Do You Know About Paleo Diet? Be Healthy And Eat Like Our Ancestors

What is Paleo Diet?

Paleo means ancient. A Paleolithic diet is the diet that humans ate during the Paleolithic or “Old Stone Age” era. This period, about 2.5 million years ago, is marked by anatomic and physiologic changes that were taking place in in the human body as people adapted to climate change, learned to control of fire, and began to use stone tools. Scientists said that diet of our ancestors heavily influenced their neural expansion, increased brain size, and reduced gastrointestinal tract size.

Health And Paleo Diet

Due to industrialization in the last 100 years, a rise in processed food occurs, which is low cost and widely available to fulfill the hunger of the growing population. These processed food increases the risk of diseases on human body. Diseases like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and obesity are becoming common among people.

Healthy diet and lifestyle changes are the solutions for the diseases like above said. Many experts and scientists are studying the food and their nutritions required by human body and creates some diet pattern. These diet pattern consists of all the nutritional elements your body needs and can keep you healthy and stay out of diseases.

The concept of Paleolithic diet started in the 1970s, and its popularity soared after the publishing of the book The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to Eat by Loren Cordain in 2002. Since then, the public has shown a tremendous interest in this diet, also called the “cave man diet” or “Stone Age diet.” Many cookbooks have been published claiming to have Paleolithic recipes.

The idea behind this diet is that if we revert back to what our prehistoric ancestors ate and reject the modern-day, processed diet, our health outcomes would change significantly.

In the last few years, several breakthrough developments in the field of anthropology happens. It helped dieters and practitioners to better understand the Paleolithic diet. Perhaps one of the most popular misconceptions is that our ancient ancestors were mainly carnivores when, in fact, they mostly ate a plant-based diet. The diet was very broad and was also influenced by the geographical location of the group and food availability.

What Types Of Food Items Paleo Diet Consists?

Paleo diet has all the food types including plants and vegetables.

• Plants - These included tubers, seeds, nuts, wild grown barley that was pounded as flour, legumes, and flowers. Since they had discovered fire and using stone tools, it is believed that they were able to process and cook these foods.

• Animals - Because they were more readily available, lean small game animals were the main animals eaten. As per some estimates, animal products contributed to only about 3% of the whole diet. Animals were not yet domesticated so dairy products were probably not included.

• Seafood - The diet included shellfish and other smaller fish. It was a major component of a diet in the coastal regions.

• Insects - A variety of insects and their products, including honey, honeycombs, were eaten. They were a major fallback food. Recently, the interest in edible insects, called entmophagy, has increased. The United Nations released a list of edible insects as an alternative to meat products as the insects are said to provide similar nutrition benefits. 

What Are The Health Benefits Of Adapting Paleo Diet?

There are numerous health benefits by adopting Paleo diet routine.

• It encourages foods that make the body work hard to obtain calories while providing nutrients that optimize efficient use of those calories.

• It may kick-start weight loss and, at least in the short-term, improve blood sugar and lipid profiles.

• Better blood pressure control.

Paleo diet avoid grains like oats and wheat, legumes, salt, potatoes etc. The primary difference between the paleo diet and other healthy diets is the absence of whole grains and legumes, which are considered good sources of fiber, vitamins and other nutrients. Also dairy products are absent from the diet which are good sources of protein and calcium. It is very hard to resist from these now a days. Also, skipping these items you can miss some important nutritions. So it is wise to talk with your doctor before adopting any diet plan.