Loren Cordain, author of The Paleo Diet Cookbook, tells Sarah O’Meara why we should be living like cavemen.
There comes a point, often even before Christmas Day, when you start feeling a little sick.
Not from the thought of spending time with your relatives, but due to the salty meats and sugary foods you’ve been forcing through your body.
According to Prof Loren Cordain, there’s one way to appease your body’s desire to expand: by following the Paleo Diet.
Since 2002, the diet, also known as the Caveman Diet, has advocated a return not so much to traditional values, but prehistoric ones. Out are modern day vices such as supping sugary drinks and nibbling snack foods, and in are hunter gatherer-style meals.
“We have never suggested that it would be possible or practical to exactly emulate the Stone Age diet in fully westernised populations,” says Cordain.
“First, most people don’t have access to wild game, nor do our cultural preferences allow us to eat the entire carcass such as brains, eyes and intestines, as hunter gatherers did.
“Secondly, most wild plant food is unpalatable or unavailable, hence our strategy has been to mimic the nutritional characteristics of forager diets with commonly available modern foods.”
Cordain says the diet encourages people to consume unlimited quantities of fresh fruits, vegetables, fresh lean meats (preferably grass fed), seafood, nuts, and certain healthy oils, while restricting or eliminating cereal grains, dairy products, legumes and all processed foods.
“We have adopted what we call the 85:15 rule – meaning that a person can eat 15 per cent of their calories (three meals out of 21 in a week) as non-Paleo meals. Most people achieve significant health gains while being 85 per cent compliant with the diet.
“We no longer live in a Stone Age world and by allowing people a glass of wine with dinner or an occasional non-Paleo food item, it helps them to adopt the diet and enjoy eating real foods.”
Cordain believes our bodies are designed to enjoy this type of diet and, by emulating our ancestors, we can avoid some modern day health problems.
“In the US and UK, the consumption of refined sugar has risen steadily in the past 200 years. It is now about 150lbs per person, whereas in 1800 it was about 20lbs per person,” says Cordain.
“Except for seasonal honey, hunter gatherers typically ate no refined sugars. Cheap, highly processed junk foods represent the environmental element most responsible for the worldwide obesity epidemic and the associated metabolic syndromes. People do not become insulin resistant on fresh fish and broccoli but rather upon cookies, ice cream, chips, cooldrink and sugared cereals.”
Cordain explains that our ancestors sought out “sweet” tastes because fruits and some vegetables were also dense sources of necessary nutrients such as vitamin C.
“Today we have the technology to separate the sweet taste from the healthful components and produce artificial foods with the sweet taste, but with none of the other components present in the natural plant food,” he adds.
Some have argued that this diet, with its emphasis on costly, perishable ingredients, is difficult to maintain.
“I recently read that food has become the premier marker of social class and I think that’s an important point,” says Cordain. “But in the US and the UK, the majority of our populations are suffering not from diseases of under consumption, but rather from diseases of overconsumption.”
* The Paleo Diet Cookbook by Prof Loren Cordain, published by Wiley, £13.99
