This is a potential hit for those who are eagerly waiting every new miracle for losing weight without any effort. It is the Caveman Diet or Paleo Diet. It certainly stirred the seas of nutrition and caused a real whirl. Taking a glance on the menu, it might even seem that there are some advantages to it. At least it does not require groceries which are either hard to get or too expensive. However, there is much more to it.
The creators behind the Paleo Diet claim that this is the only healthy one. Their major postulate is that we should eat only what we are supposed to eat, but that is hardly sufficient information. To those who have problems with understanding their hypothesis, it means that people have to cope with the fact that they are humans and that they have to eat according to that fact.. As they state further, the Paleo or Caveman Diet is medically researched and proven. There is a lot of talk about scientific approach and documentation which indicates its healthiness for human organism. It would be nice if some of it might be found elsewhere.
The people from the old times mainly ate what they could find (nuts, fruit, and vegetables of some kinds) and red meat. It would be nice to know how much an average caveman actually weighed in relation to his or hers height and general physical predispositions. Keeping processed grains away is not news in any known diet, although total avoidance of legumes and fruits does sound a bit strange. Naturally, sugar is the enemy of our organism as such, but fructose cannot be that harmful, unless people consume their fruits with high fat ice-creams and melted chocolate.
The Paleo Diet supposedly does miracles to human skin, clearing it from acne. It is common knowledge that various nuts also cause acne as much as irregular and unhealthy nutritional plan. Cavemen ate nuts. It means they must have had acne proof skin or something similar. Apart from building human stamina and preventing various autoimmune diseases from rapidly taking over human organism, Paleo Diet also melts the excess weight without a single minute of exercising. This is where every sane person must stop and think how much time will pass until overweight people understand there are no such things as losing weight over night or simply melting fat without a drop of sweat. People from the Paleolithic definitely moved lot more, thus having opportunity to remain lean, if so.
Paleo Diet sounds like a true phenomenon, since it claims to successfully prevent various modern age diseases, from cancer and heart attack to predisposed genetic disorders. It almost sounds too good to be true.
The fact that this nutritional plan does not cost much does not automatically make it perfect. Being conscious about your budget is as important as being conscious about your food. How much can a person actually save on cereals, pasta, bread and similar? There are people who eat whole grained bread and brown rice at all times. There are families whose daily menus do not always consist of pasta and chips. Cutting out all fruit and beans is also a questionable move, especially if you consult many a parent who lives for the moment their kid has eaten an apple, drank a freshly squeezed lemonade or orange juice.
Paleo is mainly meat, which cuts out the vegetarians and people who have doctor’s orders to avoid almost all types but lean meat such as chicken and veal. How lean was the meat Paleo people ate? It further states that although the diet is far from suitable for vegetarians, it is possible to adjust it. It would be interesting to know how, since once you cut out fruits, beans and legumes and you are vegetarian, there isn’t much you can eat.
Basically, Paleo diet looks like a mixture of already known diets based on low intake of carbohydrates where protein intake is much higher. However, the originators of the diet claim it is very different from ordinary diets which operate on similar plans. The further explanation is that cavemen did not have access to processed grains, refined sugar, processed carbohydrates etc. It seems that we already know that, as well as we know that today’s people adapted to the environment for also millions of years and so developed their metabolisms. For cavemen, the thunder strike came with the agricultural revolution and civilization generally. If it weren’t for agricultural revolution, there would not be countless vegetables available. As an average person might reason, the people of the ancient times certainly did not have as many vegetables on their menu as we have today. So much for the agricultural progress, one would say. Paleo diet seems more of a critic review of modern society and civilization generally, than a new approach to already known nutrition plan.
The only purpose of the world as we know it is to develop further in all areas. Without medications, cavemen were suffering and dying from illnesses they did not know, but there are no documents about it. What we do know today is that regardless of their healthy meat and veggie diet, it is known through researches that their teeth were mainly deteriorated. That is merely one known example. Mixing a nutritional plan such as Paleo with the biased views on civilization and its benefits is by all means strange, because it is the matter of common knowledge that both progress and stagnation in development has its advantages and disadvantages. Progress and hectic modern life cannot be the only issues to blame for obesity or chronic illnesses. No matter how much the progress contributed to pollution of environment generally, decreasing immunity in humans and similar issues, it also helped immensely with its achievements; aside the horrid side effects of progress, it has its unmatched achievements. The Paleo website suggests that people should learn more about ancient history and ways of life. The true connection between one’s choices for healthy living today and the ways of the cavemen remains a great mystery, at least to the author of this article.
The Paleo diet seems like a combo of Atkins, high protein and low carbs diet, and it rather reminds of a mystical history lesson someone’s trying to teach the modern man. With inconsistencies in Paleo food consumption (you can eat fruit, than you cannot, diet is not suitable for vegetarians, then it can be adapted), it seems strange someone actually combines already existing diets, gives them “modern” and appealing name, wrapping it in a history mystery and suggests people to go back and live in the Stone Age. It is inexplicable why our ancient ancestors had a lifespan of probably forty years or so, while today’s average life expectancy of an American in actually increasing. Modern man certainly found the way towards a better life without history lessons already learned in school, with diets based on what we already seen, tried and discussed.…