Caveman Diet

The caveman diet or paleo diet or paleonithic diet is probably the most natural and right way that we, as a species, should eat. Not only have we veered away from this diet that has basically stood the time of evolution, but our society is moving further and further away from foods that made and kept us well.

Think I am crazy for saying this? Well, you don't have to go much further than checking out what idigenous people eat...you know...the 84 or so tribes in this world that still haven't been affected by what modern day society considers to be the right way to eat.

Additionally, anthropologists over the the last few hundred years have noted how much better health these tribes have been compared to their European neighbors. One of these anthropologists, Western Price actually noted that he thought most of the dental problems that modern society dealt with was primarily from the diet they ate after noting several tribes he was in contact with that were outside the scope of modern technology. He noted that these tribal or primitive people were remiss from cancers, heart disease and other modern diseases.

So what gives? Where did we go wrong? The answer is approximately 10,000 years ago when our diets changed from a hunter-gatherer mentality to a more agriculture based diet. In other words, when we started eating grains, we started experiencing problems.

For millions of years before the invention of agriculture, the primitive man (or caveman) basically ate what he could eat naturally. This included animals that he killed and fruits and vegetables that he could pick. And this is where people start to get confused about what you can eat, vegetable wise and what you can't eat.

First of all, just to be clear, the caveman diet plan does not include potatoes, sweet potatoes or beans of any type. Are they vegetables? Sort of. So what gives?

Just like wheat and grain, tubers and beans contain enzyme blockers and leptins. They are also toxic to humans, parasites, insects, ect., containing solanine(in potatoes) which is nature's answer to pesticide. In beans, the toxins come in the form of leptins, which are also a type of insecticide.

Because of this, pre-agricultural man, most likely didn't eat these things because it would have been toxic (actually, I imagine a couple did and paid the price while everyone else learned their lesson).

So if they are toxic, why do we eat them today?

When agriculture became the rage and the hunter-gatherer mentality began to fade, someone somewhere figured out that by cooking them, they could eliminate most of the toxins. I say most because even cooked, some toxins are still around. Add this to the fact that

One of the prevailing questions in regards to any diet is is it safe? After all, losing weight is great but not at the expense of your health. A perfect example of this is the Atkin's diet which gained a lot of momentum and was proven to work but came with some health problems like gout, and heart disease, mostly because of the huge amounts of meats that were consumed on the diet. This was mostly because people took the diet as a "eat anything you want but stay away from carbs."

The caveman diet or paleo diet is very closely aligned to atkins but with a couple exceptions. The first is that a proper caveman diet is organic which means that the food you are eating are living the way God intended them to. This type of a diet will help eliminate the chemicals, antibiotics and hormones that most of our meats are loaded with.

Secondly, unlike the Atkins diet, the caveman diet is not really regulated. Basically, you can eat as much as you want of the food that is on the list....

So what can you eat on the paleo diet?

Rather than say what you can eat, I feel it is easier to say what you can't eat on this diet....

The basic rule to follow is that if you can't eat it in its raw state, then you shouldn't eat it. This eliminates a lot of foods....

• Nothing processed or manufactured
• Nothing genetically altered
• No sugars (as they are processed)
• No beans or peanuts or potatoes (as they are poisonous raw)
• No breads or pastas (once again processed and you wouldn't eat them raw)

That is pretty much it. The beauty of the Paleo diet is that you will drop weight quickly because the food is what we were evolved to eat.