What is primal eating? It’s about eating the way people did before industrialization occurred. While it’s similar to the Paleo or caveman diet, there are a few distinct differences. Both diets eliminate grains, since they’re based on what man might have eaten during caveman times. Both allow for rice a quinoa in the diet. However, the Paleo or caveman diet prohibits the use of dairy, while the primal diet encourages it, but only in the raw form. The Paleo diet doesn’t allow coffee or vegetables in the nightshade family like tomatoes, eggplant and bell peppers, but the primal diet does.
So what exactly do you eat when you opt for primal eating?
It’s simple. Avoid processed food. After all cavemen never went to the 7/11 for some beef jerky or grabbed a box of mac ‘n cheese off the shelf. Cut out those foods that came after farming, which includes almost all food that contains grain, especially those with wheat. Soy isn’t part of the primal diet, neither are peanuts, alcohol, granulated sugar (honey and maple syrup are allowed), and refined vegetable oils. If it sounds like most of the food on the dairy shelf aren’t listed, you’d be right, unless you’re in the fresh produce section.
The logic behind the primal diet is simple.
If you think about it, man lived for thousands of years and never once required a Twinkie, HoHo or Zinger to survive. In fact, many of the illnesses in today’s civilization, occur because of over consumption of sugar, processed foods and additives that lead to obesity, which is the leading cause of preventable deaths in the world today. Throughout hundreds of years of evolution has changed man, but processed foods were introduced recently. It makes sense that the body couldn’t evolve to ingest foods made in a lab and hope process them easily. The belief behind the primal and Paleo diet is that man was created to genetically consume the types of food found in these diets.
The primal diet is filled with healthy food and can improve overall health.
There’s no doubt about it, living on food with added sugar and other additives, simply isn’t healthy. One big benefit of the primal diet is that it’s good for people with diabetes, since it limits the sugar intake. It also can prove beneficial for those with food allergies and conditions like celiac disease. It is a far healthier diet than the average American diet and far more balanced. It’s good for weight loss, too.
- One mistake that people often make on a primal diet is focus on meat. Cavemen didn’t. Early man ate both meat and vegetables, but heavily relied on more of a vegetarian diet with the occasional meaty treat.
- Eating more plants, vegetables, seeds, nuts and oil increase the body’s anti-inflammatory benefits. Cutting out sugar and processed food also aids in reducing inflammation.
- People on a primal diet often lose as much as those on traditional diets, but tend to lose more inches around the middle and that translates to losing more fat. That fat, visceral fat, is the most dangerous type of fat.
- In short term studies, people on the primal diet showed improved blood pressure control, lower triglyceride levels, improved control of appetite and better weight loss than other diet types, even the Mediterranean diet.
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