What is Paleo? 

About Paleo 

In the past few years, the word Paleo has become synonymous with a diet and lifestyle that many people have commenced to enhance their overall health, either by improving their body composition or as a way to fight and prevent disease. The Paleolithic (UK: Palaeolithic) era, when stone tools were used in hunting and gathering societies, covered more than 2.5 million years and ended around 20,000 years ago.

The Paleo Diet 

The Paleo diet is a modern interpretation of what our ancestors ate as hunter-gatherers, a way to reduce the impact of man-made and cultivated foods introduced into the human food chain only relatively recently. Although our world has altered radically in the last 10,000 years, the human genome has hardly changed since then. One key driving theory behind the Paleo diet is that modern human’s digestive systems are not designed to handle the refined sugars, grains, legumes, and dairy products that are now commonplace in the Western diet.[1][2]

The Paleo diet is a modern interpretation of what our ancestors ate as hunter-gatherers, a way to reduce the impact of man-made and cultivated foods introduced into the human food chain only relatively recently. 

The Paleo Diet Template

What to Eat and What to Avoid:

The basics of the Paleo diet consist of eating the following:-

• Meats
• Seafood
• Eggs
• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Nuts
• Seeds

and avoiding the consumption of:

• Grains (wheat, oats, barley, rye, rice, etc)
• Dairy and dairy products (including milk, yoghurt, cheese, etc)
• Excess salt, processed, artificial foods, colours and preservatives
• Industrialised seed oils and fats (trans-fats, margarine)
• Alcohol
• Added sugar and artificial sweeteners

Paleo from A to Z

For more details on Paleo and the Paleo lifestyle check out the book Paleo from A to Z - learn more at www.paleofromatoz.com

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References:

[1] Cordain L, Eaton SB, Sebastian A, Mann N, Lindeberg S, Watkins BA, et al. "Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century." Am J Clin Nutr. 2005
[2] Cordain L. "The nutritional characteristics of a contemporary diet based upon Paleolithic food groups." J Am Nutraceut Assoc 2002