What is the Paleo diet? Here's a common
sense explanation for the beginner
coming right up.
Hi Iam doctor Ekberg with Wellness For Life
and if you like to truly master health
by understanding how the body really
works make sure that you subscribe and
hit that notification bell so that you
don't miss anything so paleo has become
a buzzword these days and there's a lot
of confusion as usual and what humans do
best is to complicate really really
simple things. So if you go on some
forums and you start nitpicking before
you long you're just go crazy so first
of all what does it mean where's they
come from why do we do it the
Paleolithic era was from about 3 million
years ago to about 10,000 years ago
that's the time that humans first
started making stone tools and and they
got better and better at innovating
things until about 10,000 years ago we
started the agricultural era so during
this whole time there was no agriculture
and the humans and the humanoids were
hunter-gatherers they were walking
around they were moving their
settlements they didn't build cities and
then about 250,000 years ago we got Homo
sapiens and that's what you and I are if
you're listening to this you are a homo
sapiens and that means that you shared
the same genetic code as the people did
about 250,000 years ago we haven't had
time to adapt our genetic code it
changes very very slowly so what that
means is whatever they ate they have
become adapted to and that's me that
means that's what you and I are adapted
to that's the foodstuff that fits into
your genes that's what your body knows
what to do with what did they eat they
ate primarily meat, fish and poultry if
you could hunt it or catch it or pick it
then it was food they eat fruit berries
vegetable
and roots and they also had some nuts
and seeds but now we have to realize
that could make the Paleo diet a whole
bunch of different things depending on
where you live did you live in the
Arctic did you live in the tropics did
you live in the mountains or did you
live by the coast was are we talking
summer or we talking winter so it's not
a single thing that could be a huge
amount of variation to it but what's
more important is to understand what we
eat a whole lot of that they had none of
and now we're talking
they had no grains they had no legumes
those are things like peas and beans and
peanuts and things like that they had no
processed foods and now we're talking
primarily sugar and they also had no
Franken foods and what we mean by that
is that there's this tale of dr.
Frankenstein who tried to create life
making Frankenstein's monster well
that's kind of what we're doing with our
food alteration we're making monster
food we're making things that has
disastrous effects it didn't work for
Dr. Frankenstein and it's not working so
well because we're getting sicker and
sicker and sicker the more of these
processed Franken foods that we eat and
one of the worst ones is margarine
because there is nothing it's like
plastic there's nothing no similarity
between anything nature has ever made
- what margarine is same thing with
artificial sweeteners it is a neurotoxin
it's a chemical and all these other
chemicals preservatives food additives
flavor enhancers colorings etc those are
frankenfoods they're chemicals they're
poison they have no place at all
so these are things that they never ever
got not a single ounce or gram ever that
makes it pretty clear-cut that yes there
are some things they could eat and there
were some things they never ate
but then the question is do we use this
as a guideline as a template to give us
some ideas and some common sense or do
we say that nothing ever changes and
therefore we should treat this like
religion like a firm rule this is the
way it is and one of the most common
things that come up then is can we have
dairy so according to the religious view
this the stern the firm view of course
we can't have any dairy because these
guys didn't have it well you could argue
that maybe they killed an animal that
they could get some milk out of sure but
here's the way I look at it dairy is
from mammals humans are mammals it is
probably the most natural food on the
planet because every mammal baby starts
out on Mother's Milk
we pretty much continue until that baby
can fend for itself until it's old
enough to go out and start picking
things and doing things so for different
animals that that lasts different
periods of times but most
hunter-gatherer populations
breastfeeding is commonplace up until
six or seven years old not exclusively
not the only food source but as a
supplement food source so basically at
that age they they don't need it because
now they're old enough to start moving
around but what that tells me is dairy
is natural to humans because we are
mammals and we are adapted to that food
so then we can talk about well should we
drink the milk from other species so yes
we should have human milk but can we
have goat's milk or cow's milk and I
believe based on muscle testing that and
and clinical results that any milk is
perfectly fine as long as it is not
pasteurized that is the key because milk
is alive it's always in nature is always
delivered straight from the source
to the person eating it to the baby and
that means it was never pasteurized it
was never processed the pasteurization
happened because they wanted to extend
the shelf-life and now they turn it into
a frankenfood because they kill off the
enzymes and the bacteria and everything
that was in there that helped you digest
it that made it alive and natural so to
me Dairy is okay but never pasteurized
and if you make sour cream or yogurt out
of it now you bring it back to life so
now it's okay again so once you read
online about this you quickly get very
confused and as always everyone turns it
in to another diet and does it work can
you lose weight on it and yes if you eat
this way you lose so much weight and as
always they're missing the point it's
not a diet and we don't care if it works
for weight loss it's an understanding
it's a it's an idea
it's a metaphor for understanding what
food is what food is suited for us and
what is non-food what is it that's
foreign and poisonous and what is it
that can sustain us there was a guy
called Weston Price who travelled the
world about a hundred years ago and he
found that there were populations all
over the planets who were extremely
healthy who had no tooth decay no
degenerative diseases they were doing
absolutely fine and some of them ate a
lot of vegetables and some ate no
vegetables some ate almost all fish
because they live by the coast and some
ate no fish because they lived in the
mountains they had goats they drank goat
milk they had cows they drank cow's milk
they made cheese and butter and no
matter where he went they were perfectly
healthy as long as they ate whole food
as long as they didn't mess with it as
long as they didn't process it or turn
it into Franken food
humans can survive on a wide variety of
different foods the problem we've gotten
into is we've added too much grain too
much legumes we process too much
everything is sugary we have the
high-fructose corn syrups and the agave
and all these different things that we
never got in those amounts from nature
so there's the problem so that's the
Paleo diet in a nutshell that's the idea
behind it can you use it religiously and
get good results absolutely go for it
can you use it as a template I think
that's the better that's how I look at
it I look at as a great metaphor to
start understanding why certain things
might be good for us and why certain
things might be creating a lot of damage
so the take-home message is use it any
way you like it's a great metaphor for
understanding what foods might be
suitable and what might not but in the
end you eat whole foods you avoid
processed foods and you eat it in the
freshest and most natural state that you
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