Low Carb Diet: Did you know that only five hundred generations ago, everyone ate a low-carb diet?
A low-carb diet based on the eating habits of our pre-agricultural era ancestors is the healthiest and most appropriate choice for optimal health and fitness. This natural low-carb diet shouldn’t be confused with some fad, low-carb diets that promote artificial foods and restrict healthy carbohydrates such as fruits and vegetables.
Low-Carb Foods
Forget about the “low-carb” products that you might find packaged in stores. Think instead about the foods that were available to our ancestors before they started mass-production farming. They caught or picked everything they ate. They did not open boxes or bags, and their food did not last unspoiled for years. The foods we are designed to eat are whole and natural, unprocessed, and unpreserved.
The naturally low-carb paleo food groups inculde meats and organs, vegetables, fruits and berries, and eggs, seeds, nuts, and oils.
Low-Carb Diet Plan
The plan is simple. Eat as much as you want of lean meats, vegetables, and in-season fruits. This was the diet of our pre-agricultural ancestors. It provides all we need nutritionally even though it include fewer food groups than the modern diet.
All major dietary components are covered–( vitamins, fats, protein, fats, carbohydrates, antioxidants and phytosterols etc.) This is for the simple reason that [the paleolithic diet] is the only diet that is coded for in our genes–it contains only those foods that were ‘on the table’ during our long evolution, and discards those which were not.”–Dr. Ben Balzer, family physician.
If you’re looking for an established healthy low-carb diet plan with recipes, you might try Primal Blueprint, the Paleo Diet, or Protein Power LifePlan.
Cooking Versus Raw
There is debate over when our pre-agricultural ancestors began cooking their foods and whether raw or cooked is better for us. Eating a partially raw diet is beneficial to digestive function and a healthy gut. Unless you are knowledgeable about raw meat food safety, meats should be cooked. If you choose to eat legumes and tubers, which are not recommended, they must be cooked to reduce toxicity.
It is interesting to note that most plant foods can be eaten in greater quantity when cooked than when raw because they are more easily digested when cooked. Cooking is a form of processing, and like all processing, it is a way of predigesting our foods before we eat them.
Foods to Avoid
Agricultural foods such as grains and dairy products are implicated in the development of a number of diseases referred to as Syndrome X (Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, high cholesterol, and others.) These diseases were virtually unheard of before agricultural times.
Most agricultural foods do not occur naturally, cannot be eaten raw, and are heavily processed. Another characteristic of these foods is that, when overeaten, our bodies don’t reliably signal fullness as they would with natural foods. You may have noticed that there’s often room for dessert, but not for another helping of steamed vegetables.
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