Paleo History Part II

MONDAY, OCTOBER 17TH, 2011

Open Class/Baseball/Softball Class 6:30pm

Foothill Boy's Varsity Baketball 7:30pm

The diet is usually referred to as the “Paleolithic Diet” referring to the Paleolithic or Stone Age era. It is also referred to as the “Stone Age Diet”, “Cave Man Diet” or the “Hunter-Gatherer Diet”. More romantic souls like to think of it as the diet that was eaten in the “Garden of Eden” and they are correct in thinking so.

The basic principles of the Paleolithic Diet are so simple that most high school students can understand them. At the technical level, Paleolithic Diet Theory presents a fully integrated, holistic, comprehensive dietary theory combining the best features of all other dietary theories, eliminating the worst features and simplifying it all.

All major dietary components are covered – (i.e. vitamins, fats, protein, carbohydrates, antioxidants and phytosterols, etc.). This is for the simple reason that it is the only diet that is coded for in our genes. It contains only those foods that were “on the table” during our long evolution, and discards those which were not. Have you ever wondered why almost everybody feels the need to take vitamin supplements at times, or why so many people feel the need to “detoxify” their system? There are very real reasons for this that you will soon understand. Now, come with me. I’d like to share the secret with you.

BASICS OF THE PALEOLITHIC DIET

For millions of years humans and their relatives have eaten meat, fish, fowl and the leaves, roots and fruits of many plants. One big obstacle to getting more calories from the environment is the fact that many plants are inedible. Grains, beans, dairy, and potatoes are full of energy but all are inedible in the raw state as they contain many toxins. There is no doubt about that – please don’t try to eat them raw, they can make you very sick.

Around 10,000 years ago, an enormous breakthrough was made – a breakthrough that was to change the course of history, and our diet, forever. This breakthrough was the discovery that cooking these foods made them edible. The heat destroyed enough toxins to render them edible. The problem is that, though heat made them edible, they were still not fit for consumption as a massive amount of the toxins still remained in the foods. Grains include wheat, corn, barley, rice, sorghum, millet and oats. Grain-based foods also include products such as flour, bread, noodles and pasta. These foods entered the menu of New Stone Age (Neolithic) man, and Paleolithic Diet buffs often refer to them as Neolithic foods.

The cooking of grains, beans and potatoes had an enormous effect on our food intake – perhaps doubling the number of calories that we could obtain from the plant foods in our environment.

• Other advantages were soon obvious with these foods:


• The could store for long periods (refrigeration of course being unavailable in those days)


• They were dense in calories – i.e. a small weight contains a lot of calories, enabling easy transport.


• The food was also the seed of the plant – later allowing ready farming of the species


• These advantages made it much easier to store and transport food. We could more easily store food for winter and for nomads and travelers to carry supplies. Food storage also enabled surpluses to be stored and this, in turn, made it possible to free some people from food gathering to become specialists in other activities such as builders, warriors and rulers. This set us on the course to modern day civilization. Despite these advantages, our genes were never developed with grains, beans and potatoes and were not in tune with them, and still are not. Man soon improved further on these advances by farming plants and animals.


• Instead of being able to eat only a fraction of the animal and plant life in an area, farming allows us to fill a particular area with a large number of edible plants and animals. This, in turn, increases the number of calories that we can obtain from an area by some 10 to 100 fold or more.

Paleolithic Diet buffs refer to the new foods as Neolithic foods and the old as Paleolithic Diet foods. In simple terms, we see Neolithic as “bad” and Paleolithic as “good”.

Grains, beans, milk and potatoes share the following important characteristics:

• They are all toxic when raw. There is NO doubt about this. It is a fact that no competent, properly-educated source would dispute. They can be extremely dangerous and it is important never to eat them raw or undercooked (cooking takes days to neutralize enough of the toxins that they become edible). These toxins include enzyme blocker, lectins and other types.


• Cooking destroys most but not all of the toxins no matter how long you cook them. Insufficient cooking can lead to sickness such as acute gastroenteritis, cancer, diabetes, ulcerative colitis, heart disease, and virtually ANY disease that is found in western civilization today.


• They are all rich sources of carbohydrate, and once cooked this is often rapidly digestible, giving a high glycemic load (sugar spike).
  

Therefore, diets high in grains, beans, milk and potatoes:

• Contain toxins


• Have a high glycemic index/load (i.e. have a similar effect to raw sugar on blood glucose levels = fat)


• Are low in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and phytosterols (i.e. they are the original “empty calories”)


• Have problems cause by the displacement of other foods with grains, beans, milk and potatoes.
  

As grains, beans and potatoes from such a large proportion of the modern diet, you can now understand why it is so common for people to feel they need supplements or that they need to detoxify (i.e. that they have toxins in their system). Indeed, both feelings are absolutely correct. Unfortunately, we don’t necessarily realize which supplements we need, and ironically when people go on detoxification diets they unfortunately often consume even more Neolithic foods (e.g. soy beans) and therefore more toxins than usual (perhaps they sometimes benefit from a change in toxins).

Coach Justin

PerformanceQuestFitness@gmail.com