The Paleo Diet - Loren Cordain [6]
Many modern foods are at odds with our genetic makeup—which, as we’ll discuss in the book, is basically the same as that of our Paleolithic ancestors—and this is the cause of many of our modern diseases. By restoring the food types that we are genetically programmed to eat, we can not only lose weight, but also restore our health and well-being.
I have studied diet and health for the past three decades and have devoted the last twenty years to studying the Paleo Diet concept. I have been fortunate enough to work with Dr. Eaton to refine this groundbreaking idea and explore a wealth of new evidence. Together with many of the world’s top nutritional scientists and anthropologists, I have been able to determine the dietary practices of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Understanding what they ate is essential for understanding what we should eat today to improve our health and promote weight loss. Our research has been published in the top nutritional journals in the world.
It’s all here for you in this book—all the dietary knowledge and wisdom that my research team and I have gleaned from our distant ancestors who lived in the days before agriculture. Part One explains what our Paleolithic ancestors ate, the basics of the Paleo Diet, and how civilization has made us stray from our original diet, bringing us ill health and obesity. Part Two shows how you can lose weight and how much you can lose, and also how the Paleo Diet can prevent and heal disease. Part Three spells out everything you need to know to follow the Paleo Diet—including meal plans for the three levels of the diet and more than 100 delicious Paleo recipes. That’s the best part of the Paleo Diet—you’ll eat well, feel great, and lose weight! The book ends with a complete list of scientific references that back up all of this information.
How Our Healthy Way of Life Went Wrong
The Agricultural Revolution began 10,000 years ago—just a drop in the bucket compared to the 2.5 million years that human beings have lived on Earth. Until that time—just 333 generations ago—everyone on the planet ate lean meats, fresh fruits, and vegetables. For most of us, it’s been fewer than 200 generations since our ancestors abandoned the old lifestyle and turned to agriculture. If you happen to be an Eskimo or a Native American, it’s been barely four to six generations. Except for perhaps a half-dozen tiny tribes in South America and a few on the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, pure hunter-gatherers have vanished from the face of the Earth. When these few remaining tribes become Westernized during the next decade or so, this ancient way of life—which allowed our species to thrive, grow, and mature—will come to an end.
This loss of humanity’s original way of life matters a great deal. Why? Look at us. We’re a mess. We eat too much, we eat the wrong foods, and we’re fat. Incredibly, more Americans are overweight than aren’t: 68 percent of all American men over age twenty-five, and 64 percent of women over age twenty-five are either overweight or obese. And it’s killing us. The leading cause of death in the United States—responsible for 35 percent of all deaths or 1 of every 2.8 deaths—is heart and blood vessel disease. Seventy-three million Americans have high blood pressure; 34 million have high cholesterol levels, and 17 million have type 2 diabetes. It’s not a pretty picture.
Most people don’t realize just how healthy our Paleolithic ancestors were. They were lean, fit, and generally free from heart disease and the other ailments that plague Western countries. Yet many people assume that Stone Age people had it rough, that their lives were “poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” as Thomas Hobbes wrote in The Leviathan.
But the historical and anthropological record simply does not support this line of reasoning. Almost without exception, descriptions of hunter-gatherers by early European explorers and adventurers showed these people to be healthy,