Tuesday 12 April 2011

Paleolithic men alive in today's society

So here's my second blog post and as promised coming on the second day as I will keep it up every day. For me personally I don't really see the Paleo Diet at all as a diet, but more so as a lifestyle and later on I will discuss various lifestyle choices I have made to be more in touch with the Paleolithic lifestyle and how you will be able to implicate the diet into your life.

As the Paleo Diet is a lifestyle so to speak, let’s take a look at some modern hunter gatherer societies or Nomadic people. Hunter gatherers obtain between 5 and 80 per cent of their food from gathering according to Wikipedia so there lifestyles do vary. Moreover, so will yours, so each and every one of us has to make the lifestyle unique to ourselves.

These modern day hunter gatherer societies will typically still have very little influence from the outside world and are still prevalent in Western Australia such as the Spinifex people or the Pila Nguru as well as many others.

Okay so the fact that there are still a few hunter gatherer societies around in Australia and a few Adivasi people of India or maybe the indigenous South Americans, it’s nice to know but does it’s not really relevant to our modern day lifestyles, right? Wrong.

Observe these guys lifestyles and you’ll see they don’t suffer from “Western” diseases; diabetes, Alzheimer’s, even the common cold – it has been reported that Arthur de Vany who is now in his seventies hasn’t contracted so much as a cold from his “new evolutionary” way of living so I think it’s important and albeit interesting to look at the hunter gatherer societies of today as well as yester-yester-yesteryear for inspiration.

While reading the Paleo Diet for Athletes, the authors Joe Friel and Loren Cordain mention Captain Cook on his travels to Australia, who is quoted as saying that he did not “perceive the slightest eruption on their skin.” Yes diet does clear up acne in my opinion as I’ve tried it and it really works; however lapses into the biscuit tin or reaching for the chocolate do seem to worsen my condition.

The Paleo Diet for Athletes also charts that skinfold thickness is thicker among Westerners and we have lower volumes of VO2 max (than any of the following groups stated) – which basically reflects your physical fitness. So from the Aborigines, Eskimoes, !Kung (from Namibia, Botswana and Angola), Pygmies (basically defined as any ethnic group whose men are less than 4ft 11 inches) to finally the modern Westerner, it’s clear to see who is healthiest – well as far as diet is concerned. So much for McDonalds eh.
I leave you with a picture of some of the African Pygmies and a European explorer and I’ll be back tomorrow.