2 June 2013

Paleo & Nutrition

Eating Paleo, so what’s it all about then? In a nutshell (pardon the pun), it’s about eating what we evolved to eat, back in the good old Paleolithic days. You know, before all this modern farming lark came on the scene 6.5 to 10 thousand years ago.

In the years leading to modern day (some 30,000 for us Homo Sapiens and 500,000 for our ancestral predecessors) we evolved to eat a certain diet, which was localised to your part of the world. Oh and it was organic by default.

Although modern farming effectively appeared overnight and put food on our plates, in the form of grains, it didn’t and still doesn’t mean we are evolved to eat it. When we do eat modern food, our bodies don’t react in a good way; we simply can’t cope with modern food.

What does this mean to you? You’ve been taught that a balanced diet consists of 50-60% carbohydrates (predominately made up of grain based foods), 15-30% fat (that you’re told will make you fat) and then green veg and milk. It’s time to burst the bubble; your body doesn’t need 50-60% of calories to come from carbohydrates (of any type), it can’t use this much for immediate energy and so stores it for a rainy day… What’s it stored as? … FAT. Yup, your body stores carbs as fat.

And that’s just one of the many side effects: your random energy pattern, your bloated stomach, your yo-yo diets can all be blamed on your high ‘modern’ carb diet.

Modern farming methods weren’t conceived for perfect human health, they were devised for easy / high yield crops. Crops that were, and still are, alien to our bodies.

What should we be eating? Check out the Paleo Food Pyramid. For more info browse this here site. If you’d like to book a nutritional consultation and work with Duncan to get your diet working the way it should please get in touch; you can use the form below.

Need a bit more help grasping Paleo? Check out ‘Paleo in a Nutshell’…