The Paleolithic diet, also known as the caveman diet, paleodiet, Stone Age diet, the preagricultural diet, or hunter-gatherer diet, is the diet of wild plants and animals that various human species (see Homo (genus)) habitually consumed during the Paleolithic period (the Old Stone Age), a period of about 2 million years duration, ending about 10,000 years ago, when our species, Homo sapiens, invented agriculture. The designation also applies to contemporary diets that resemble that preagricultural human diet in the plant and animal sources of food recommended for consumption and avoidance, though usually from domesticated sources.

Those who advocate that contemporary humans should regularly consume a Paleolithic diet base their advocacy on the premise that natural selection had 2 million or more years to genetically adapt the metabolism and physiology of the various human species to such a diet, and that in the 10,000 years since the invention of agriculture and its consequent major change in the human diet, natural selection has had too little time to make the optimal genetic adaptations to the new diet. According to those advocates, physiological and metabolic maladaptations result from those suboptimal genetic adaptations, which in turn contribute to many of the so-called diseases of civilization.

Those considerations give rise to a simple theme for adhering to a Paleolithic-type diet in modern times: if a food item resembles one that can be found in the wild, obtained with bare hands or simple tools, and ingested immediately without cooking, processing, and by simple preparation (i.e., peeling, cracking, washing, etc.), and cause the consumer no ill effects either during or after consumption, then it can be considered edible, and therefore permissible to eat. Any food meeting this standard can then be cooked and prepared by the simplest means as practical and consumed in modest quantities. Food exclusions comprise those introduced in the human food supply late in the course of human evolution, in particular after the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago: cereal grains, legumes and dairy products..

More on [ Paleolithic diet ]

Paleodiets - Twitter Search

Anthropology in the News 10/17/11 http://t.co/wEKPbw4E Stories on florida gov's comments, #occupy wall street, #paleodiets (via...
douglasanth (Douglas Anthropology) Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:39:25 -0000
Anthropology in the News 10/17/11 http://t.co/wEKPbw4E Stories on florida gov's comments, #occupy wall street, #paleodiets (via...

Subscribe to Paleodiets RSS feed