The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat

simply THE book to read on proper nutrition (171 of 179 Found this Helpful)   February 18, 2002
I would like to write this review for 2 reasons:

1)I just want to say that I first started to lose weight when I switched to a low-carb diet, but continued to eat lots of dairy and soy, as I was a vegetarian. I have always been a size 12-14, and was quite pleased when I dropped to a size 10 by eliminating bread, pasta and sugar from my diet. I still experienced occasional fatigue and lots of digestive upset, though, and it wasn't until I took an allergy test and found I was allergic to grains and dairy - and subsequently cut both completely out of my diet - that I started to feel the energy and vitality for which I have been searching for years. I'm also allergic to most beans, so my only alternative source of protein was meat. I started to eat lean, unprocessed meats and fresh fruits and veggies, and my energy was not only soaring, but my depression lifted, my skin became smoother and softer, and I dropped down to a size 4 without even trying to lose weight! (I've never been less than a size 10 in my life!) Anyways, I effortlessly maintained that level of vitality and a size 4 until I started to eat rice flour, oats, processed meats and candy. I quickly gained 15lbs and fell into depression once again, leading me to realize that once on a paleo diet, it must become a way of life. The foods that Dr.Cordain describes as detrimental to our health (grains, dairy, legumes) are indeed factors in all sorts of health problems. If you are a possible buyer of this book, please take note of this, you cannot expect to lose weight and then go back to your usual style of eating. Buy this book and undertake Dr.Cordain's suggestions only if you are ready to change your lifestyle - it will be well worth it, I promise! In any case, I have since started back on the paleo-lifestyle route (feeling better already and have lost 5lbs in one week), with the help of Lauren Cordain's book, and it has been an invaluable resource for me. I have beeen waiting for him to write a book for a while now, as I have been reading interviews and papers written by him on www.beyondveg.com since I first started on the paleo nutrition route 2 years ago. This brings me to my second point in writing this review:

2)In response to the reviews that mention disdain at the apparent contradiction with Dr.Cordain discouraging the use of saturated fat while promoting the idea that humans' natural diet contained lots of meat, known to be rich in saturated fats, I have read research that sheds some light on this, at least for me. It seems that the saturated fat found in lean game meat - buffalo or wild boar that has been running around the jungle or the plains all day - has a different composition entirely than the saturated fat found in your average piece of supermarket meat - cows, chickens, even free-range game. There is a more favorable ratio of omega 3:omega 6 fatty acids in the lean game meat, as well as other aspects that I can't remember offhand, but you can read more for yourself on this subject in interviews of Dr.Cordain on beyondveg's website.

One more note for those of you trying to decide between Dr.Atkins or something similar, or a book such as this one or Neanderthin: speaking from the point of view of a person who has developed IBS and multiple food allergies as a result of the Standard American Diet, I wholeheartedly agree with the low-carb way of life, but must offer my 2cents that any diet that fails to caution the consumer on the downfalls of consuming fake foods such as artificial sweetners and salty, processed meats, cannot be healthy for the long-term. I would eat fresh cream or whole milk before I put MSG, nitrates, sulfites or Splenda into my body. I have tried Atkins, and I felt a big difference in my general health from that program to one of eating more natural foods as advocated by Dr.Cordain, Diana Schwarzbein and Ray Audette.

If you are undecided, please take your long-term health as well as your short-trem weight into consideration. Any of the above-mentioned authors can help you lose weight and feel great, but unlike Atkins or Eades, they will help you do it for life. As far as deciding between the above-mentioned authors, "The Paleo Diet" is written by a well-respected professor and expert in the field of paleolithic nutrition, and if you were to go with one book on low-carbing, this would probably the healthiest, most sane and moderate approach I have seen out there.

The Stone Age Diet brought up to date (114 of 132 Found this Helpful)   March 16, 2002
Before I found this book, I'd heard of the Stone Age diet and wished I could adopt it. The restrictions--no grains, legumes, dairy products, or processed foods--sounded formidable, as did the requirements--fresh meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit, the wilder/more organic the better. But my health problems have recently goaded me into adopting a rough form of this diet, and I've needed a diet manual to focus and refine my new food choices. Voila! I found The Paleo Diet just yesterday and am already convinced it's the right diet book for me. I do feel better since I started eating more animal protein and no starch a few weeks ago, but I've been having trouble with fatty meats, and Loren Cordain's book explains why.

The reviewers here who argue that saturated fat has been getting a bum rap, that our Stone Age ancestors undoubtedly ate the whole bird and not just the breast, etc., appear to have read the book cursorily, if at all. Cordain clearly explains that the animal protein prehistoric people thrived on had nowhere near the amount of saturated fat found in today's domestic meats, poultry, and dairy products. Quoting from the book, "Paleolithic people couldn't eat fatty meats if they tried--they had nothing like the tubby grain-fed animals that produce our steaks today." Readers who want more science may consult the 20-page bibliography in the back of the book.

The Paleo Diet is primarily a diet manual, a nutritional primer, and a cookbook, loaded with practical information (e.g. "How to Be a Savvy Shopper for Fish," "Dining Out, Travel, and Peer Pressure," etc.) for readers who want to adapt the Stone Age diet to the 21st century. What's more, the book is engagingly written and extremely readable. Above all, Cordain makes the Stone Age diet seem simple. If I could give his book an extra five stars, I would!

Excellent Book (29 of 31 Found this Helpful)   November 20, 2006
I was recommeded this book by a fitness coach. I was about 50 lbs overweight and suffering health problems. Anyhow, I been following the program for about 2 months now and occasionally work out and have lost 25 lbs. I tried Atkins before and did lose about 40 lbs, but as soon as I went off and added carbs back I gained weight like no tomorow. I wore everything I ate. With this program I eat a lot of fruit and vegtables and the part that is great is it seems to kill your hunger after awhile. I used to think about food most of the time and with this program, I actually sometimes have to remind myself to eat. That is completely un-heard of for me prior. Additionally, I feel much better, my compexion, and skin is much healthier looking. I ve lost about 25 lbs already and I have energy to want to work out. With Atkins I had no energy and no endurance. Occasionaly when I cheat, and eat bread, it actually upsets my stomach now. I used to have indigestion frequently, now that is also gone. I highly recommend this program.

At least one of the 'editorial' reviewers didn't read it (25 of 27 Found this Helpful)   January 9, 2004
... or maybe s/he simply didn't understand what s/he read. I'm talking about the one that made the stupid statement about the lifespan of paleo humans being only 30 years. Cordain's research shows that if the paleo human was able to avoid childhood mortality and accident, he or she was typically a healthy and productive member of the tribe well into the 60's or 70's, and that the agricultural 'revolution' substantially shortened the human lifespan. Skeletal remains of elderly paleo humans are common -- plus they don't usually show signs of degenerative diseases (or even crooked teeth). Both Cordain and Audette make this observation, so I'm assuming the reviewer simply relied on what somebody else said about the book when writing the 'review'.

Cordain's diet recommendations have two big plusses: 1) they make sense, and 2) they are simple enough for anybody (except maybe the 'reviewer' in question) to understand and implement.

In addition to this book, I recommend Ray Audette's NeanderThin.

Destined to be regarded as a classic (34 of 39 Found this Helpful)   January 4, 2006
The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain, Ph.D. is a monumental work that brilliantly explains and popularizes what may well be one of the biggest breakthroughs in scientific understanding in human history: the evolutionary hypothesis of human nutrition and lifestyle. This hypothesis does what no other diet and exercise regime does: it builds a scientific model that can be used to make predictions that can be tested and it does so upon the very foundation of biology--evolution.

This book does an excellent job of explaining this model and how to put it to use. Dr. Cordain's style is eminently readable, so it is understandable to the layperson while maintaining a scientific and evidence-based approach. Endnotes would make the book even better.

Those scientists who are using this evolutionary model of nutrition predict that the healthiest foods for humans will be the natural foods that humans have been eating for the last 2.5 million years--not the agrarian and processed foods of the last ten thousand years--and that an optimal diet will approximate as much as possible the types of diets that Paleolithic peoples consumed.

Most other diets take a hit-or-miss, after-the-fact approach, focusing on the micro level of what certain scientific studies and anecdotal evidence suggest about the healthiness of certain foods and diets, and from the aggregation of some of this data, try to determine the optimal dietary approach. As new data comes in that contradicts the old, upheavals in dietary fads occur and many people become confused and discouraged by the conflicting signals they receive over the years. As others have noted, Paleolithic-based diets are the only non-fad diets, since they span hundreds of thousands and millions of years, not decades.

The most common criticism of the evolutionary hypothesis of diet and lifestyle involves comparative life expectancy. Assumptions are made that people live much longer and healthier lives today than Stone Agers did, and that Stone Agers did not live long enough to acquire the chronic degenerative diseases of modern civilization. The idea that hunter gatherers' lives were "nasty, brutish, and short" is actually an exaggeration that was popularized by Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. Dr. Cordain explains (as have others) the scientific findings that human life expectancies DECLINED when Stone Age hunter-gatherers adopted an agrarian lifestyle at the start of the Neolithic era. The later increases in life expectancy were mainly due to public health advances in sanitation, food safety, quarantine systems, immunizations and childbirth survival rates. Thirty three years was the estimated AVERAGE life expectancy of a Paleolithic hunter-gatherer male, not the maximal lifespan of all hunter gatherers. A hunter gatherer who survived childbirth, infectious disease, accidents, battles, and wild animals could be expected to live as long as we do today. Moreover, archaeological and anthropological studies of Paleolithic records and contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures show much lower prevalence of heart disease, sudden cardiac death, cancer, stroke and even acne than in modern societies.

Professor Jared Diamond, the famous evolutionary biologist and author, went so far as to state that "recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture ... was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence. ... Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we're still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it's unclear whether we can solve it."

Those questions that Cordain didn't handle thoroughly in his book are addressed on his website (http://thepaleodiet.com/faqs/). Perhaps future editions of the book will include the additional details and defenses that Cordain has posted on his site. For example, Cordain responds to another common objection to The Paleo Diet--that hunter gatherers favored fatty cuts of meat and that Cordain is therefore wrong to suggest that we restrict our intake of saturated fat. Cordain agrees that "There is absolutely no doubt that hunter-gatherers favored the fattiest part of the animals they hunted and killed" (such as the tongue and brains). But this does not mean that we should eat unlimited quantities of fatty domestic meats, as Cordain explains: "Not surprisingly, these organs are all relatively high in fat, but more importantly analyses from our laboratories showed the types of fats in tongue, brain, and marrow are healthful, unlike the high concentrations of saturated fats found in fatty domestic meats. Brain is extremely high in polyunsaturated fats including the health-promoting omega-3 fatty acids, whereas the dominant fat in tongue and marrow are the cholesterol lowering monounsaturated fats." Cordain points out that modern feedlot cattle typically have 30% body fat or greater, versus the 10% body fat that wild Paleolithic animals averaged on a year round basis.

Cordain also explains on his site that the question of saturated fat is more complicated than a simple good-or-bad debate would indicate. Some saturated fat is good (stearic acid) and some is bad (palmitic acid, lauric acid, and myristic acid). Wild animals have more of the good saturated fat than domestic animals.

As scientific understanding of the new field of evolutionary nutrition advances, some of Cordain's recommendations may well be revised. Cordain has already modified one of his recommendations: he no longer recommends using flaxseed oil in cooking (he still recommends consuming it cold, adding it to meats after cooking them and to salads) and acknowledges that was an error.

Cordain was first "enlightened" about diet by S. Boyd Eaton's 1985 article in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled "Paleolithic Nutrition." Accumulating evidence and growing scientific opinion suggests that S. Boyd Eaton, Loren Cordain and others have indeed started a scientific revolution. I believe that this book will be seen in retrospect as an early classic in this revolution's development.

One doesn't even need to accept the evolutionary model in order to recognize the wisdom of this dietary approach. Cordain says that a blueprint for optimal nutrition is built into our genes and "Whether you believe the architect of that blueprint is God, or God acting through evolution by natural selection, or by evolution alone, the end result is still the same: We need to give our bodies the foods we were originally designed to eat."