There are many interpretations of the Paleo diet. I'll include some links at the end of the post to some of the most popular and informative sources of information. The soundbite answer is simple: eat like your Paleolithic ancestors to avoid the diseases of civilization. I'll present here what I do in practice.
1. I'm putting this first because it's very important. Even when I "cheat" on my diet, this is the rule I NEVER break. NO WHEAT. OK, I'll stop shouting! No grains in general, certainly no gluten grains. On the rare occasions when I eat grains of any kind, it will be a small amount of rice or corn.
2. Although I don't eat any more meat than I used to, it's in some sense a more important part of the diet. I make sure that I eat meat from animals that were humanely raised and that eat the food they were meant to eat. So no grain fed beef with the antibiotics that are needed because grain makes cows sick. Chickens should not just be "free range", and they certainly shouldn't be fed a "vegetarian diet", they should actually be outside and eating bugs and whatever else they eat naturally. The net result? Beef and eggs that are actually high in omega-3 fats. More on this later. One way to get meat like this is to buy from local producers whenever possible.
3. No sugar, and certainly no artificial sweeteners! And of course, avoiding high fructose corn syrup is a no brainer. If I must sweeten something, I'll use either a little honey or stevia. But I rarely make things that need to be sweetened. And further, when you stop consuming so much sweet stuff, you start detecting sweetness where you don't expect it (like in broccoli and cauliflower).
4. OK, by now you're thinking, this sounds impossible. There's wheat and sugar in EVERYTHING! Yes, almost everything processed contains one or both of these. And so that means it's a whole food diet. Yeah, just like your ancestors ate! This is not as hard as it seems. In fact, since we've gone Paleo, Wayne has taken over much of the cooking!
5. Fats. I eat a lot of fat. What kind of fat? Mostly saturated fat (from animals or coconut oil) and monounsaturated fat (extra virgin olive oil, EVOO). So we usually cook in coconut oil and put butter (not margarine) on our veggies. What do we avoid? The supposedly "heart healthy" industrial seed oils like canola oil and other polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). If I could tolerate it I'd also take some cod liver oil (yuck!). The net result is that we avoid overconsumption of omega-6 oils, and together with eating more sources of omega-3, we get the ratios more in balance with what our ancestors ate and what our bodies need.
6. Carbohydrates. This is a somewhat controversial topic in the Paleo/Primal communities. However, I've found that what works best for me is to avoid starchy vegetables along with the grains, and so my diet tends to be very low carb. Some in the Paleo community like sweet potatoes, but I don't like the sweetness and I just feel better when I don't eat a lot of carbs. In general, because Paleo eaters avoid grains, potatoes, and sugar, it's a naturally lower carb diet than the standard American diet (SAD).
Some people might be tempted to try to make fake versions of forbidden foods like pizza, but generally it's a bad idea. It doesn't satisfy cravings for that food because they generally don't taste that good. So it's better to just enjoy the food that is allowed. That's what we do and we don't feel deprived, since we do indeed enjoy the food we do eat.
There's more to it but these are the basics.
Now for a few links:
Robb Wolf, author of "The Paleo Solution"
Mark Sisson, author of "Primal Blueprint"
Paul Jaminet, author of "The Perfect Health Diet"
Melissa McEwen's Hunt-Gather-Love blog
A Wall Street Journal article about gluten sensitivity
Paleo 101 - Paleo Diet Lifestyle blog
Article: Why eating like we did 20,000 years ago may be the way of the future
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