The Paleo Diet: Is Eating Like a Caveman Really a Healthy Way to Lose Weight?

Sure, it may encourage you to eat like a cave man, but is the Paleo diet really a healthy way to lose weight?

Loren Cordain, Ph.D., and the founder of the Paleo Movement, says, according to his website, that this diet is the world's healthiest, based upon fundamental concepts that provide the optimal nutrition to which we are genetically accepted and the therapeutic effect is supported by randomized controlled human trials. When adopting these dietary habits, such as consuming more lean meats, fish, seafood, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and 'good' fats. However, common staples of today's world including grains, legumes, dairy products, and of course, sugar, transfat, and processed foods of any kind, are completely cut out. 

The website boasts that a surge of benefits will enter your life, including the following: a lessened risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and most chronic degenerative diseases in the western world, loss of weight, improved athletic performance, and the list goes on, but what are some criticism of a diet like this?

Though the diet has created an illusion through popular media of a universal, homogeneous, 'one-size fits all,' meat-dominated, hunger-gathered diet, reality shows a very different picture. Truth be told, hunger-gatherers expressed a diverse range of dietary behaviors that do not fall into one standard, universal macro-nutrient pattern. 

"It's absolutely true that our bodies didn't evolve under circumstances where we had television and lots of calorie-rich but nutrient-poor food, but at the same time, talking about life 100,000 years ago like it was completely static or like it was the same all over the world doesn't reflect reality either," said biologist Marlene Zuk, and author of the new book "Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live."

So the next time you're looking to shed a few pounds, make sure you take these things into consideration if you're thinking about the Paleo diet.