No one would argue that actually living in conditions similar to a caveman’s would be beneficial for health, since lack of shelter, illness, injuries and predators led to relatively short life spans (approximately 30 years) for early man. What the cavemen ate, however, known today as the Paleolithic diet, was very beneficial for health. It was, in fact, exactly what the human body was designed to eat. The Paleolithic diet can provide anyone with a healthful eating plan, and holds special promise for diabetics. I have type 1 diabetes, and for several years I’ve been experiencing its benefits.
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What is the Paleolithic diet?
The Paleolithic diet categorizes food into two groups, in and out.
In foods are foods that humans ate prior to agriculture and animal husbandry (meat, fish, shellfish, eggs, tree nuts, vegetables, roots, fruit, berries, mushrooms, etc). Out, or Neolithic Era foods, are foods that resulted from agriculture or animal husbandry.
This sweeping cut removes a vast quantity of the foods we eat on a daily basis, most notably grains (including pasta and bread), dairy and refined sugars.
The question you are probably asking is why would someone eat this way?
The answer is multi-fold. Many who eat in this manner extol the virtue of “removing the toxins” from their highly processed diets. Others speak of truly “getting back to their roots” in a way unlike any other. The most fundamental reason to consider eating a Paleolithic diet has to due with evolution.
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Early man was limited in his ability to eat many of the items in the aforementioned out list because they are inedible in their raw state. Then a wondrous discovery took place – fire. And with fire, previously inedible foods became palatable. Then, about 10,000 years ago, the agricultural revolution took place. At this juncture, our current grain-based diet came to be. And with time came the modern staples such as flour, bread, noodles and pasta, but the human body was unprepared for such things.
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The human genome has been relatively stable for the past 40,000 years, requiring little variation in diet. The breakthrough of nutrition attainability that came with cooking and agriculture ran counter to our needs, but was so enjoyable that it rapidly replaced our “natural” bounty.
The argument from the Paleolithic camp centers on the rise in health issues, disease and disabilities that some attribute to the consumption of the formerly inedible food choices. If we simply ate like our ancestors, instead of subsisting on the grain-based diet of today, various ailments might be significantly reduced or non-existent in the population.
This idea turns the traditional food pyramid on its head, considering its foundation is carbohydrate rich foods. And there is increasing evidence that indicates the type of diet recommended in the USDA’s food pyramid is discordant with the type of diet with which humans evolved.
The Paleolithic Diet and Diabetes
Whether or not you are on board with the notion of the Paleolithic diet being superior to our modern Western diet, one point that cannot be dismissed is that the diet can have very positive implications for those with type 1 or type 2 diabetes.
June 24, 2010
