The Nutritional Institute

This blog was written by natural health practitioner, Tom Sheehy from Natural Health 21, who was an interviewee on 12 Steps to Wholesome Nutrition.

The Paleo diet is based on foods presumed to be available to Paleolithic humans who lived during the Stone Age; beginning roughly 2.5 million years ago and marked by the earliest use of stone tools. The diet is based on avoiding foods that humans began eating after the Neolithic Revolution; the period where we began to cultivate crops and domesticate animals.

This was a change from the system of hunting and gathering that had sustained humans from earliest times. As a result, permanent settlements were established for the first time in our history. The first agricultural societies developed in the Middle East, rice cultivation later developed in China, and maize production in the Americas.

A lifestyle and ideology has developed around the Paleo diet, largely focusing on the capacity of human genes to evolve. Proponents state that humans were genetically adapted to eat only foods available in their local environments; arguing that our physiology has changed little, and that we have not been able to adapt to digest the grains and dairy products introduced by the agricultural revolution. However, undermining this concept; during the Paleolithic era, the highly variable climate and worldwide spread of human population meant that the species had to be nutritionally adaptable in order to survive.

The Paleolithic period ended around 10,000 years ago with the end of the Ice Age and the start of the Holocene period (modern era), which includes humankind's written history, the development of major civilisations, and a transition toward urban living.

Omnivore

The word omnivore derives from the Latin ‘omnis’ (all) and ‘vora’ (to devour); used to describe animals that have the capacity to obtain energy and nutrients from foods of both plant and animal origin. This is a notable distinction from herbivores (plant eaters) such as horse and sheep, who cannot digest animal tissue, and carnivores (meat eaters) such as lions, who obtain energy and nutrients exclusively from a diet of animal tissue.

Various mammals are omnivorous, such as pigs, bears, skunks, sloths, and rats. Hominidae (great apes) including humans and chimpanzees, are also omnivores; being omnivores gives animals more food security in stressful times, and makes it possible to survive in variable and inhospitable environments.

Unfortunately, many modern humans have taken their position as ‘all-devourer’ too literally, and commenced with the intriguing behaviour of eating non-foods. Industrial food production is awash with synthetic ingredients and chemical additives that interfere with biochemistry at a cellular level and are increasingly linked to a host of chronic health conditions.

The foods we eat have changed more during the past 100 years than in the previous 10,000; much of which has not been for the better. During this period, the food manufacture and supply system has shifted away from fresh, seasonal ingredients; to the highly processed, synthetically manufactured pseudo-foods that fill the shelves of modern supermarkets.

Humans as a species have come a long way from their historical diet of diverse and unrefined foods. The modern transition to highly processed foods, in conjunction with a more sedentary lifestyle, is a major contributor to the change in disease patterns seen in society today, and the absurd irony that the number of people malnourished globally are now evenly matched by the obese. Statistically, individuals in the range of ‘healthy weight’ are now the minority.

Our Paleolithic hunter-gatherer days are long past, and we are no longer required to labour on farms to produce the food we need to survive. Today we have access to an abundance of food choices year-round and, for the first time in human history, face uncertainty as to what best works for our highly evolved digestive systems.

The key then, is to manage and gratify the appetite, allowing us to feel satisfied and content; whilst determining how, when and what to reduce in order to protect our health. To understand what works best for each individual requires that we cultivate our innate intuition; a process supported not by dietary prescriptions, but rather templates.

Individually tailored eating plans must be based on a combination of sound nutritional principles and personal discernment of the physical, mental and emotional feeling of the food in the belly. In doing so, no food need be off-limits, yet no food can have an emotional hold over us either.

Nutrition can be a controversial subject. Many people who become interested in nutrition find themselves prey to two silent fears; fear of eating and fear of not eating. Yet by focusing predominantly on plants, with the addition of high quality whole foods from all the major groups, one cannot go too far off course; and may well notice sooner if they do.

Re-learning to cook simple meals at home, so as to see exactly what is being put into the body, can be a valuable first step towards regaining health and discerning the types of foods that serve each person best.

Click here to view Tom's website, including other blogs he has written.