New to Paleo? A few links to get you started

The ancestral diet, also known as the Paleo diet, is an approximation of the original diet of our ancestors living before the development of agriculture and animal husbandry around 10,000 years ago. They ate lean meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and berries. Studies reveal our ancestors were taller and healthier than people today. Below are some books, websites, and a DVD to help you learn about this new - and yet very old! - approach to nutrition.

BOOKS

The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to Eat (2010) - Dr. Loren Cordain is a top expert on the nutrition of our ancestors. This book should serve as the main gudie for the Paleo diet.

The Paleo Answer (2012) - Dr Cordain’s new book provides more detail and answers common questions about the Paleo diet.

The Paleo Diet Cookbook: More than 150 recipes for Paleo Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, Snacks, and Beverages by Loren Cordain, Nell Stephenson, and Lorrie Cordain.

Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Meals. This primal cookbook was written by Mark Sisson and Jennifer Meier.

WEB SITES

Marks Daily Apple – this very popular site covers diet, fitness, and other aspects of primal health. Check theSuccess Stories link, especially The Unconquerable Dave.

Everyday Paleo – this popular site by Sarah Fragoso has plenty of recipies. Sarah is also the author of the Everyday Paleo cookbook and Paleo Pals, the first children’s book on Paleo nutrition.

MOVIE (DVD)                       

At the age of 24, CJ Hunt had a health crisis - one that led him to explore a number of human diets is search of the best possible choice to achieve a “longer, healthier and happier” life. The movie, In Search of the Perfect Human Diet, documents his journey. Ready to learn why the Paleo diet may be the best for you? Hunt has already done a lot of the groundwork for you. Order your DVD here or ask your local library to order it.

If you are on a special diet for health reasons, discuss the Paleo diet with your doctor before making changes. Also discuss with your doctor if you have high blood pressure or diabetes since your medications may need to be lowered. Also, if you are on Coumadin or have hemochromatosis, discuss this diet with your doctor before you start.

Review Part 2: In Search of the Perfect Human Diet

In the April 15 SUNDAY PALEO, I reviewed the first half of a new documentary, In Search of the Perfect Human Diet, by CJ Hunt. We left off with Hunt visiting Dr. Cordain and learning about the evolution of the human diet over the past two million years while they both walked down the football field at CSU in Fort Collins, CO.

Continuing his search, Hunt then travels to New York to interview physical anthropologist Gary J. Sawyer of The American Museum of Natural History. From Sawyer, Hunt learns about our Paleolithic ancestors and how they lived. When comparing the modern diet to that of our ancestors, Sawyer observes:

We do not know how to eat properly. We feed ourselves, but we fail to give ourselves proper nutrition.

While in New York, Hunt also interviews Leslie Aiello, PhD, of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Dr. Aiello reminds us that our Paleolithic hunter-gatherer ancestors, in contrast to our limited palate today, ate “a huge diversity of foods.” The reduced diversity of our diet following the agricultural revolution led to nutritional deficiencies that caused a reduction in our stature: modern humans are much smaller than the Paleolithic ancestors.

Later in his travels, Hunt visits the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany to meet Professor Mike Richards, a specialist in prehistoric bone chemistry. This remarkable segment reveals what state-of-the-art techniques are telling us about the evolution of the human diet. We now have direct evidence of the components our ancestors' diet and the important role of meat, fish, and plants in human nutrition. Interestingly, no vegetarians have been identified in the bone analysis of thousands of human ancestors studied from all over the world.

According to Dr. Richards, our current age, the Neolithic, “is a new experiment,” one that we are not adapted to. Is the Paleolithic diet the “most optimum” for humans?

It has to be, it’s what evolutionary pressures got us towards and we were successful in that kind of diet. It’s got to be the best diet for humans.

The video ends with a section on the clinical application of this newly developing knowledge. In Wimberley, Texas, Hunt interviews Dr. Lane Sebring, a physician who is clearly knowledgeable on role of the ancestral diet in medicine. Dr. Seabring discusses how he advises his patients and then takes Hunt to a nearby grocery store to show how easily we are marketed “foods” that undermine our health.

In Search of the Perfect Human Diet is an excellent “crash course” on the ancestral diet. Available on DVD, I recommend it to anyone wanting to take control of his or her nutrition from the surrounding culture. The movie is enlightening for those new to this nutritional approach as well as for those with years of experience.

For health care providers, it provides a new approach to helping people suffering from many chronic disorders. As the CDC reminds us, ¾ of U.S. health care spending is directed at preventable modern diseases and these costs continue to increase. The ancestral diet may prove to be a powerful tool to reverse this trend.

SUNDAY PALEO / April 15, 2011

Review: In Search of the Perfect Human Diet

On Memorial day 1978, I dropped dead.

Thus starts the new documentary, In Search of the Perfect Human Diet, by producer CJ Hunt. At 24 years of age, Hunt had suffered a heart attack while running track. On discharge following a 10-day hospitalization, he was given the following advice: “Don’t walk up stairs. Don’t go anywhere without someone that knows CPR. You have over a 50% chance of dying in the next two years.”

Deeply shaken, CJ began a “personal quest for optimal health.” Over the subsequent years, in pursuit of the best possible health, he “experimented with a wide variety of eating methods, cleansing fasts, and dietary philosophies.” A cardiac defibrillator, implanted at the age of 46 to restart his heart should it stop working, became a constant reminder of his mortality and triggered “a 10 years journey to find the perfect human diet.”

At the beginning of his quest, Hunt recalled his parent’s advice (advice we could all use at various times in life):

1. “Do your homework.”
2. “Be willing to look past conventional wisdom.”
3. “Don’t be afraid to go back and start at the beginning and see where it leads you.”

With bags packed, Hunt set out to interview nutritional experts throughout the world, many who are “flying below the radar of conventional dietary thinking.”

In an interview of Professor Karen Oday, Hunt learns of a small, yet classic, study with 10 Australian aborigines who, as young adults, had moved into towns and eventually developed type 2 diabetes. Each was asked each if they would consider living in the bush for 7 weeks and forage for their own food. All agreed. After just 7 weeks, their insulin and glucose metabolism returned to normal! Furthermore, an assessment of their activity level, surprisingly, was found to have been somewhat less in the bush. (This finding supports the concept that hunter-gatherers had more leisure time than people in modern cultures.)

Jay Wortman, MD discusses the nutritional insights gained while helping the First Nations people of Canada reclaim their health by returning to their traditional diet. Michael R. Eades, MD emphasizes the importance of protein in the human diet.

Science journalist Garry Taubes, author of Why We Get Fat, provides a historical perspective on missteps that have led the current increase in obesity and chronic diseases. He explains how the demonization of dietary fats led to a marked increased in the consumption of refined carbohydrates, an underlying factor in many modern preventable diseases. Andrew Weil, MD, founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, reinforces this point:

Fat does not make us fat. What is driving the obesity epidemic in this country is the very high glycemic load carbohydrate foods which have been technically manipulated.

Adele Hite, MPH, MAT, Executive Director of the Healthy Nation Coalition, discusses the origin of the USDA food pyramid:

From the start, our dietary recommendations have been based as much on politics as on science.

Hunt then travels to Colorado State University to interview Professor Loren Cordain, “America’s leading expert on evolutionary nutrition.” Cordain relates how he developed an interest in Paleolithic nutrition after a reading the “classic article” by Dr. S. Boyd Eaton, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985.

Dr. Cordain then takes Hunt on the CSU football field to provide “a sense of scale” to human dietary evolution. Beginning on one end of the field (viewed as 2 million years ago), both slowly walk down the field as Cordain points out the time periods of various dietary changes and finally reaches the development of processed foods beginning around 1900 to the present.  This final period represents a miniscule portion of the entire evolutionary timeframe: “the last 1/5 of the last inch” of the hundred-yard field. Frankly, an astoundingly small period of time; so brief, it exposes the typical modern diet as an experiment, one whose outcome we are now beginning to comprehend.

This is a good place to pause the video. Get up and walk around. Get a Paleo snack and come back soon for the rest of the story.

Ancestral Diet Resources

The ancestral diet, also known as Paleo or primal diet, is an approximation of the original diet of our ancestors living before the development of agriculture and animal husbandry that occurred around 10,000 years ago. They usually ate lean meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and berries. Studies reveal that our ancestors were taller and healthier than many people living today. Below are some books, websites, and a DVD to help you learn about this new (and yet very old!) dietary lifestyle.

BOOKS

The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Foods You Were Designed to Eat (2010) - Dr. Loren Cordain is a top expert on the nutrition of our ancestors. This book should serve as the main gudie for the Paleo diet.

The Paleo Answer (2012) - Dr Cordain’s new book provides more detail and answers common questions about the Paleo diet.

The Paleo Diet Cookbook: More than 150 recipes for Paleo Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, Snacks, and Beverages by Loren Cordain, Nell Stephenson, and Lorrie Cordain.

Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Meals. This primal cookbook was written by Mark Sisson and Jennifer Meier.

WEB SITES

Marks Daily Apple – this very popular site covers diet, fitness, and other aspects of primal health. Check the Success Stories link, especially The Unconquerable Dave.

Everyday Paleo – this popular site by Sarah Fragoso has plenty of recipies. Sarah is also the author of the Everyday Paleo cookbook and Paleo Pals, the first children’s book on Paleo nutrition.

MOVIE (DVD)                       

At the age of 24, CJ Hunt had a health crisis - one that led him to explore a number of human diets is search of the best possible choice to achieve a “longer, healthier and happier” life. The movie, In Search of the Perfect Human Diet, documents his journey. Ready to learn why the Paleo diet may be the best for you? Hunt has already done a lot of the groundwork for you. Order your DVD here or ask your local library to order it.

If you are on a special diet for health reasons, discuss the Paleo diet with your doctor before making changes. Also discuss with your doctor if you have high blood pressure or diabetes since your medications may need to be lowered. Also, if you are on Coumadin or have hemochromatosis, discuss this diet with your doctor before you start.                                               

PaleoTerran.com

Revised 9/16/12

In Search of the Perfect Human Diet

At the age of 24, CJ Hunt had a health crisis; one that led him to explore a number of human diets is search of the best possible choice to achieve a “longer, healthier and happier” life. The movie, In Search of the Perfect Human Diet, documents his journey. Executive Producer CJ Hunt writes:

… the documentary … bypasses common contradictory dietary bias and the recycling of confusion, by filming interviews and explorations with many of the world's top scientists and researchers in the fields of archaeological science, paleo and forensic anthropology, nutrition and metabolism, biomolecular archaeology, and the emerging field of human dietary evolution.

Mark Sisson, of Mark’s Daily Apple, received an advanced copy and posts his review here.

If you, or your loved ones, are interested in reclaiming or improving your health, take the journey with CJ. If you do so, please share your comments on PaleoTerran. I will share my impressions once I obtain a copy.