Paleo eating and does it all make sense?

The paleo diet, caveman diet, clean eating, I have heard it called lots of things. So is this really the best food lifestyle to keep you healthy? Notice I did not say diet. In our modern vernacular diet has generally come to mean temporary, so I'll skip that can call it a food lifestyle. In the strictest terms the paleo diet can be summed by saying, if cavemen didn't eat it you shouldn't eat it. Meaning no sugar, no legumes, no farmed grains, no dairy (these are the main ones). The idea is that millions of years of evolution have predisposed our bodies/genetics to efficiently process and use certain foods. Since farming and other modern practices of food production have only been around thousands of years, most of these things should not be consumed. Our bodies do not like these foods as much.

Certainly this thought process is logical, but there are some flaws in it. When farming of plants and domesticates animals began is somewhat questionable, but most estimates place it around 20,000 years ago. Modern humans (homo sapiens) evolved around 250,000 years ago (not millions like many paleo proponents mention). So farming has existed for around 10% of our species existence (since all of these historical numbers age just reasonable estimates). Personally I find it difficult to believe that 1,000 generations of humans (farming humans) failed to produce any adaptations to changing dietary availability. Yes, 230,00 years of evolution trumps 20,000 years but also remember the 20,000 are the most recent changes. There is a good amount of conjecture on both sides of the argument to weather or not this food lifestyle is preferable for health. The studies are out there, Google works, so I will be lazy and not post them (plus there are way too many).

The second flaw in this argument comes from modern transportation. Most experts agree modern humans first showed up in Africa. So if we take into account the time and speed at which these people migrated to various part of the earth, I am guessing most early humans weren't eating asparagus and buffalo (things included in paleo). So if we adapted to certain foods how did each regionalized group of humans (African, Native American, Australian) develop the genes to use foods from other places? There were no planes or trains to get fresh foods from one place to another. Even with the development of larger boats, most foods from other places were dried or salted to preserve them first (even this was only the past 5,000 years).

There are also several variations of what people call paleo, some of which are more restrictive and many which include other food groups based on their reported benefits. Again, these are out there for you to find, and too many to list.

Where does this leave us, is this paleo thing good or not? Since this is my blog, I do what I want and I will tell you what I believe. The paleo food lifestyle is a very good thing, but not for the reasons commonly stated (mainly a genetic predisposition to use certain foods). I try to keep my food consumption to what I call pre-technology. Mainly before, we as humans, figured out how to develop chemical pesticides, refined sugars, processed dairy, factory farming techniques, growth hormones, antibiotics, etc... These are the things, in my opinion that led to many of our modern health problems. So stick with local and seasonal fruits and veggies (when you can), grass fed/free range meats, raw milk and dairy and nuts and seeds. If these things are the base and majority of your food consumption then you should end up with a long healthy life (if you are not hit by a bus).