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The basic idea of the Paleolithic Diet is to eat as similar to our ancestors as possible. Our genetic makeup is designed for those foods, so to be in the best state of health we should eat accordingly. By examining what humans ate more than 10,000 year ago we can create a dietary theory to follow today. This PaleoDiet is in stark contrast to the average American diet. The main differences are based on the intake of carbohydrates and fat as explained below. First, let us examine carbohydrates: The carbohydrate rich diets that we eat today would have been completely foreign to our ancestors. Think about where do most of our sugars and starches come from? The answer is grains. Foods like corn, rice, wheat, barley and oats are all types of grains. History indicates that the grain we eat today was domesticated from wild grasses. This occurred between 10,000 and 3,000 years ago in various parts of the world. Before this time here was no farming as we know it. People lived as hunter-gathers. In this lifestyle humans ate a lot of meat and whichever wild fruits and vegetable they could find. They did not have access to grain. And remember, our genetic makeup is 99.99% identical to those people. Because humans did not have ready access to grain until recently (in a genetic time frame), our bodies are not well adapted to grain based diets. In the Paleodiet, carbohydrates intake is minimized to represent this idea. The carbohydrates that would have been available were nuts and berries, fruits and vegetables. There were no processed sugars or plates of pasta. To eat a paleodiet, these must be decreased significantly. Next the fats: Hunter-gathers did not have domesticated livestock. The meat they ate was from what they could catch. There were no livestock in pens, hogs in confinement lots or turkeys in huge barns. Studies show that animals that run free and are not commercially raised have a different composition of fat. “Free range” animals have higher levels of ω-3 fatty acids and lower levels of ω-6. This mean that less of the human fat intake would have been of the ω-6 type and more of the ω-3. The average American diet has about 10 times as much ω-6 fatty acids as ω-3. This ratio would have been closer to 3 to 1, or maybe even 1 to 1, in the prehistoric period. Today, we can get more ω-3 fats by eating nuts, deep sea fish and free range meat. A lower ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is a key component of this diet. It is recognized by many researchers as a more healthy balance of fat intake. Protein: Anthropological research shows that the Patheolithic people at more meat than the average American. Meat is a good source of protein and fat. Increasing the amount of protein intake is an important aspect of the Paleodiet. Because of they way our bodies use protein, the actual source is not critical. But because fats are so often found mixed the protein, some thought must be given to selections. Free range meats, because of the more favorable fat profile are preferred over other sources.
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Og the Neanderthal by Richard Wilson
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