Tuesday, June 10, 2014

The "Paleo Diet" Makes No Sense

We have all probably heard of someone who is on the "Paleo Diet".

They definitely got SOMETHING right, and that is that WHOLE FOODS are the way to go, BUT, there are many things that bother me a quite a bit...

Let's look at their food pyramid first:



First of all, they put MEAT (all kinds) at the base of their food pyramid. And I ask... REALLY?

Even in the aboriginal tribes that exist today, they HARDLY eat meat as a staple of their diets.
Meat is an unreliable source or calories. They can get it only when they go hunting and have good luck finding and catching something..

Most tribes today thrive on a diet based on grains or tubers. Corn, potatoes, rice, etc.

So, if even organized tribes can only get meat on occasion, what do you think would be left for the paleolithic man? I seriously doubt that he could get any kind of meat very often.
He probably relied more on fruits and tubers to get his energy from, and supplemented with insects (such as worms) or eggs, when he could find them.

Getting back to their allowed foods, and I saw a controversy regarding this, depending on the author or "guru" promoting this kind of diet, they oftentimes limit their sweet fruit intake (they're missing out!) and focus only on tart fruits, like berries.
Well, I don't understand the science behind this, since sweet fruit was, is and always will be a natural food for us, and I think that there is a reason why our bodies always look for the sweet taste. Our tongue has taste buds for sweetness and we even have an enzyme in our saliva to predigest carbohydrates. We are adapted to eat all kinds of fruit.

Another thing that bothers me is that they tend to allow oils as well. Now you tell me, how are oils natural? They're all processed and are 100% fat with 0 nutritional value.
How would the caveman get oils? Maybe he would eat some nuts and seeds when in season, but never PURE oil!

Also, most if not all the meat that they eat come from animals that didn't exist back in time, and that already makes it an unnatural diet.

Finally, I think they don't understand that our bodies are made to run on carbohydrates. There is science behind this, but anyone should also be able to come to that conclusion just by using some common sense.

They argue that our brain is composed of mostly fat. That is true, but so what? Our muscles are made mainly of protein, yet they use a big deal of glycogen as energy.

It absolutely makes no sense that most of our calories back in the day came from fat instead of carbohydrates.

Again, meat (protein and fat) was an occasional food, and the caveman very likely relied on fruits (when in season) and tubers (throughout the year) as his daily energy source.





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