Why Go Paleo?

The Paleolithic Diet is based on eating foods our Paleolithic ancestors ate. The "Paleolithic" refers to the Paleolithic Age, about 2,600,000 years ago to about 10,000 years ago. The premise is that during the Paleolithic, we evolved a specific genome that has only changed approximately 0.01 per cent in these last 10,000 years. However, during this recent time span mass agriculture, grains/grain products, sugars/sugar products, dairy/dairy products, and a plethora of processed foods have all been introduced as a regular part of the human diet. Research shows that 70% of the average caloric intake of Americans is from foods that did not even exist for our Paleolithic ancestors. This discordance is having tremendously negative health consequences for our society as a whole. We are not eating the foods we are genetically and physiologically adapted to eat (99.9% of our genetic profile is still Paleolithic); and the discordance is an underlying cause for much of the "diseases of civilization", "syndrome X", obesity, and "diseases of old age" that are so epidemic in our society today. - "www.thepaleodiet.com"