Next to the gluten free diet, the Paleo Diet is another hugely popular diet right now. Many people will tell you that can help you with weight loss, cravings, sleep and even allergies. So again, this seems pretty good, right? Well, let's find out. First, what is the Paleo Diet anyway? The idea behind the Paleo Diet is to eat the same foods our hunter gatherer ancestors supposedly ate.
So fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood, and nuts. What you want to avoid are processed foods, dairy products, potatoes, and grains. If a caveman couldn't eat it, neither can you. Advocates of this diet will argue that the average human back then was tall, muscular, agile, athletic and incredibly versatile, whereas the average human now is overweight, out of shape, stressed out and unhappy. So we should go back to our roots and bring back the caveman diet. The problem with this though, is that we now know from excavations and bone analysis People back then were nearly as tall and healthy as pelea advocates make them out to be.
They also didn't have all the abundance of food we have today. So it was basically impossible to become overweight for them. But these are details that don't really matter when it comes to dieting because the Paleo Diet could still be healthy, even if in theory, it doesn't really make sense. And in fact, many of the aspects of paleo dieting are very healthy. Eating lean meats and seafood will provide you with a lot of protein which is very important to build muscle and maintain muscle mass, as you know now, it also excludes processed meats, which can pose a health risk when consumed in great quantities. It includes a lot of veggies and fruits, which are high in vitamins and generally nutritious and excludes basically any type of candy and processed sugars, which usually have little nutritional value.
And it also excludes trans fats, which generally bad for your heart and overall health, like I explained before. So in these aspects, paleo is a pretty good diet, there's just one problem. It also forbids quite a few foods that offer great health benefits. For example, whole grains are an excellent source of quality carbohydrates that have been shown to reduce inflammation in the body and decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease. And dairy products provide calcium protein and vitamin D. Of course, some people are lactose intolerant, but for those that do find with dairy, it's a highly nutritious food. Also lagoons are a good source of plant based protein and have been shown to decrease total and LDL cholesterol levels.
But all of these you couldn't eat as a true Paleo Diet eater. Now often the argument for this is that whole grains damaged the intestines and lagoons contain entry nutrients that interfere with nutrient absorption. My problem with these claims is However, there's little scientific evidence to back them up and that most of these problems aren't really problems. Anti nutrients and lagoons for example, aren't dangerous and normal intake levels. As part of a properly balanced diet, and can also be easily reduced by cooking them. So what's the bottom line on paleo?
The foods that are recommended in the diet are pretty healthy, as long as you stick to lean and unprocessed meat. So there's nothing wrong with that. The problem comes from foods that should be avoided according to the diet, especially the whole grains, which are one of the best sources of quality carbs. Trying to get your carbs solely through foods will be difficult and it's not recommended. So if you really want to follow the Paleo diet, I suggest you go with a less drastic approach and still include some of the non paleo foods when you need them.