Paleo diet Is the Stone Age food healthy?

Paleo: food as in the Stone Age

09/04/2015

Food combining, raw food, vegan: Alternative nutrition concepts are booming. In some people, the so-called Paleo diet is now popular. Their followers eat as in the Stone Age: meat and vegetables yes, grain and milk no. Nutritionists are critical.

Food as in the Stone Age
Meat, fish, seafood, eggs, fruits and vegetables, as well as mushrooms, nuts and honey are okay, sugar or milk is not: Paleo fans rely on food as in the Stone Age. The basic idea is to eat, above all, what prehistoric man consumed more than 20,000 years ago in the Stone Age. This diet will therefore also „Stone Age Diet“ or „Stone Age diet“ called. It is true that what was added by agriculture and livestock, is taboo: cereals and thus bread or cereal and milk and thus yogurt or butter, but also sugar.

Diet trend finds more followers
Among other things, many active athletes Paleo food is very popular. In the US, the diet trend has been announced for some time, meanwhile he finds more followers in Germany. As the news agency dpa reports, that is „Mammeo“ in the Bornheim district of Frankfurt, one of the few restaurants in Germany that cook, bake and drink as in the Paleolithic, the Palaeolithic. Sariya Forkel started doing that a year ago. From mid-May, the 28-year-old wants to open her café with lunch on the weekend in the evening and then also „really nice steaks“ to offer. There are only a few role models: 2011 did „Sauvage“ opened in Berlin-Neukölln, in Prenzlauer Berg in 2013 came - even larger - offshoots added.

Different reasons for the Stone Age diet
Among the supporters of this diet are often meat and fish fans to find. However, many also rely on this for other reasons, for example because they suffer from lactose intolerance or gluten intolerance (gluten allergy) „Stone Age food“. Advocates in some guidebooks advocate effective protection against many widespread Western diseases that have come about as a result of the emergence of progressive civilizations. According to the meat diet to protect against heart attack, obesity and diabetes. Forkel, who has been eating the Paleo diet for about three years, said: „I did not want to eat any industrially processed foods anymore.“ She said she finally wanted to open a restaurant, „in which I would like to go myself“. The motto of their shop is: „Real food“.

Nutrition experts against „Nutritional dogmatism“
Nutritionists, however, are rather critical of the whole. According to dpa, Susanne Klaus, who heads the working group Physiology of Energy Metabolism at the German Institute for Nutrition Research, rejects any „Nutritional dogmatism“ from. This is sometimes too „a kind of religious substitute“. In addition, there are critics who accuse the representatives of this diet that the statements regarding the Stone Age way of life consists of pure hypotheses for which no scientific evidence exists. From a scientific point of view, the reconstruction of nutrition during the Stone Age is only partially possible. Among other things, it is not clear whether Stone Age people really ate superficially meat. In addition, it is criticized that the Stone Age diet is not adapted to the modern man, which is less physically active today than in primitive times. (Ad)