Our bodies are the same bodies we have had
for hundreds of thousands of years (and boy does it feel like that sometimes) –
joking aside, our point is this: we know
what fuels the body what makes it work well – that hasn’t changed. What has changed is the world in which we
live.
Did somebody say choice? More choice out there than any of us could
possibly know what to do with. Throw
into the mix the fact that our bodies are programmed to like fat and sweet stuff
(necessary for our ancestors to direct us toward the calorie dense foods to
sustain us during the lean times) and on a kind of “get it while you can” type approach
and well, some of us are in big trouble!
The food out there is crazy! We grew up hardwired for lean times for
times of scarcity for times when there was no food and we went hungry - that is
evolution. Now we are faced with the
opposite. A world of overabundance, a
world stuffed full of every conceivable delight and it can be hard to fight
against nature – remember we are hardwired for the taste of fat and sweetness
to direct us to the calorie dense food that would sustain us during periods of
food scarcity. Can you see where we are
going with this?
The food industry has created “food” more
intensely stimulating than anything found in nature..oh the crunchy, salty,
sugary deliciousness of over processed food.
This type of food hits the pleasure sensors in the brain and overwhelms
us. Oh oh oh.(I’ll have what she’s having) and in the process creating a kind of
food addiction which disables our ability to love and appreciate good honest FOOD. We lose our taste for it and when that goes,
we are in trouble. Not only because we
have knocked out that natural response but also because the “food” we are
eating offers no nutrient content but lots and lots of calories. So we are constantly hungry and malnourished
at the same time as becoming hugely overweight.
Why then do we eat paleo. It is quite simple to answer that
question. The paleo diet recreates the
food environment our bodies evolved for.
Not in a re-enactment sense – nobody’s asking us to go out and hunt a woolly
mammoth (good luck in Ilkley) or trap a rabbit (possible but time consuming) or
gather fruits and berries from the hedgerow (actually that last one is good
fun). It’s much simpler than that.
It’s so much simpler than that.
1 comment:
So true Katie! I followed a family down the cereal aisle the other day. Their trolley was piled with biscuits, cakes and all manner of refined carbohydrates. But, then I looked at the cereal boxes around me and noticed how colourful they were, and so inviting. even the so called 'healthy options' which are anything but! So easy to be seduced into eating the wrong stuff!
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