty, sugary and highly processed foods. This leads to heart disease, diabetes, obesity and many other preventable nutritional diseases. Paleo experts claim to counteract this we must eat like early hominids by cutting fats through leaner meats and less dairy as well as increasing fruit and vegetable intake. These two factors allegedly combine to remove unnecessary calories, bump up vitamin, mineral and fiber consumption and help reduce weight gain through over eating.
The obvious question is, does this actually work?
The American Journal for Clinical Nutrition published an article that experimented on over 150 people. They gave each person one of four different diets, one being the paleo diet. It was found that the paleo diet did lead to short term smaller weight sizes, lower blood pressure and lower blood sugar. But the article never fully endorsed the diet but rather stated that their research only concluded that more long term research should be conducted. Many leading nutritionalist claim that the diet should be completely avoided because these long term effects have yet to be studied.
Yet the biggest con of the entire diet may not even be nutritional. This diet is just as extreme with its rules as it is on your wallet. People claim that it cost around $500 a month per person in groceries alone. This plus an increase in dining cost due to the expensive nature of fresh meats and vegetables makes this diet out of reach for most of the public.
