A Paleo Diet aims at only using food that was available during the Paleolithic era which spans from 2,500,000 to 200,000 years ago.
The goal of the diet is to go back to foods that are unmodified and unprocessed and to stick to ingredients naturally growing in the wild.
The ingredients that are compatible with a Paleo Diet are all the foods growing naturally in nature, without cultivation.
It includes:
It excludes any ingredient that requires processing, that doesn’t naturally occur in the wild, or that wasn’t readily available during the Paleolithic era.
Among these not-paleo-friendly ingredients are:
The principles behind the paleo diet don’t have any scientific basis.
The idea that “eating like we used” to is better doesn’t carry any intrinsic justification.
However, since the diet focuses heavily on fruits and vegetables, it does bring a number of health benefits.
It has been proven that a Paleo diet can:
But the diet can also lead to a deficiency in fiber (often brought by grains and legumes), some vitamins, and minerals such as calcium.