The paleolithic diet, also known as caveman diet or the paleo diet, is a fad diet[1] based on the food humans' early ancestors might probably have eaten, like berries, nuts and lean meat.
The diet is based on several premises. Proponents of the diet posit that during the Paleolithic age -- a period continuing around 2.5 million years that finished about 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture and domestication of animals -- people evolved nutritional needs particular to the foods available at that time, and that the nutritional demands of modern individuals stay best adapted to the diet of their Paleolithic ancestors. Proponents claim that human metabolism has not been able to adapt fast enough to manage a lot of the foods which have become available since the arrival of agriculture. Consequently, modern humans are said to be maladapted to eating foods like grain, legumes, and dairy product, and in particular the high-calorie processed foods that are a staple of most modern diets. Proponents claim that modern individuals' inability to properly metabolize these relatively new kinds of food has caused modern-day issues including obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. They assert that followers of the Paleolithic diet may appreciate a longer, healthier, more energetic life.
Critics of the Paleolithic diet have pointed out quite a few defects with its fundamental logic, for example, fact that there's ample evidence that paleolithic humans did in fact eat grains and legumes,[2] that humans are far more nutritionally adaptable than previously believed, that the theory that Paleolithic individuals were genetically adapted to specific local diets remains to be established, that the Paleolithic period was exceptionally long and saw a variety of types of human settlement and subsistence in a wide selection of changing nutritional landscapes, and that currently very little is known for certain about what Paleolithic individuals ate.
The diet is based on several premises. Proponents of the diet posit that during the Paleolithic age -- a period continuing around 2.5 million years that finished about 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture and domestication of animals -- people evolved nutritional needs particular to the foods available at that time, and that the nutritional demands of modern individuals stay best adapted to the diet of their Paleolithic ancestors. Proponents claim that human metabolism has not been able to adapt fast enough to manage a lot of the foods which have become available since the arrival of agriculture. Consequently, modern humans are said to be maladapted to eating foods like grain, legumes, and dairy product, and in particular the high-calorie processed foods that are a staple of most modern diets. Proponents claim that modern individuals' inability to properly metabolize these relatively new kinds of food has caused modern-day issues including obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. They assert that followers of the Paleolithic diet may appreciate a longer, healthier, more energetic life.
Critics of the Paleolithic diet have pointed out quite a few defects with its fundamental logic, for example, fact that there's ample evidence that paleolithic humans did in fact eat grains and legumes,[2] that humans are far more nutritionally adaptable than previously believed, that the theory that Paleolithic individuals were genetically adapted to specific local diets remains to be established, that the Paleolithic period was exceptionally long and saw a variety of types of human settlement and subsistence in a wide selection of changing nutritional landscapes, and that currently very little is known for certain about what Paleolithic individuals ate.