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Wednesday, December 17, 2014

A Stone Age Diet - Considering Dr. Loren Cordain's Paleo-Diet

A Stone Age diet is the one and only diet that ideally fits our genetic makeup writes Loren Cordain, an evolutionary nutritionist at Colorado State University, in his book: The Paleo Diet: Lost Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You were Designed to Eat.  What does that mean? According to Cordain we should eat plenty of lean mean and fish, which I am all for. In fact, I would love to do as she does here. However, these days there would be fishing license requirements, considering costs and limits on catch, probably not as frugal today as it was then; and where would I hang my catch to dry/smoke? When most people can't even hang laundry in the yard.

Back to Cordain, the professor says that we really should not eat dairy products,beans or cereal grains because they are foods introduced into our diet after the invention of cooking and agriculture. Paleo-diet advocates like Cordain say that we we should stick to the foods our hunter-gatherer ancestors once ate, we can avoid the disease of civilization, such as heart disease, high  blood pressure, diabetes, cancer and even acne. Meat has played a starring role in the evolution of the human dies. And humans are still evolving. The discussion is that we should also pay attention to that evolution in context of life styles and exercise. In our evolution, we have adapted and meat is considered not so necessary by some and yet again, we hear from scholars such as Cordain that meat and even a good 'bit' of fat (as you could read in a previous post of mine ~ "Don't Fear the Fat???") and or marrow is good for us regarding brain cell growth, evolution and throughout life's bodily changes, meat has vital nutrition. What is agreed on by most is that being human isn't our taste for meat but our ability to adapt to many habitats and to create many healthy diets in any place. *Taken from the article "The Evolution of Diet" by Ann Gibbons: in National Geographic Sept. 2014
The problem with living the Paleo Diet is that not everyone is able to, or allowed to. There are so many restrictions that most people today in this 21st century can no longer and or are not allowed to adapt to his/her environment and to feed him/herself or family.  In many places, you can even raise chickens without a permit or half acre. What is happening to our evolution?  Are we becoming more and more reliant on machines/manufacturing, and fast food eateries. Perhaps, we could answer Yes. Thankfully, many people are rethinking their diet, their ability to raise food and even to hunt and fish for it. Would that mean a retreat to survival of the fittest? Only greedy people can answer that question.

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