Caveman Diet Can you eat “Paleo”

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Paleo Diet

As in Paleolithic

You may have heard of it as the Caveman Diet

WHAT TO EAT AND WHY

Do your best to stick to whole, unprocessed foods: meat, eggs, seafood, non-starchy vegetables — and some (but not a ton of) fruit, nuts and seeds. I try to avoid eating things with sugar, grains (yes, whole grains, too), legumes (and not just because of their fart-inducing properties), and polyunsaturated fats. In short, I eat anything that can be hunted or gathered, and try to avoid stuff that’s processed, cultivated, or sealed in colorful plastic packaging.

My favorite description of the Paleo approach

I eat “real” food — fresh, natural food like meat, vegetables and fruit. I choose foods that are nutrient dense, with lots of naturally-occurring vitamins and minerals, over foods that have more calories but less nutrition. And food quality is important — I’m careful about where my meat comes from, and buy produce locally and organically as often as possible.

It’s not a low calorie “diet” — I eat as much as I need to maintain strength, energy and a healthy weight. In fact, my diet is probably much higher in fat than you’d imagine. Fat isn’t the enemy — it’s a great energy source when it comes from high quality foods like avocado, coconut and nuts. And I’m not trying to do a “low carb” thing, but since I’m eating vegetables and fruits instead of bread, cereal and pasta, it just happens to work out that way.

Eating like this is good for maintaining a healthy metabolism, and reducing inflammation within the body. It’s been doing great things for my energy levels, body composition and performance in the gym. It also helps to minimize my risk for a whole host of lifestyle diseases and conditions, like diabetes, heart attack and stroke.

Sound good?  Want to give it a try?  The best way to do that is to have a Paleo cookbook that also gives you a meal planning guide.

No bread, cereal or pasta? Give me one good reason why you’re doing this to yourself.

Humans are poorly adapted to eating the majority of modern (or “Neolithic”) foods like grains, sugar, processed vegetable and seed oils, and other bad stuff. A strong case can be made that the “diseases of civilization” — including metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, etc. — are due to the consumption of foods that only became widely available ten to fifteen thousand years ago, with the rise of agriculture.

John Durant summarized the premise of Paleo eating brilliantly:

Nearly all conventional health authorities recommend that you move from an Industrial Diet (processed foods, soda, Pop Tarts) to a traditional Farmer’s Diet (whole grains, dairy, organic). It’s a good first step. I’m simply recommending that we go one step further back in time, to a Hunter-Gatherer Diet.

And that’s it! Really, that’s it. It needs to be no more complicated than that. Remove processed foods. Remove farmer foods. DONE.

Paleo eaters avoid dairy?  If so, why?

Dairy can present a host of health problems. But some dairy products seem to present less of a problem due to their source (A2 dairy, grassfed butter), fermentation (yogurt, kefir, cheese), or the elimination of milk solids (ghee). To paraphrase Kurt Harris, just ’cause dairy’s Neolithic or technically un-Paleo doesn’t mean that every dairy product is an agent of disease.

• Don’t eat toxins: avoid industrial seed oils, improperly prepared cereal grains and legumes and excess sugar (especially fructose)

• Nourish your body: emphasize saturated and monounsaturated fat while reducing intake of polyunsaturated fat, favor glucose/starch over fructose, and favor ruminant animal protein and seafood over poultry

• Eat real food: eat grass-fed, organic meat and wild fish, and local, organic produce when possible. Avoid processed, refined and packaged food.

Within these guidelines, however, there’s a lot of room for individual differences. When people ask me whether dairy products are healthy, I always say “it depends”. I give the same answer when I’m asked about nightshades, caffeine, alcohol and carbohydrate intake.

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Click the Go button and get your new healthy lifestyle started…..or at least try the diet.

Thank you for reading!

Please be sure to Like, Share, and Comment below.  I would really appreciate it and would love to see your opinions.

Nikki Shellenbarger

Inspired Entrepreneur