The premise of a Paleo lifestyle emphasizes the fact that the way you eat and how you move have consequences that are relevant to your health.
The paleo diet is actually one of the few diets that is based on science.
Contrary to what is often reported on social media, Paleo adherents are not trying to perfectly emulate the exact life of the ‘caveman’. Living Paleo is about embracing aspects of diet and lifestyle that are optimal for the modern human animal, viewed through the lens of evolution.
Over the past few years, there has been an increasing amount of studies linking Paleo-based diets with reducing many chronic conditions including reduced inflammation, blood pressure, lipid profile and glucose tolerance, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and weight loss,
Part of the caveman argument relies on the fact that much of the food Paleolithic man ate no longer exists making it impossible to REALLY eat a paleo diet. Nobody argues that the animals and plants in existence now are the same as they were 10,000 or more years ago. In fact, the majority of the plants and animals available now are not even the same as they were 50 years ago due to factory farming, hybridization, genetic modification and mono-crop agriculture. This is why the paleo lifestyle encourages finding the highest quality, most nutritious food you can. Grass-fed meats, wild-caught fish, organic fruits and vegetables. If these are unavailable or not within your budget, there are still ways to adhere to Paleo principles without letting perfection be the enemy of the good.
The Paleo diet is a lot of common sense:
You get to eat the same types of foods people used to eat about 100,000 years ago: meats, vegetables and fruits. No grains, no processed stuff, no sugar, no added sugar – the list goes on.
This more or less applies to cooking: you either eat it raw, grilled, baked or steamed, but never deep fried (where would hunter gatherers be able to process the oils and the tools necessary to deep-fry stuff anyway?). Your distant ancestors could easily eat food raw or cook it over the fire (grilled). They could steam it or wrap it in leaves and cook it as such; they could bake it by digging a hole and placing foods (wrapped in leaves) under the place where they’d lit a fire…but no deep frying. That’s agricultural.
Proponents of the Paleo diet emphasize that agriculture, which humans developed about 10,000 years ago, provided for quantity at the cost of quality: less nutrition, more calories and ‘a full belly’. Modern day humans are not that different from humans with approximately 90% of the evolution of the modern-day human occurring before the Neolithic era. It is clear we’ve evolved to work well with it, otherwise we would not be here to contemplate about its benefits. In fact, one need only look at hunter gathering societies existing today to see that this lifestyle leaves them tall, healthy, fit and lean.
The Paleo Diet works for women and men alike. Even though there is a widespread misconception that ‘women did the gathering’ and ‘men did the hunting’, there are societies where the hunting is done by both genders. Furthermore, meals were shared by men, women and children, young and old.
When following a Paleo diet, the majority of the foods you consume provide high nutritional benefits for a relatively low caloric intake. Sugar, for example, provides little to no nutritional benefits whilst providing a lot of calories, all of which are easily stored as fat. There is also no need to diet through the effort of weighing your food, calculating calories and macronutrients and scheduling meals. You simply do your research for some adequate food sources and periodically stock up (depending on spoilage etc.). You don’t need to worry about anything else, you eat when you’re hungry, as much as you want, day or night.
Order some Pete’s Paleo meals for when time is scarce, choices are limited or you want chef prepared meals ready when you are – no apron (or fire pit) required.
When eating real, whole, nutrient dense foods it is extremely challenging to eat more than you need or over-consume because most of the food you are eating provides the nutrition your body needs without overloading your calorie intake. Common-sense dictates that the Paleo Diet offers really great nutrition at adequate calorie levels, so you can eat to satiety and remain satiated longer. The Paleo Diet it clearly provides a rounded and adequate nutritional input, there’s indisputable science behind this.
The Paleo Diet is the optimal human diet.
This is not because ancient humans didn’t eat grains (research shows they might have in small quantities). It is not because the human genome has not evolved (we always have and will continue to evolve, however slowly), nor is it because the diet encourages excessive meat consumption (if anything, it encourages excessive vegetable consumption). It’s not simply because the Paleo Diet teaches your body to use stored fat for energy rather than sugar. Nor is it just because it’s very difficult to overeat on the Paleo Diet, which almost always leads to weight loss. It is also not because it can help controlling and managing health conditions, chronic illness and autoimmune disease.
The Paleo Diet is your best option for a number of reasons, the most important being something that has nothing to do with anthropology or physiology:
The Paleo diet is the optimal human diet because its premise is simple to understand, makes logical sense, removes the need for counting calories, and removes willpower from the equation. Similar to other lifestyle habits, the pretty good routine you follow is better and produces superior results than the perfect one you don’t. The Paleo Diet may be modified and adapted to suit your needs, goals and preferences. It works and is easy to follow.
Paleo enthusiasts tend to look at their Paleo lifestyle as more than simply a diet, they think in terms of paleo insights: What can we learn from the foods we evolved with? Paleo is incredibly useful as a critique of ultra-processed food which no longer relies on anything like the fresh and original food ingredients that even our recent ancestors ate in abundance. Paleo thinking leads to efforts to raise livestock in a way that’s somewhat akin to the system they evolved with. This means on pasture, for example and not force-feeding them grains and beans in barns. Likewise, it leads logically to more organic methods of growing, and to much wider ranges of foods that are eaten daily, as was common when people foraged for food.
In North America, we tend to think in terms of diets, calories and macronutrients, which are only partially responsible for what we eat. Paleo does not get caught in that trap. The Paleo diet encourages you to look a little wider and deeper and think of food systems. At this level, Paleo is not only the optimal diet for you, but a lifestyle and philosophy that betters your life and the lives of generations to come.
Eat paleo! You will survive and thrive. We have done so for 2.5 million years
All Pete’s Paleo Meals and products are ethically raised, organically grown and seasonally sourced. Order yours today.