Every species has its own species-specific diet necessary to run its given DNA blueprint optimally. Humans are no exception! Care and feeding of humans has been going on for thousands and thousands of years, determined by what was available in nature. The advent of farming was just a few short 10k years ago, a blip in this generational timeline. When grains were introduced into the human diet things started declining for our species and the decline has become more dramatic since the industrial revolution.
“Life in all its fullness is Mother Nature obeyed.” – Weston A. Price
Today disease consumes the majority of westernized civilizations. Junk food, fast food, convenient food, manufactured highly processed chemical laden formulated heavily marketed products – this is what is considered a normal part of the modern day human diet. Everyone is in such a hurry and so disconnected from themselves and their food it’s no wonder we are constantly dealing with aches, pains, illness, surgeries, medications and continuously devastated by disease diagnoses. We look to the government and the healthcare system for answers, solutions, new discoveries that will fix us, but it could be so much simpler.
If you want to know what to eat, look back.
You don’t have to go too far back generationally speaking to find low incidence of disease. But if you want to find the perfect human diet, go back 10,000 or more years. Humans before agriculture hunted wild game eating everything nose to tail when they finally caught something, often going days or weeks without it. They foraged for vegetation, they spent a lot of time connected to each other and nature, time in the sun, time moving around. They understood the interconnection between nature, food, and their survival.
This is our DNA blueprint. In modern, industrialized society we are very far removed from the life we are engineered for. Progress is amazing and there is so much to be grateful for! And we can enjoy it in good health by recognizing that “food” is a very broad and general term and should be carefully scrutinized.
How to figure out what is actually food in a sea of confusing marketing.
Eating to reach our greatest human potential for health and wellbeing requires us to get back to basics. It really simplifies the painful question of what to buy and eat when you consider what was available to live off of in the wild.
By following this we eliminate processed sugars, oils, dairy and chemicals of all kinds. This leaves plants and animals (but mostly plants!)
So a basic paleo/primal nutritional profile adapted for modern living looks like this:
- Eat mostly vegetables with the bulk being dark leafy greens.
- Small portions of grass fed, wild caught meat and fish.
- Eat healthy fats from coconut, avocados, olives, nuts and seeds.
- Eliminate industrial seed oils like corn, soybean, canola and sunflower oil.
- Avoid refined sugars and minimize natural sugars.
- Exclude grains and legumes
- Eliminate dairy.
The principles are basic, the list is short and simple, but the process of making this change challenges everything we’ve been raised to understand about food, no matter what your age. Most of us have eaten a grain-centric processed food diet most of our lives and have the metabolic challenges to show for it. Adapting to a simpler food lifestyle is not easy, it can take time, it can be daunting, there may be growing pains, but it is worth it.
It is 1000% worth it!