Lesson 3: What Not To Eat
This lesson covers the new additions to our human diet, the foods implicated in the development of several chronic diseases.
Introduction
Agricultural foods, also called neolithic or new foods, such as grains, dairy products, legumes, and potatoes, entered the human diet about 10,000 years ago. That converts to about 500 generations ago. In evolutionary terms, that’s a short time in which our genes have changed little. Even more recently, problematic food additives such as monosodium glutamate, aspartame, sulfites and nitrites have entered our diets.
These new foods contain far fewer nutrients per calorie than natural paleo foods, so their consumption displaces more nutritious foods. Additionally, many of these new foods contain toxins, or anti-nutrients, that inhibit the absorption of nutrients in our bodies. Cooking may destroy some, but not all of these toxins. Many of these foods are also high-glycemic carbohydrate foods. That means they cause rapid rises in our blood sugar levels which require our bodies to produce large amounts of insulin in response. A diet high in high-glycemic foods will lead to obesity and other chronic diseases. We will talk more about high-glycemic foods, insulin, and obesity later in the course.
In addition to grains, dairy products, legumes, and potatoes, agricultural times also brought fattier meat, salted foods, refined sugars and oils, and countless additives, preservatives, coloring agents, and emulsifiers. We invented foods that our paleolithic ancestors would not have even recognized as food.
Avoiding available foods can be difficult, especially when those foods are tasty, convenient, and in the case of refined sugars, grains, and dairy products, addictive. For those who cannot imagine living the rest of their lives without eating bread, alcohol, ice cream, etc., occasional indulgences are ok. In The Paleo Diet, Loren Cordain defines three levels of adherence to the paleo diet that won’t greatly diminish it’s health value. Level I allows three “open meals” per week, level II allows two, and level III allows one. These open meals give you the opportunity to include some “forbidden” foods. You can progress through the levels or choose to stay at any level.
