Fad Alert- The Paleo Diet

Made popular by celebrities like Megan Fox, the paleo diet (often referred to as ‘the caveman diet’) was accredited for her dramatic post-pregnancy weight loss.

Quick Paleo Diet Summary-our ancestors ate the meat they hunted and the wild plant foods they foraged. In the last 10,000 years the development of agriculture, and more recently the fast food industry, has dramatically changed the foods that are available to us. Our genes have not evolved to cope with this ‘new’ food.

🚫 Avoid – anything a caveman wouldn’t have recognised :Grains, Dairy, Pulses, Sugar, Refined salt, Processed food.

✅  Eat lots of- Meat, Vegetables, Fruits, Seeds, Nuts

So what do we think

Cutting out processed food and reducing added sugar is a good move.

Like any restrictive diet, those who adopt it are likely to lose weight.

1. Cutting out whole food groups such as dairy or grains is NOT recommended as you will be restricting your intake of essential nutrients such as fibre and calcium.

2. Following fashionable diets that restrict these food groups may result in insufficient daily nutrient intakes which can be harmful to health; low fibre intakes have been linked to an increased risk of colon cancer and low calcium intake is linked to an increased risk of osteoporosis.

3. The only people who should be avoiding these food groups are those who have been clinically diagnosed with an intolerance or allergy, and they will be given advice by a health care professional on how to ensure they avoid deficiency of the essential nutrients these foods provide.

4. The paleo diet is both high in fat, and high in red meat; two dietary elements that have been shown to increase risk of heart disease and colon cancer respectively. No studies to date have investigated the effect of paleo diets on long term health, or the risk of developing osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease or cancer.

Even the foods that are classified as ‘paleo’ in the diet, are products of modern agriculture. Take a look at this Daily Mail article and you’ll see how apparent ‘paleo’ foods such as carrots and corn have changed over time.


Image: https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6064/6036104368_15b2943e7f_z.jpg

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