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The Paleolithic diet, based on what humans ate thousands of years ago, has been suggested as a means of evoking better health. It consists of game meat, fish, nuts, and honey, avoiding anything that speaks to agricultural development. While it may result in weight loss, its overall health benefits are questionable.
Did cave man or paleolithic era humans eat healthier diets than those eaten today? This is the argument that was first launched by a doctor in the 1970s and continues to make rounds of discussion in many different circles addressing topics such as human development, nutrition, physical anthropology, and medicine. The creation of a Paleolithic diet based on what humans ate thousands and possibly millions of years ago has been suggested as a means of evoking better health, since earlier eating was closer to what humans could access in a hunter/gatherer lifestyle, or represents what they were genetically designed to eat.
There are many arguments about the health of the Paleolithic diet and many people have since suggested it as what could be the world’s perfect diet. In particular, the foods most avoided are those that could not have been “hunted” or “gathered” by early humans. Anything that speaks to agricultural development, such as grains, hybrid foods, and most starches, would not be allowed. By-products of many foods like sugar from sugar cane wouldn’t make sense either.
In principle, the Paleolithic diet, as has been suggested, consists of game meat, fish, easy-to-gather products, products such as nuts, or a sweetener such as honey. This encompasses a wide variety of foods, and many may notice an almost complete absence of things like carbohydrates, although dietary fiber through nuts, fruits, and vegetables can be easy to come by. There are real purists within the paleolithic diet movement who suggest that all sourced foods should be as close to the source foods as possible. So people can take wild boar over farm-raised pigs, for example, or just eat non-GMO vegetables and avoid anything that’s sprayed with pesticides.
For those who successfully maintain a Paleolithic diet, there may be some weight loss benefits, but the overall health benefits tend to be more questionable. It is suggested that this diet is similar, in some ways, to Atkins or South Beach, since high consumption of saturated fat is quite common and protein can account for a large part of the calories. From a human health standpoint, and despite the reasoning used by those who suggest that this diet is optimal, it does not appear to be absolutely healthy for everyone. Low-protein diets that focus on healthier oils and grains still seem to produce healthier people.
People interested in reading about the paleolithic diet will find many resources online and many books that describe it or how to implement it. It can be a difficult diet to follow because it eliminates many food sources. The claims about this method of feeding have not been fully proven, and may never be. For this reason, there are many who dismiss the diet as just another fad.
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