Dr. Loren Cordain is one of the leaders in the practical application of paleolithic nutrition to improving your diet. This month he writes an awesome commentary in my favorite journal (American Journal Clinical Nutrition).
Before the development of farming and the domestication of livestock practices dietary choices would have been necessarily limited to minimally processed, wild plant and animal foods. It is important to understand that over 70% of the American diet consists of:
- Dairy products,
- Cereals,
- Refined sugars,
- Refined vegetable oils, and
- Alcohol
These types of foods would have contributed little or none of the energy in the typical preagricultural human diet. This is one of the primary reasons why in the US and most Western countries, diet-related chronic diseases represent the single largest cause of death and sickness. These diseases are epidemic in contemporary Westernized populations and typically afflict 2/3 of the adult population, yet they are rare or nonexistent in hunter-gatherers and other less Westernized cultures.
Fortunately the solution is not that difficult. The eating principles on the site help you adopt primitive eating patterns to maximize your health.
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition February 2005 Vol 81(2):341-354