(**) The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain

The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain

• Paleolithic people ate no dairy food. Imagine how difficult it would be to milk a wild animal, even if you could somehow manage to catch one.


• Paleolithic people hardly ever ate cereal grains. For most ancient people, grains were considered starvation food at best.


• They didn’t salt their food


• The only refined sugar they ate was honey, when they were lucky enough to find it.


• Wild, lean animal protein intake was quite high by modern standards, while carbohydrate consumption was much lower [Atkins’ like].


• All carbs came from nonstarchy wild fruits and vegetables. The fiber intake was much higher than the typical modern diet.


• Major fats were healthful, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and Omega 3 fats. P10

Scientists found that the people who ate the most fruits and vegetables had the greatest bone mineral densities and the strongest bones… What about calcium?…The main factor that determines calcium loss is yet another kind of balance – acid/base balance. If you diet has high levels of acid, you’ll lose more calcium in your urine; if you eat more alkaline foods, you’ll retain more calcium… Diets rich in fruits and vegetables (these are alkaline foods) significantly reduce urinary calcium loss in a study of 459 men and women… Cereals, dairy products ,legumes, meat, fish, eggs produce net acid loads in the body. The worst offenders are hard cheeses, which are rich sources of calcium. Unless you get enough fruits and vegetables, eating these acid rich foods will actually promote bone loss. P16

Our ancestors spent much of their time outdoors, and they manufactured all the vitamin D they needed from the sun’s natural rays. Today, many of us get insufficient sunlight exposure to synthesize optimal levels of vitamin D… We would all do well to incorporate some of the StoneAge lifestyle and make sure to get some daily sunshine. P28

In Paleolithic times, starchy foods weren’t also salty… Sweet foods were never also fatty. And fatty foods were almost never also starchy. P34 Today we have potato chips, ice cream, and donuts. These are fake foods; not naturally occurring combinations of starch, fat, and sugar.

We can only tolerate a certain amount of protein at a time – about 200 to 300g per day. Too much protein makes us nauseated, causes diarrhea, and eventually can kill us. This is why our ancestors needed to eat fat along with lean meat, or they needed to supplement the lean meat with carbohydrate from plant foods. Early explorers and frontiersmen knew this too. They were painfully aware of the toxic effect of too much lean protein; they called the illness ‘rabbit starvation’… Rabbits and squirrels are 83% protein and 17% fat; a mule deer is 40% protein, 60% fat. If you ate nothing but squirrel, you would rapidly exceed the body’s protein ceiling. On the other hand, if you only had deer to eat, you’d be doing fine. You would not develop protein toxicity… This is why Paleolithic hunters risked their lives hunting larger animals. P40

One of the great dietary myths in the Western world is that whole grains and legumes are healthful. The truth is that these foods are marginal at best… They weren’t part of the Paleo diet. Almost all cereal grains were eaten whole or were so crudely milled that nearly the entire grain remained intact… which meant a more moderate rise in blood sugar level… Even whole wheat bread made from flour ground by steel roller mills does the same thing to your blood [as most processed non-whole grain flours] because the flour particle size is uniformly small – so it’s virtually no different from white flour. P46

During the digestive process, your body breaks down food into its basic components – carbs, fats, proteins – and turns them into energy it can use. To get the energy from the food, the body must spend some of its own energy… In order for the body to obtain energy from protein, it must give up 3 times more energy than it needs for either fat or carbs. What this means is that protein boosts your metabolism and causes you to lose weight more rapidly than the same caloric amounts of fat or carbohydrate… Studies show that a high protein increased total energy expenditures by 12% (220 calories) compared to a calorically matched high carb diet. Think about it. You don’t have to cut calories one bit. You can lose 20 to 30 pounds in a year with no change in caloric quantity of food you eat or even change your exercise habits. P64