The Caveman Diet

The Caveman diet comes from the Paleolithic era, so is often called the Paleo diet. Modern Agriculture changed our diet because it became necessary to mass grow cheap food in order to feed the growing population.

The foods that we consider to be normal today, including wheat, oats, barley, dairy, legumes, soya and maize are all relatively modern foods, developed more because they can be grown cheaply in bulk than because they are good for us.

As the populations in the developed world have grown, it has become necessary to develop foods with a greater yield so that we don’t all starve, but the trade off for the adequate supply of these foods is that we are not ideally suited to digest them as well as we could do.

A Caveman’s natural Diet

It has only been in the last couple of thousand years that we have stopped being hunter-gatherers, in that time our diet has changed drastically. We are designed to be hunter-gatherers, eating nuts or berries for one meal, followed by maybe a fish the next day, or a rabbit, etc, then the next day some vegetables, or fruit.

Your body produces a different enzyme depending on whether it is trying to digest proteins or carbohydrates. Meals containing mixed food groups have only been eaten for the last 10,000 years or so, which is no time at all on an evolutionary scale and that is why so many people struggle to adequately digest their meals properly.

Your stomach will try to generate different enzymes to breakdown each food stuff, but together these enzymes dilute each other and so your food will not be digested as well.

Which Food Should You Avoid?

The Paleo diet is centred on avoiding modern processed foods and foods we aren’t naturally accustomed to digesting, including; wheat, potatoes, grains, legumes, refines salts, dairy, refined sugars and refined oils.

These foods are alien to us and we can’t easily digest them, the refined foods are usually converted into body fat as our body can’t do much else with them. Only organic, natural foods should be in your diet, you shouldn’t eat anything that has been processed or refined.

What Did Cavemen Eat?

The diet your body is designed to be able to divest includes; meat (organic naturally), fish, fruit, fungi, eggs, roots, nuts and vegetables. These foods represent our natural diet across millions of years, it’s only been in the past 10,000 years that we have combined foods together into indigestible meals. It is still possible to create fantastic meals with different food on one plate, but by grouping the foods together correctly, your stomach will be able to easily digest them making you healthier, giving you more energy and adding vitality to your life.