The Palaeolithic Diet

[poliphilo]

Ailz talked to her doctor about her low-carb diet. He was all in favour. He thinks we should eat the way our hunter-gatherer ancestors did- lots of green stuff, nuts and fruit in season, meat when and if- because that's the sort of diet our bodies are designed for.

Comments

[wolfshift.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of good sense in the Paleo diet and others based on similar principles. I've been using the Primal diet as my basic template for a couple years now and it has definitely improved my health. I do make a few exceptions, though. Some people get very ferociously fundamentalist about these diets, and I'm not convinced that's healthy mentally.

There are lots of good Paleo and Primal blogs around, with good recipes to try.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think it's foolish to get fundamentalist about anything.

Thanks for the hint. I'll have a look at some of those blogs.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

In the winter, I just crave carbohydrate, which is not good, but I've been eating more fruit and veg recently and I do feel better on it.

I do get fed up with those people who try to say that we should be eating huge hunks of steak and no fruit (one version of the low carb diet). They've got hung up on the macho myth of Man the Hunter and obviously haven't a clue what real hunter gatherers eat.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

This diet includes plenty of fruit and veg. One of the things you have to do is balance one food type with another- so if you eat an apple you also eat a piece of cheese.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I'm kinda-sorta eating that way now, with some tofu thrown in and the occasional small batch of brown barley or brown rice: lots of vegetables and fruits, albeit not necessarily the ones in season; lots of fish and poultry; the occasional beef and pork. Some yogurt. It has been working very well for me -- no cravings, no feeling of being hungry, and I've dropped a couple stone.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ailz is following this diet with the aim of getting her diabetes under control. It's working- and she also finds- as a very welcome side effect- that she's losing weight.

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

I just finished a book that talks about how much humans have evolved since paleolithic times, largely as a result of agriculture. I don't really buy into the notion that our bodies are "designed" for an environment that existed hundreds of thousands of years ago. Adult humans couldn't digest animal milk back in those days, for example, but now most of us (definitely those of northern European descent) can, because we have evolved to be able to do so. But the paleo diet treats dairy as off-limits.

There are some good aspects of the paleo diet, however, like eating a lot more greens and fewer processed carbs. The less processed anything is, the better.

A lot of people say they feel better when they drastically reduce carbs. I end up miserable. I mostly eat whole grains, but I do need them or I end up with headaches and lightheadedness and I'm hungry within about 30 minutes of eating. :-(

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

When I wrote the heading "The Palaeolithic Diet" I was unaware that such a thing actually existed. I thought it was just a clever wheeze of our doctor's.

Ailz isn't eschewing dairy. The books she's been reading are fine with milk and cream and butter. The diet she's on is low carb rather than no carbs at all. She eats a bit of bread, but has largely cut out potatoes and rice and cereals.

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

Heh, yup, there's an actual Paleo diet and while most of its principles are pretty sound, I get annoyed when people use evolution to claim that we are "designed" for this or that.

But it sounds like Ailz's diet is really just more commonsense. Hope it works out for her!

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

As one person pointed out, there's been a lot of evolution since that period. It really only takes a few generations to complete a genetic sweep, imparting a gene on every member of our species in breeding range.

The reason "Paleo diets" work so well is that they generally lower your carbohydrate intake. However, I'd be skeptical of anyone who insisted on greatly reduced meat intake based on "how we're designed". Pigs (in Europe and China) along with sheep, cows and goats (almost everywhere) were kind of critical domesticates because the turned unfarmable land into viable grazing grounds. That's been true for far too long not to have the relevant genes sweep the population.