When you think of CrossFit you might also associate that with eating Paleo. You hear this term often with the CrossFit community. Eating like our ancestors once did and incorporating foods like meat, veggies, fruits, little starch, nuts and seeds. Along with the elimination of grains, dairy, sugar and legumes. Sure eating this way seems like it would pose a lot of benefits to your health and help you understand eating clean and closest to nature but that was 10,000 years ago and not in the modern world of agriculture. If you look back into the paleolithic era there are things that just don’t add up quite right.
If you ask someone about being Paleo they will tell you they eat a lot of meat. However, meat was not the first source of food that was available to people. Don’t forget, they couldn’t just go to the store to buy it, they had to hunt it and finding food everyday was not the norm. This is why a HUGE meat consumption is not necessary. Looking back in history, we have no known anatomical, physiological, or even genetic adaptations for intensive meat consumption. But we do have adaptations for plant consumption. Carnivores make their own vitamin C. but humans (omnivores) have to eat plants to obtain vitamin C because our digestive tract is longer than carnivores. As omnivores, we don’t even have the specialized teeth that carnivores have for shredding meat. In other words, while we can digest meat, our bodies have adapted more to a plant-based diet.
The second thing that many people overlook is avoidance of grains and legumes. This is far from how they ate because food that you can pick or learn to harvest was the main source of nutrition. Stone-grinding tools from 30,000 years ago which is a long time before the onset of agriculture, some 20,000 years ago have been found from northeastern Europe to the central Mediterranean, like a mortar and pestle used to grind up seeds and grains. These were used for eating grain based foods. Measurements from the micro-fossilized tooth plaque or dental calculus of paleolithic people show grains including barley, legumes, and tubers. In fact, archaeologists found there was an abundance of plant remains. Now if you look at Paleo, there are many foods like coconut flour brownies which I don’t think were on the menu for the Paleo era!
The foods you know currently are absolutely nothing like the wild foods of 10,000 years ago. In fact, you wouldn’t recognize those wild foods as being edible or palatable because since that time they have been altered genetically and bred to be more easily consumed, tastier, and without toxins. We have radically changed these foods through farming to suit our needs. So in other words it’s unattainable to eat like our ancestors did. Do you really know where your food is coming from ? Where did that meat in the case come from and how long ago was it hunted? Are you getting the best and freshest veggies and fruits?he size of domestic vegetables and fruits are completely different to those in the wild. Most of the vegetables as we know them didn’t even exist. Most of our fruits and vegetables we currently know are actually human inventions common like a cotton candy grape ?? It is simply impossible to even remotely eat like our ancestors in the world we live in today. Don’t be fooled by the label “gluten free” because junk is junk and it’s just reprocessed with other ingredients to make it gluten free but full of sugar, salt and additives.
So, when we look to evolutionary science we learn a great deal about the reality of the “paleo” diet, and thanks to that science there are some great take-aways we can use to improve our health.
- There is no one correct diet. There is only the right one for you that pushes your health indicators in the right direction. You won’t read that often because it doesn’t sell books and make money. From evolutionary science diverse eating is key to health, and eating foods from different species is also important for our health. If you look at many of our processed foods on our supermarket shelves, they generally are of only three species -corn, wheat, and soy. Eat as large a variety of foods as possible to be healthy.
- Eat foods that are in season. Eating foods that are fresh, in season, and ripe means our foods have the highest nutritional value and the most health benefit.
- Eat foods with only one ingredient, and with their fiber, roughage, and skin. Even the parts of the food you can’t or don’t digest so well are important. Fiber regulates the speed of the food traveling through your body, it slows down the release of sugars, and feeds the good bacteria in your gut. Yet, most people don’t get enough in their diets.
Think about all what you are eating, the value of the nutritional content and the quality of the food! Don’t be fooled by the hype but get educated !