The Paleo Diet

Today's list of fad diets runs from the fantastic to the downright stupid, but each has something that makes them at least semi-effective or people wouldn't promote them. One of the more interesting diets - one that has its own shortcomings, unfortunately - is the Paleo Diet.

The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain, Ph. D - (Wiley Press, 2002) maintains that all you need to do is eat the same diet that your primitive Paleolithic ancestors ate to be healthy.

His credentials are considerable: he is a professor at the Colorado State University for Health and Exercise Sciences, a member of the American Society for Clinical Nutrition, a Member of the American Heart Association and travels widely to give lectures.

Unlike many fad diets, this one has more than a little basis in fact. His premise is that the human body has evolved over millions of years to eat certain foods. These foods do not damage the body, make us fat or cause long term health problems. The reason why; the body has had almost 250 million years to adapt to a hunter-gatherer diet. Compare that to the several thousand years eating a grain based diet and you can see how this hypothesis makes sense.

But the book goes on to more than just guess, it also gives examples of how humans began to suffer modern eating-related health problems shortly after changing from hunter-gatherers to agriculturally based societies.

People got shorter, weaker and suffered from malnutrition at much higher rates than their more primitive ancestors. A diet based on grains did not give them the same nutritional benefits that one based on meat and wild fruits did.

Today, the same is true. Eating a diet of pure carbohydrates, fats and very few proteins will produce a fat, unhealthy person in short order unless they work very hard to burn the calories.

Diets low in protein also lead to developmental problems for children since protein is an essential building block for muscles and brain tissue. Based on fossil records beriberi, scurvy, pellagra, vitamin A and zinc deficiencies also began to appear more frequently after agricultural societies began to form.

The book goes further to list foods that your ancestors likely ate. These include mostly meat, fruits and vegetables. Conspicuously absent from the list are all grains, dairy products, legumes and most underground vegetables like potatoes - i.e. the things that make up two thirds of a normal western diet.

It also nixes salt and processed foods in general - also common sense for the healthy minded of today.

Most interesting is the way it breaks down the foods you should eat by protein content. For example, chicken breast and turkey breasts - although similar - have very different percentages of pure protein. Turkey is considered one of the best protein sources with 94% protein while the chicken breast only has 63% protein - food for thought for those trying to build muscle mass and eat low fat, high protein entrees.

Another difference when compared to standard low carb diets is the allowance for more fats - especially the Omega 3 and 6 enriched types.

Dr. Loren recommends eating foods that will balance the Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids whereas most diets just recommend more Omegas 3s.

He also likes an alkaline balanced diet over an acid or a neutral PH diet since this diet protects your kidneys, slows bone loss and reduces the risk of high blood pressure.

Meats, dairy, salts, legumes and grains will produce an acidic effect on the body, while fruits and vegetables tend to produce an alkaline effect - fats are neutral - so the proper balance is necessary. Interestingly, he is one of the few nutritionists to point this out.

He's particularly hard on grains and their negative effects on the body: high blood glucose in particular. This effect has been proven to cause a number of health ailments including - in some people - diabetes.

One great thing about the book is that he acknowledges the hardship of eating right and gives a whole section over to recipes and strategies to eat right. This is particularly useful since his regime is fairly diet restrictive.

As in most fad diet books, he gives exercise only a few pages towards the back. This is sad since exercise is necessary for long term fat loss, but at least he gives it the right emphasis in terms of importance. Hunter-gatherers certainly worked their butts off to get the food they needed from their environment and he maintains regular exercise is critical to keeping the fat off.

Not only does he personally make a good case for the Paleo diet, but he backs it up with the work of experts in all the relevant fields - unlike other fad diets where it's he said, she said or the "expert opinion" of some movie star's personal trainer.

What he does not cover is the effect of a person's genetics on body exercise regimes and diet, nor does he really address the difficulty of eating these very few foods. Also, he seems to forget our ancestors had a very low life expectancy - 35 years - that wouldn't allow many of the diet related illnesses we suffer from today to fully manifest themselves.

People who have the money to buy these items and the willpower to stick to his diet will probably achieve good results, but a stronger exercise program would certainly be helpful - especially for those interested in not just burning fat, but also looking better.

That said, it's a really interesting book and well worth the read. Even if you don't follow his diet 100%, you can still benefit greatly and learn a lot about how we used to survive. He makes a convincing case and many other low carb diets contain similar recommendations - his is just more comprehensive and believable.

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