The Paleolithic Diet

My brother-in-law recently reminded me about the Paleolithic Diet -- or the diet of humans as hunter/gatherers. This has interesting parallels with the idea of pasture-raised animals. Essentially, grass-fed beef and lamb, pastured poultry and pig (and wild fish) all raise and treat animals the way they have been raised and treated since man learned agriculture, but before man industrialized it. Therefore, in a pasture system, the animals are living as they were meant to live -- in as close to the "wild" as these animals would ever get. Of course the idea here is that when we started industrializing farming, when we moved the cows inside to pack more of them into an industrialized system, or stuffed our chickens in cages in a building, we did more than make it easier for us to raise the animals cheaply and uniformly -- we also made significant changes to their lifestyle and diet. These changes meant that the animals gained weight too quickly, ate food their bodies were never designed to process, and created density problems that promoted the spread of disease -- disease and health of the animal being the main issue as it requires counter-action of antibiotics, hormones, etc. Treatment of the animal is also a concern to many but that's a separate issue.

There are those who believe we should look back even further, to the Paleolithic age, to before man began cooking food. Cooking opened up huge possibilities -- food that was inedible became edible. All you have to do is think about what you wouldn't (or even more accurately, what you couldn't) eat raw -- beans, for example, grains, and all sorts of random things. I'm looking at a plantain in my kitchen right now. You can't eat plantains raw -- or at least I wouldn't. Beans are toxic raw. Grains are inedible raw. Believers of this diet simply think that humans are not engineered to process these foods properly (and that other risks exist such as the presence of toxins as cooking does not always fully remove toxins in foods that are inedible raw). Followers of this diet also want us to take a step back to before we started using certain minerals (like salt) and stimulants (like coffee or tea). I think this logic is highly questionable, but what I find most interesting is the parallel to the grass-fed/pasture-raised idea. The Paleolithic diet encourages the eating of meat -- firmly believing that man is a solid omnivore -- but would certainly prohibit the eating animals that live in environments and are fed foods that differ from the Paleolithic times. If you buy true grass fed beef or pastured chickens, for instance, you're eating the way someone would have eaten a cow or chicken 15,000 years ago.

There is one MAJOR difference of course and that comes back to cooking. We don't really eat raw animal flesh anymore. It is possible and if the meat is fresh and local it is probably safe, but it would repulse your modern pallet. Therefore, like with all their foods, the Paleolithic diet has no problem with cooking so long as you're cooking something that you could have eaten raw -- something that your cousin 15,000 years ago might have eaten raw. Part of the appeal to me is that the diet looks to the way tribal people still live today. Many of the tribal people around the world today are amongst the healthiest alive -- with essentially no heart disease, no cancer, pretty high live-expectancy considering the lack of modern medicine, no diabetes, and so forth. It is popular for educated Americans, from my experience, to look to the Japanese as the longest living industrialized people on earth, and try to increase fish intake, fermented soy, etc. believing that their diet must play a large role in this phenomenon. But few look to tribal people who are really healthier. I am confident that if these tribal people could eat what they eat and live where they live, but be afforded non-invasive modern medicine, they would live substantially longer than the longest living Japanese. It is an interesting thought and one that is given surprisingly little attention amongst people obsessed with looking young late in life and extending life as much as possible.

One last thought is the interesting difference on dairy. Those who believe in the pasture-raising of animals would often agree that dairy is good for humans, but that the industrialization of dairy is what's caused problems. Therefore, humans should eat RAW dairy -- or milk, cheese, etc. in unpasteurized forms. I'm going to discuss this more in the future, including my recent attempts (and failures) to get these products in Chicago.

Here's a summary of the "essentials" of the Paleolithic Diet: (you can also learn more here)

Don't Eat: Grains, Beans (including string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas and peas), Potatoes, Dairy products, Sugar, Salt.

Eat: Meat, chicken and fish, Eggs, Fruit, Berries, Vegetables (but not potatoes or others that require cooking), Nuts (but not peanuts or cashew)

Try to increase your intake of: root vegetable, organ meats (liver and kidneys)