What is the Paleo Diet???

The Paleolithic Diet is based on eating foods that our Paleolithic ancestors ate. The "Paleolithic" refers to the Paleolithic Era, which is a formal time period on Geologic Time Charts from about 2,500,000 years ago to about 10,000 years ago. The premise is that during the Paleolithic, we evolved a specific genome that has only changed 0.01 per cent in these last 10,000 years. However, during this recent time span mass agriculture, grains/grain products, sugars/sugar products, dairy/dairy products, and a plethora of processed foods have all been introduced as a regular part of the human diet. We are not eating the foods we are genetically and physiologically adapted to eat (99.9% of our genetic profile is still Paleolithic); and the discordance is an underlying cause for much of the "diseases of civilization", "syndrome X", obesity, autoimmune diseases including eschemia, diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis as well as "diseases of old age" that are so epidemic in our society today. As Dr. Cordain and others' scientific research reveal - the evolutionary, genetic, and clinical evidence point to a natural (i.e., unprocessed foods), omnivorous diet as the healthiest way to eat. Dr. Cordain's research shows that 70% of the average caloric intake of Americans is from foods that did not even exist for our Paleolithic ancestors. This discordance is having tremendously negative health consequences for our society as a whole.Our genes determine our optimum diet, and our genes evolved according to the environments in which our ancient ancestors lived, including the foods they ate. Our Paleolithic ancestors did not eat just one single diet, but rather they ate within a range of natural, unprocessed diets - depending on variables like geography, climate, competition, ecologic niche, season, and glaciations. All of these Paleolithic diets did share some universal characteristics, though:

Paleolithic Diet - the ingredients
1) The vegetable sources were:
· Plants
· Roots and tubers
· Berries
· Fruits
· Nuts
The most obvious plant food missing is grains and grain products. If you can concentrate on fresh versions of the plants above - and eliminate or drastically reduce grains, grain products, sugars, and sugar products - you will be well on your way to eating the plants that fit your genetic consitution.
2) The animal sources were:
·Wild terrestrial animals (including the muscle tissue, fat and organs, although the total amount of fat and the fatty acid composition were quite different than that found in modern domestic animals).
· Fowl
· Insects
· Fish and seafood
· Eggs

Paleolithic Diet - an outline from Dr. Loren Cordain
Below is a short excerpt from Professor Cordain's book, outlining and summarizing some of the salient points about what Paleolithic Era people's ate:
• Paleolithic people hardly ever ate cereal grains. This soundsshocking to us today, but for most ancient people, grainswere considered starvation food at best.
• Paleolithic people ate no dairy food. Imagine how difficultit would be to milk a wild animal.
• Paleolithic people didn’t salt their food.
• The only refined sugar Paleolithic people ate was honey,when they were lucky enough to find it.
• Wild, lean animal foods (relative to today) dominated Paleolithic diets, sotheir protein intake was quite high by modern standards,while their carbohydrate consumption was much lower.
• Virtually all of the carbohydrates Paleolithic people ate camefrom nonstarchy, wild fruits and vegetables. Consequently,their carbohydrate intake was much lower and their fiber intake much higher than those obtained by eating the typical modern diet.

In many historical accounts (i.e., Ethnography), European explorers and early settlers are amazed at how healthy native people were, how vital their old people were, and how ailments such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, auto-immune diseases, and obesity didn't exist (or were extremely rare). These cultures were without exception each on a "Paleolithic diet" ...until colonists, missionaries, Trading posts and western food goods, invaded their societies and they started switching to our "modern", western diet and the ailments it brings.