The concept behind the Paleo diet is a simple one: let’s eat the way our ancestors did. Eat meat, fruit and veg that hunter-gatherers had easy access to, and avoid dairy, grain and processed foods that are modern inventions.
Put simply – eat natural, it’s the way our bodies are designed. Instinctively, it makes a lot of sense. And it seems to work. But there’s a growing resistance to the diet from people who say the basic claim is nonsense.
So who’s right, and does it really matter?
Anna Magee, writing for The Telegraph, only tried the diet as research for her writing. But she is still on it 3 years later. “I was back at the gym after years of desperate tiredness, had lost my afternoon crisp cravings, was sleeping better and thinking more clearly.”
Diane Sanfilippo, a blogger for Balanced Bites, believes women are embracing the diet because it gives them permission to eat fat without getting fat. The higher fat content means you are likely to be satisfied with smaller portions. The protein sustains them longer than carbohydrates, so they are less likely to be hungry between meals. And they’re not getting blood sugar spikes and crashes, so their calorie intake goes down, and they lose weight.
Simple, logical, fresh foods, sustainable results, what’s not to like?
Well, some people say the premise is based on a fantasy that all cavemen were fit and strong and lived idyllic lives. They also point out that while our eating habits have changed, so have our lives, even more drastically. We have to make appropriate choices to our own lifestyle, not that of our ancestors. Why eat like a caveman, if you don’t live like one? Obviously not in the sense of actually living in a cave, but in terms of the activity involved in hunting wild animals, the miles they would have walked each day to collect fruits and water. They certainly didn’t spend their days curled up on a sofa with the latest box set!
The idea that there was a single healthy diet regime that hunter-gatherers followed is shown to be flawed by the fact that modern tribes around the world have massively variable diets according to their location and local resources. Meat content varies from less than 10% to nearly 90%.
Then there’s the question of evolution. Paleo advocates claim humans haven’t evolved enough in the 10,000 years since agriculture began to adapt to our new foods. But this is to misunderstand evolution. Organisms that survive are ones that are already adapted to deal with different conditions. And we can point to several examples of human evolution that have occurred within the last 10,000 years. Blue eyes and malaria resistance, even lactose tolerance. The gene that allowed us to break down lactose used to shut down after infancy, but now remains turned on for life. Lactose intolerance exists in the very small percentage of people for whom this mutation hasn’t happened.
Marlene Zuk, evolutionary biologist from the University of California, writes that “‘Paleofantasies’ call to mind a time when everything about us—body, mind, and behavior—was in sync with the environment…but no such time existed.”
Does it matter that the logic is flawed if people see the kind of results that Anna Magee did in her trial? After all, it encourages eating fresh foods over processed, and surely the reasoning is only a form of motivation. Whatever works, right?
Anna Magee concedes that it’s a difficult diet to stick to and can be difficult to deal with in restaurants: “I succumb to the odd chickpea curry, eat porridge made with water and salt every few days, the occasional chip off my partner’s plate and anything I am served at dinner parties. Otherwise I couldn’t keep paleo going.”
Ferris Jabr in Scientific American concludes that “the Paleo diet is founded more on privilege than on logic. Hunter–gatherers in the Paleolithic hunted and gathered because they had to. Paleo dieters attempt to eat like hunter–gatherers because they want to.”
And there’s nothing wrong with that. If it appeals to you, and helps you achieve your goals, then we can help you by preparing the meals for you. That might seem a step further removed from the caveman lifestyle, but here’s how we look at it – while we worry about your stomach, you have more time to go out hunting and gathering your heart’s desires.
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Paleo – Food Fact or Fallacy? | Total Diet Food - London's Fresh and Personalised Diet Delivery Service
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