Pros And Cons Of Paleo Diet

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Is Paleo Diet the Answer?
Healthy eating is on the lips of everybody, and with more people being health conscious, more diet plans pop up on the internet, including military diet, vegetarian eating habits, etc. And now, professionals and researchers are not looking for new ways, but going back to the Paleolithic era over 10,000 years ago by following the diet of our ancestors, in which no gluten, sugar, dairy products and processed food can be found. In the following paragraphs, I am going to illustrate how paleo diet answers to your call to being healthy as it can help us solve health problems and give us all the nutrients we need by eliminating useless toxins in our bodies. First of all, Paleo diet should be adopted as it can help alleviate health problems. According to the Hong Kong Centre of Health Protection, it is revealed that 39.0% of the population aged 18 - 64 were classified as overweight or obese (BMI ≥ 23.0) and there are around 1.3 million children suffering from allergies in Hong Kong. Paleo diet advocates suggest that these health issues are result of the food consumption model we follow nowadays. According to Cordain, L (2012), the founder of Paleo diet, modern diet has evolved significantly, and it is way ahead of the evolution in the human body. Without the right enzyme in our digestive system, we are not able to digest many new foods including grains and gluten (Chenoweth, H., 2014). The inability to digest and absorb the food molecules results in health problems such as cellular inflammation and a higher chance of having chronic diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure (“PALEO DIET FOODS, LLC,” 2015). It is predicted that the human body will evolve and the health issues brought by following nowadays’ diet will be slowly mitigated (Chenoweth, H., 2014). However, in the meantime, while our guts are not fully developed to digest contemporary food, paleo diet is highly recommended. In addition to resolving health problems, Paleo diet also brings upon a number of health benefits. Compared to today’s diet, the Paleolithic humans are taking in more soluble fiber, omega-3 fatty acids, unsaturated fat, antioxidant vitamins, and much less saturated fat and sodium (Weintraub, L., 2015). Despite the food groups that are set unavailable in the diet, the primal dieters end up getting more nutrients and healthy carbs (Laura Reiley Tampa, B. T., 2013). And without getting unnatural food like alcohol and chocolate brownies, the body can get what it really needs, like poultry protein and calcium (Tong, A., 2010). By following what the cavemen’s diet, we detoxify our body while nourishing ourselves with healthy food, which after all improve our skin, boost energy level and make us feel overall better (Weintraub, L., 2015). Some argue that the primal diet is unrealistic (“The pros and cons of the popular paleo diet”, 2013).
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After all, it has been more than 100 000 years, the lifestyle in those days are no longer applicable in today’s setting. There are a whole list of food delimited in Paleo diet, including all refined sugars, dairy products, cereal grains, legumes, starchy vegetables, salty meat, pickled food and processed food. This kind of harsh diet is hard to follow. Not only is consuming 100% organic food impractical, it is hardly possible for Paleo dieters to dine out with that much restrictions in their food list. The diet is too strict and it is extremely difficult to sustain it. Even researchers are unable to find a single person who is able to fully follow this harsh diet for over one year in today’s society (“Paleo diet has pros and cons”, 2015), the effectiveness and feasibility of going paleo is therefore questioned. Indeed, following full paleo diets for a long time is hard, yet, there are number of ways to help us stick to the rationale of the cavemen diet. First, dieters do not need to go 100% paleo for decades to see the results. There can be occasional cheat meals, like consuming dairy products once a month or have a bit of a baked potato from time to time. This kind of relaxation helps to strengthen to willpower of the dieters, making paleo diet more practically (Kedem, L., 2013). It is also possible that we can adjust our

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