To put it most simply, the Paleo diet is whatever would have been eaten by people living anywhere from 10,000 to 2,500,000 years ago - generally known as Palaeolithic man (and woman of course!).
Of course there are a few issues when it comes to knowing exactly these 'cavemen' actually ate. Not least is the fact that they lived an awfully long time ago! Ten thousand years, the recent end of what is commonly termed the Paleolithic period, is still a long time ago - a lot has changed since then.
That tremendous time span makes it very hard to be sure what people did eat. Within recorded history, the last three or four thousand years or so, we can be pretty sure about people's diets, but past a few thousand years, into the paleolithic times, and we're really taking …show more content…
Just as man has evolved over the course of millions of years, so our food has changed. As soon as we started cultivating crops and domesticating animals, we changed our relationship with it, and changed the way that change takes place. This continues to the present day with the much dreaded GMOs of curse.
The Paleo Diet in modern times
So while we may not be able to say for certain exactly what the paleo diet was, we can at least agree on what we mean when we say we're 'going paleo' or following a paleo recipe. Well sort of agree!
Perhaps the simplest way to put it is to say that, on a paleo diet, we would eat nothing that Paleolithic man wouldn't have eaten, and we eat as much as possible of what they would have eaten.
So what does that mean when it comes to real, food on your dinner plate? At its heart, the paleo diet is: Plenty of vegetables, some meat, eggs and fish and some fruit, nuts and seeds, and that's about it. Another way of putting would be: No grains, no legumes, no potatoes, no sugars or sweeteners, no dairy, no preservatives, additives, processed, emulsified, or otherwise manufactured
Of course there are a few issues when it comes to knowing exactly these 'cavemen' actually ate. Not least is the fact that they lived an awfully long time ago! Ten thousand years, the recent end of what is commonly termed the Paleolithic period, is still a long time ago - a lot has changed since then.
That tremendous time span makes it very hard to be sure what people did eat. Within recorded history, the last three or four thousand years or so, we can be pretty sure about people's diets, but past a few thousand years, into the paleolithic times, and we're really taking …show more content…
Just as man has evolved over the course of millions of years, so our food has changed. As soon as we started cultivating crops and domesticating animals, we changed our relationship with it, and changed the way that change takes place. This continues to the present day with the much dreaded GMOs of curse.
The Paleo Diet in modern times
So while we may not be able to say for certain exactly what the paleo diet was, we can at least agree on what we mean when we say we're 'going paleo' or following a paleo recipe. Well sort of agree!
Perhaps the simplest way to put it is to say that, on a paleo diet, we would eat nothing that Paleolithic man wouldn't have eaten, and we eat as much as possible of what they would have eaten.
So what does that mean when it comes to real, food on your dinner plate? At its heart, the paleo diet is: Plenty of vegetables, some meat, eggs and fish and some fruit, nuts and seeds, and that's about it. Another way of putting would be: No grains, no legumes, no potatoes, no sugars or sweeteners, no dairy, no preservatives, additives, processed, emulsified, or otherwise manufactured