The Caveman Diet

Yeah, skin clearing up is a side effect. Dr. Cordain's new book is actually about curing acne through this diet. And when I cheat, or am in a place where it's hard to stay strictly on my diet and start eating grains (which Cordain says are the chief cause of acne), I immediately start getting a bit of acne again. Clear-headedness and consistent, high energy levels are another benefit, no doubt.

I've changed my way of eating (been on this "diet") for about two months now. Never have I seen such rapid change. Within 10 days my skin got clearer. After the first month I was building muscle like nothing. Since school started I've never been able to focus in class or while I study as well as I can now. Also, when I DO give myself a little sweat every now and then it's ten times sweeter than I ever remember. In summary, I'm seriously lovin' it! Though I wouldn't recommend it to the weak willed. The modern world of food can be a powerful temptation.

Hi Karney, you look thin, but this is good. One day on the bus in Vancouver BC I saw and heard 2 men talking: we all overheard that they were both 100 years old. The one was so spry (I saw him get on and off the bus) looked like 40 years old...he was a thin Chinese man, no accent, well-dressed, wearing a Fedora hat. The other was fat and decrepit, Caucasian. I often wondered what the Chinese man's secret was! Keeping thin is one of the secrets, I think. Found this link on the low-carbers forum.

An apple tasting like a marshmallow? I've just been eating marshmallows for an hour and I find that hard to believe. I could never mistake a marshmallow for an apple.

I do like the diet idea though. I could definitely live on pork and grapes alone.

Nuts are on the diet, yes...

;)

People are nutty.

A couple of points - yes it's true tat a lot of the vegetables and fruits we eat today are drastically different from their ancestral predecessors. I think it's more true of some things than others, and some of the things that have changed the most, like corn, aren't allowed on the diet anyway.

Re: meat. One of the biggest challenges in this diet is to eat high-quality fat rather than fat from domesticated animals, as animalia_libero just mentioned. I try to eat a lot of salmon and wild game meat, but that's not easy for everyone. Factory-farmed meat is bad for you in lots of different ways.

I have no doubt that this is a health diet but the notion that you only would be eating "stone age food" is flawed.
Pretty much all vegetables and fruit that are available now are heavily modified versions of their wild ancestors.

To me is not so much as to going back to our "roots" --if it could be called that-- but to keep evolving. To revert back to a diet we had at one point in time can be interesting but that's as far as it goes for me.

I guess there comes a point in time where we must leave some things behind. Maybe rely more on our intellect so we can make better choices? In the end, isn't that the point of evolution?

To wrap it up, all I get from this is that maybe cavemen weren't that dumb after all. I think they would never be fooled into eating the kind of junk people consume these days.

lol a caveman diet.

Actually, Dr Sears who wrote "The Zone" books in the 1990s bases the zone diet on the eating habits of our "caveman" ancestors. He says that our bodies haven't evolved regarding weight and illness like our food industry has. His suggestion for food shopping is to shop the perimeter of a grocery store where there is mostly meat, and produce. That is the healthy way to shop...The center of the store is the processed foods that cause the problems and illnesses our bodies encounter from eating them.

Also, our ancestors from the "cave-dwelling" days also went out and found their food and "fur clothing" and their lifestyle was much more active then ours today. Thus, with just about anything we need at our fingertips and cars to get there or computers to order whatever we want and get mailed to our home, our activity levels are very low in comparison and our bodies have not adjusted to the lessened activity of yesteryear to burn the calorie-ridden processed foods of today.

So, as in Dr. Sears' books, eating like our "cave-dwelling ancestors" and exercising too will keep us healthy and slim. And you can add a very small amount of rice or potato at times.

I think it sounds like a good diet. If the theory of evolution holds true, humans are probably programmed to eat a diet like this or very similar to this. It sounds like a healthy choice to me, but I'm an engineering undergrad student, not a nutritionalist.....

hmmm...maybe i can try for 4 weeks!!! idk I do lov yogurt!!! and cheese with my eggs...but i think i might try it..crazy right?

karney,
you da man. your overdrawn pod stands as one of my current favorite current pods. this is a great topic too. good luck touring the doc and keep making shit for current.

Very interesting. The concept is totally logical, and sensical. I'd like to see the long term affects as well. I don't think that I could live without rice though.

i am going to give this a try. thanks for posting.

Very interesting! This goes to show that the eating habits of our pre-evolved counterparts still have work with our own genetic code.