It's Day One of my caveman diet, and I'm sitting down to a breakfast unlike
It's Day One of my caveman diet, and I'm sitting down to a breakfast unlike any I've eaten before. Next to the sliced banana are two fluffy scrambled eggs and a boneless chicken breast. No oatmeal. No bagel. No milk.
Experts call this the Paleolithic diet, a menu plan based on what our hunting and gathering ancestors probably consumed 40,000 years ago. Proponents believe that by eating the way Fred and Wilma Flintstone did, we could help ward off many of the modern ailments that bedevil us, including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
The idea of going back to a hunter-gather diet isn't new. In 1988, S. Boyd Eaton, MD, an associate clinical professor of radiology and an adjunct associate professor of anthropology at Emory University, co-authored a popular book called The Paleolithic Prescription. Lately, web sites devoted to the Paleolithic diet have been springing up, with loyal followers sharing their experiences, along with suggested menus. "If it's a fad, it's the oldest fad going," says Loren Cordain, PhD, an exercise physiologist in the department of health and exercise science at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. "The whole world ate this way for thousands of years."
As I soon discovered, the forbidden foods list can make the Pritikin Program seem generous: no dairy products, grains, potatoes, cereals, salt, yeast, anything in a can, alcohol, or caffeine. (I negotiated a keep-the-caffeine clause with my editors.) What I do get to eat in abundance are lots of fruits, vegetables, wild game meats, and fish like salmon.
