Table of Contents
Praise
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface to the Revised Edition
Acknowledgments
PART ONE - Understanding the Paleo Diet
Introduction
How Our Healthy Way of Life Went Wrong
Chapter 1 - Not Just Another Low-Carb Diet
Health Secrets of Our Ancestors
The Problems with Most Low-Carb Diets
Low Carb Doesn’t Mean Low Cholesterol
Healthy Fats, Not Lethal Fats
Saturated Fats, Reconsidered
Disease-Fighting Fruits and Vegetables
The Osteoporosis Connection
Toxic Salt
Lean Meat Helps You Lose Weight
Protein Increases Your Metabolism and Slows Your Appetite
Lean Protein and Heart Disease
Chapter 2 - The Ground Rules for the Paleo Diet
The Fundamentals of the Paleo Diet
The Seven Keys of the Paleo Diet
Just the Foods You Can Hunt and Gather at Your Supermarket
Meal Preparation and Typical Meals
The Paleo Diet: A Nutritional Bonanza
The Typical American Diet: A Nutritional Nightmare
Why You Can’t Overeat on the Paleo Diet
What to Expect on the Paleo Diet
Chapter 3 - How Our Diet Went Wrong and What You Can Do about It
Lean Meat Is Brain Food
Hunting Big Game
Restoring the Balance in Your Diet
How “Progress” Has Hurt Us
Hello Grains, Hello Health Problems
Big Mistakes in the 1950s
The Seven Major Problems in the Typical American Diet
Minerals
PART TWO - Losing Weight and Preventing and Healing Diseases
Chapter 4 - Losing Weight the Paleo Diet Way
Determining Whether You Need to Lose Weight
A Doctor Loses 30 Pounds: Ben’s Story
Why Protein Helps Burn Calories
Losing 75 Pounds in Six Months: Dean’s Story
Protein Satisfies Your Appetite
Promoting Weight Loss by Improving Your Insulin Sensitivity
What You Can Expect to Lose on the Paleo Diet
Sharing Success Stories
Losing 45 Pounds and Healing Crohn’s Disease: Sally’s Story
Vegetarian Isn’t Better: Ann’s Story
A Nutritionist Loses 30 Pounds: Melissa’s Story
Losing Weight the Right Way
Chapter 5 - Metabolic Syndrome: Diseases of Civilization
Healing Metabolic Syndrome: Jack’s Story
How Insulin Resistance Increases Your Risk of Heart Disease
Other Diseases Related to Insulin Resistance
Chapter 6 - Food as Medicine: How Paleo Diets Improve Health and Well-Being
The Diet-Disease Connection
Metabolic Syndrome Diseases
Cardiovascular Diseases
Diseases of Acid-Base Balance and Excessive Sodium
Digestive Diseases
Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis
Inflammatory Diseases
Autoimmune Diseases
Psychological Disorders
Vitamin-Deficiency Diseases
Dental Cavities
Alcoholism
Skin Cancers
PART THREE - The Paleo Diet Program
Chapter 7 - Eating Great: What to Eat, What to Avoid
Making the Diet Work for You
What to Eat?
Lean Meats
Fruits and Vegetables
Nuts and Seeds
Foods You Can Eat in Moderation
Foods You Should Avoid
Chapter 8 - The Paleo Diet User’s Manual
Stocking Your Refrigerator and Pantry
Look for Lean Meats
Wild Game Meat—at a Gourmet Store Near You
Fish and Seafood
Eggs: Good or Bad?
How to Make the Most of Fruits and Vegetables
Nuts and Seeds
Omega 6 to Omega 3 Fat Ratio in Nuts and Seeds
Purchasing Oils
Spices
Individualizing Your Diet
Vitamins, Minerals, and Supplements
Food Availability and Preparation Issues
Dining Out, Travel, and Peer Pressure
Ask Your Friends and Family for Support
Chapter 9 - The Meal Plans for the Three Levels of the Paleo Diet
Snacks
Level I: Entry Level
Level II: Maintenance Level
Level III: Maximal Weight Loss Level
Chapter 10 - Paleo Recipes
Basic Recipe Principles
Stone Age Food Substitutions
Recipes
FISH AND SEAFOOD
DOMESTIC LOW-FAT MEAT ENTRÉES - (Beef, Chicken, Veal, Pork, Organ Meats, Game Meats)
ORGAN MEATS
GAME MEATS
DRIED MEATS (JERKY)
EGG DISHES
VEGETABLE DISHES
SALADS
CONDIMENTS, DIPS, SALSAS, SALAD DRESSINGS, MARINADES
SOUPS
FRUIT DISHES AND DESSERTS
Chapter 11 - Paleo Exercise
Exercise Plus Paleo Diet Equals Health: Joe’s Story
“Exercise”: A Funny Idea to Hunter-Gatherers
Physical Fitness: Naturally, and with No Exercise Programs
Exercise and Obesity
Why Should You Exercise?
Exercise and Blood Lipids
Exercise, Type 2 Diabetes, and Other Health Benefits of Exercise
Modern Exercises for Your Paleolithic Body
Chapter 12 - Living the Paleo Diet
The Right Reasons to Eat
One Day at a Time
APPENDIX A - Acid-Base Values of Common Foods (100-gram portions)
APPENDIX B - Comparison of the Total Fat in Domestic and Wild Meats
APPENDIX C - Practical Implementation of Parts of the Paleo Diet on a Global Scale
Resources
Bibliography
Index
Praise for THE PALEO DIET
“The Paleo Diet helps you lose fat, improve your health, and feel great. Why? Because the Paleo Diet works with your genetics to help you realize your natural birthright of vibrant health and wellness. My book’s success is due in large part to the revolutionary solutions provided by Professor Loren Cordain and his Paleo Diet message.”
—Robb Wolf, author of the bestselling The Paleo Solution
“Loren Cordain’s extensive research demonstrates how modern westernized diets drastically depart from the original diet humans consumed for millions of years. In The Paleo Diet and The Paleo Diet Cookbook , Dr. Cordain shows how diets high in grains, dairy, vegetable oils, salt, and refined sugars are at odds with our genetic legacy and then shares his uncomplicated strategy for losing weight and getting healthy.”
—Arthur De Vany, Ph.D., author of The New Evolution Diet
“We found Dr. Loren Cordain’s scientific research indispensable when we wrote The 30-Day Low-Carb Diet Solution. Cordain provides the most compelling arguments we’ve seen for why a protein-rich diet is the diet we were born to eat. His weight-loss plan simply works and his recipes are simply terrific.”
—Michael R. Eades, M.D., and Mary Dan Eades, M.D., authors of Protein Power, The 6-Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle, and The Low-Carb Comfort Food Cookbook
“The Paleo Diet is at once revolutionary and intuitive. Its prescription provides without a doubt the most nutritious diet on the planet. Beautifully written, The Paleo Diet takes us from the theor
y to the day-to-day practice of the native human diet.”
—Jennie Brand-Miller, Ph.D., coauthor of the bestselling The Glucose Revolution series
“Dr. Loren Cordain’s approach to nutrition is logically compelling, readily understood, and at the cutting edge of health science. Not all scientists can translate their concepts into a straightforward, accessible format, but Cordain has accomplished this feat brilliantly.”
—S. Boyd Eaton, M.D., lead author of The Paleolithic Prescription
“Finally someone has figured out the best diet—a modern version of the diet the human race grew up eating. Dr. Loren Cordain’s easy-to-follow diet plan reminds us that the healthiest foods are the simplest ones.”
—Jack Challem, author of The Inflammation Syndrome, Stop Prediabetes Now, and Syndrome X
“In a world where we’re surrounded with information overload on dieting, this is a commonsense and effective weight-control approach that’s easy to follow.”
—Fred Pescatore, M.D., author of The Hamptons Diet and The Allergy and Asthma Cure
“The Paleo Diet lays out the basic nutrition plan not only for weight loss and good health but also for peak performance in athletic competition. It works.”
—Joe Friel, author of The Triathlete’s Training Bible
Copyright © 2002, 2011 by Loren Cordain. All rights reserved
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To Lorrie, Kyle, Kevin, and Kenny for making it all worthwhile
Preface to the Revised Edition
The original version of The Paleo Diet first came into print in January 2002. After its initial release, my book gained popularity and sales were good for the next few years, but it did not achieve chart-topping levels and the national exposure for which I had hoped. Fast-forward eight years to 2010: The Paleo Diet has become one of America’s best-selling diet and health books.
This kind of sales history is almost unheard of in the publishing industry for successful diet books, which typically act like dwarf stars—they burn brightly at first and then fade away. Not so for The Paleo Diet, which started as a gentle glow and over the years has become hotter and hotter until now it is red hot. A diet book that once began as a ripple is now approaching tidal wave proportions.
Why? What is different about The Paleo Diet in 2010 compared to 2002? The material in the book has not radically changed, but the world has radically changed since 2002, particularly how we now communicate and inform one another about our lives, our daily experiences, and our reality. And herein is a clue to my book’s sustained and increasing popularity.
When I first started to write The Paleo Diet in 2000, the Internet was in its youthful throes (Google had been founded only two years earlier, in 1998), and most people still used telephones (not cell phones) to talk. The U.S. Postal Service remained healthy because Bill Gates’s foundational maxim “a personal computer in every household” had not yet taken firm hold, and snail mail reigned supreme. Then, “spam” simply meant canned meat. In the era of my book’s baptism, texting, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and most of the other Internet and electronic wizardry we now routinely take for granted still lay in the future. Then, people found out about the world through newspapers, radio, TV, and weekly news magazines. Now, except for the New York Times and a few other mainstays, daily newspapers have dried up to a trickle. Who wants to hear about outdated weekly news in paid-for magazines when you can get it for free and instantly from the Internet anytime you want? Like newspapers and magazines, radio and TV are not nearly as convenient or as timely as the Web—you can get Web versions of these media, anyway—so why bother with the real things?
When I wrote The Paleo Diet a decade ago, electronic interconnectedness was primitive, slow, and noninclusive. Local U.S. news was unavailable, obscure, or unknown in places like Uzbekistan or Botswana and vice versa. In those days, scientists reported new discoveries in their specialized journals, but this information was rarely picked up by newspapers or the popular press. It took years or decades for many discoveries to have an impact on people’s lives. A decade ago, most people didn’t argue with their physicians’ diagnoses and prescriptions because “the doctor always knew best”—presumably because, then, the doctor was better informed than the patient was.
The Internet, Web sites, blogs, cell phones, and other various types of electronic wizardry have transformed our world within a mere decade or less. The electronic transmission of news and information and practical data to improve our lives, our financial situations, and our health has become humankind’s universal language. Anyone in the world who has access to either a computer or a cell phone can immediately connect with anyone else who has the same technology. We now can and do talk to one another in unprecedented numbers—by the billions. A local event can instantaneously become a worldwide happening. Today what your next-door neighbor knows is available not only to you and your close friends, but literally to the world.
With such vast and nearly total information connectiveness, a subtle but crucial upshot of this brave new electronic world has arisen. When someone comes up with an answer to a complex or even a simple problem that is correct and that works, it gains followers like a snowball rolling downhill. Such has been the case for The Paleo Diet. It simply works. In an earlier era, prior to the Web, when human networks were small and noninclusive, information flowed slowly or not at all. Accordingly, correct answers sometimes smoldered for years, decades, or longer before they became widely recognized and accepted. Fortunately, The Paleo Diet came of age at the same time that the Internet was being adopted globally.
Had I originally written about a diet—a lifetime way of eating—that didn’t work, The Paleo Diet would have simply faded into oblivion in the ensuing eight years since its publication. Yet it didn’t. My book continues to gain more and more supporters as people like you re
late their personal health experiences with The Paleo Diet to one another via the largest and most comprehensive human network ever created: the Internet. If The Paleo Diet had caused you to gain weight, made you feel lethargic, raised your blood cholesterol, promoted ill health, and been impossible to follow, it would have fallen by the wayside like most other dietary schemes dreamed up by human beings. Yet it didn’t. In fact, The Paleo Diet movement continues to spread worldwide, thanks in part to the Web.
When people find correct answers to complex diet/health questions, they let their friends know, and thanks to the Internet, the momentum has accelerated. In the United States, the word “Paleo” has become part of mass culture, due in part to its popularity with the national CrossFit movement that is sweeping the country and recent coverage in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other global media. The Paleo Diet has found wide acceptance not only with CrossFitters and athletes, but also with the medical and health professions, who have embraced it because of its wide-reaching therapeutic effects on metabolic syndrome diseases, autoimmune diseases, mental disorders, and beyond. In fact, there are very few chronic illnesses or diseases that do not respond favorably to our ancestral diet.
The novelty of The Paleo Diet is that a mortal human being like me didn’t create it. Rather, I—along with many other scientists, physicians, and anthropologists worldwide—simply uncovered what was already there: the diet to which our species is genetically adapted. This is the diet of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, the foods consumed by every human being on the planet until a mere 333 human generations ago, or about ten thousand years ago. Our ancestors’ diets were uncomplicated by agriculture, animal husbandry, technology, and processed foods. Then, as today, our health is optimized when we eat lean meats, seafood, and fresh fruits and veggies at the expense of grains, dairy, refined sugars, refined oils, and processed foods.
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