The Paleolithic Diet And Can It Help You?

The Paleolithic is a period which stretches far back into the history of humans to a time where we survived as hunter gatherers living on meat, fish and plants. The food was as nature intended and it was not covered in more modern day additives such as sugar or even salt. So this basic food has led to the development of a diet for people to follow which is intended to take us right back to our origins so here is some information on the Paleolithic diet.

It is a diet which does focus on the consumption of things such as fish, meat, plants, berries, and nuts as they were all things that were either hunted or gathered by the Paleolithic people. It does mean it is a diet which is devoid of sugar, oils, dairy products, and legumes since they only came into the diet in any large numbers later on and mostly into the Neolithic period.

Although the diet does try its best to be authentic there are a few differences. First of all clearly we do not go out and hunt the meat ourselves but the main difference is the variety of meat consumed. We do not eat the same animals as we did back then and there are other points that anthropologists argue about but it is normal for discussions when talking about a diet.

It has its modern day origins in the seventies where the creators argued that genetically speaking we have not changed since this period. Genetics has not had the time to evolve since our diet became more about processed foods and we started agriculture so our body is capable of coping with having such a diet as it did not do us any harm before.

It does involve a drastic change for some people in what they consume on a daily basis as research has shown a lot of people in the US get seventy percent of their daily intake from things in the do not eat list. However, with enough help and advice it is possible to still get all that you require from the Paleolithic diet.

When it comes to the point about the cereals some people do point out that in the latter stages of the period some cereals were consumed. While this may be true they did not play as central a role in the diet as the other things and it does depend on what stage of the Paleolithic you wish to adhere to.

One main argument from the proponents of the diet is that it shall cut down on the diseases that exist in the modern day world as they say how most of them have only appeared since we started agriculture and became civilized. However this part is extremely debatable as you must remember that life expectancy back then was very low so we simply did not live long enough to develop certain diseases. It is also true that the life style was much more active so people did not become obese and therefore did not get the diseases associated with obesity.

At the end of the day the success of a diet comes down to the individual. What works for one person does not have to work for their friend so it is always a case of getting out of it what you can no matter what the professionals argue.