Have you ever wonder what early humans ate? Some people claim to know. Some of those people believe that eating the same diet consumed by early man will provide you with ultimate health.

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The paleolithic diet consists of fruits, nuts (excluding peanuts and cashews), vegetables and meat. The diet excludes grains all together. They also don’t eat potatoes, processed vegetable oils, salt, sugar, alcohol, dairy products and no processed foods at all.

While some paleo dieters choose to eat most of their food raw, the diet doesn’t call for eating food raw. You can cook your vegetables and meat.

The idea is that the human body evolved to survive on a certain type of diet. This is the diet that was eaten by our hunter gatherer  ancestors. They believe that once agriculture started people started eating foods that were not normally eaten and not necessarily good for them.

Grains and beans are the seeds of plants. These seeds don’t want to be eaten. Being eaten would destroy the seed and make it unable to germinate. The seeds contain natural antinutrients that discourage animals from eating them. These antinutrients prohibit the body from absorbing nutrients necessary for optimal health. They also contain toxins. That’s why you cannot eat them raw without getting sick.

History

The paleolithic diet first became popular in 1975 when a gastroenterologist named Walter L. Voegtlin published a book called The stone age diet: Based on in-depth studies of human ecology and the diet of man. Voegtlin had a ton of digestive problems including, indigestion, colitis, Crohn’s disease and irritable bowel syndrome. He found that eating this diet got rid of his digestive problems.

In 1988, Melvin Konner, Marjorie Shostak and S. Boyd Eaton published The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet and Exercise and a Design for Living. This book made the diet popular and since then it has been popular with some natural health practitioners and doctors. The diet that Dr. Mercola suggests is based on the paleolithic diet.

Benefits

People on the paleolithic diet claim many health benefits. People on this diet don’t suffer from diseases of civilization. These diseases include:

• diabetes
• cardiovascular disease
• obesity
  
• high blood pressure
• autoimmune diseases
• colon cancer
• osteoporosis

My Two Cents

Do they really know what paleolithic man ate? I’m not too sure. Would he have eaten something else if he could’ve gotten his hands on it? Obviously he would’ve. How else could we explain our diets now?

I think that the diseases of modern man come more from processed food and eating too much than eating grains. It seems that the lack of these diseases in ancient man are more related to their restricted calorie intake and  cutting out processed foods than to not eating grains. I’m no expert, but that just seems like common sense to me.

Avoiding grains and legumes is difficult in normal life. I didn’t have any reason for doing it. It was just an experiment. When I went to the hospital last week they gave me some toast after surgery to see if I could hold down food and my grainless diet was over. Honestly, I love rice and eat quite a bit of Asian food so I’m happy to go back to my normal diet.

I felt good on my grain free diet, but I don’t think I stuck to it long enough to really notice a change in my health. I’m pretty healthy so I don’t even know what kind of change I’d be looking for. I was eating mostly vegetables and small amounts of meat and seafood. Avoiding grains isn’t impossible. I used raw food solutions for my grainy food product needs, like zucchini spirals instead of pasta or noodles.

I don’t know if I’ll start eating this diet again. It was just an experiment. For now I’m eating a limited amount of grains that have been soaked and washed. Some have even been unintentionally sprouted. That’s always worked out well for me.

Photo by TheBusyBrain

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