FoodBlog Facts: Fad Diets. Going Paleo for a Day 🥩
The way you eat obviously has an enormous impact on your health and daily life, and so it’s very interesting to examine the different diets that have popped up over the years, whether for weight loss or improvement of overall health. 🚀
For this week’s fad test, I looked at the Paleo Diet. At first glance, the diet seems quite healthy, with a focus on vegetables and fruit, healthy fats and proteins. However, it excludes major food groups such as grains (including whole grains), legumes, and dairy, which may be a cause for nutrient deficiency. 😷
What is the Paleo Diet?
The entire idea behind the paleo diet is to eat the way that our hunter-gatherer ancestors did (hence paleo - short for paleolithic era). This means avoiding farmed, processed and refined foods entirely, as these obviously weren’t around back then. The reasoning behind it is that with ailments like heart disease, high blood pressure and obesity on the rise, we should resort back to eating only organic foods. Whether or not this is a sensible idea is debatable - after all we’re bound to have undergone and continue to undergo some sort of evolutionary adaptation to our modern-day diets. Either way, it can’t hurt to try, especially not for a day! 🤣
What foods can you eat on the Paleo Diet?
Foods which you must avoid completely on the paleo diet are grains, legumes, refined oils and sugars. Many sources say dairy may be re-introduced after your gut is ‘healed’. Natural sugars, such as coconut sugar and honey, are accepted in moderation. Eggs, nuts and seeds are suggested to be eaten in moderation, and there is an emphasis on consuming animals as our ancestors would, meaning don’t skip on the organs. Shellfish and other seafood is also highly recommended. 🐟
Some More Information
As far as ratios go, one should aim to consume 50% of calories from animals and 50% of calories from plants. This means that far more food volume should come from plant produce. In reality, this diet is more so about achieving health through being more organic and returning to our roots rather than an attempt to lose weight. I’ve found there are plenty of similarities between this diet and the keto diet; and it’s also very similar to the Whole 30 diet, which we’ll discuss in the future. 👀
Let’s jump in
Overall, figuring out exactly what foods are and are not allowed on the paleo diet is quite confusing, and I ended up relying on Google for much of the day - still ending up with inconclusive answers. When I woke up the first thing I reached out for was the kettle, but are tea and coffee considered paleo-friendly? Some sources said no, others yes in moderation (without milk or unnatural sweeteners). I obviously went by the latter, or I’d have ended up falling asleep half way through the day. 🥱
Breakfast
I wasn’t very hungry in the morning, so I made a quick omelette before heading out and starting my day, plain and simple. 🍳
Lunch
For lunch, I tried out something new: an acai bowl from Oakberry. I looked up all the ingredients in the base and they are indeed organic and unrefined, no grains or dairy included. I also made sure to only select paleo-friendly toppings for my bowl: blueberries, seeds and peanut butter (which is made by Munch A Bunch, so we know it’s 100% natural). Later in the afternoon I also had another cup of coffee. ☕
Dinner
By the time I got home for dinner after a long day out, I was relieved to find a pot of hot vegetable soup waiting for me. It made me wonder how awkward it would have been if my family were having, say, pasta for dinner, and I couldn’t participate. I suppose that’s the major downfall with these hyper-restrictive diets. I followed up with some roasted sweet potato as I was still quite hungry, and that was it for the day. 🍲
The Verdict
I definitely felt like I had a very ‘healthy’ day, in the sense that I got loads of fruit and veggies in, and didn’t eat any processed foods. The sugar from the fruity lunch was enough to keep me going, and I felt focused and got all my work done. Come evening I was lacking energy and in fact skipped out on the gym, but that could have easily been due to other factors. I didn’t find this diet hard to follow for just a day, but I know that I could never do it long-term. I should also add that the fact that I was ultra busy meant I wasn’t thinking much about eating - if I were at home all day, I’d have probably gone mad trying to figure out what to eat as a snack on this diet other than hard boiled eggs, fruit and peanut butter. 🍏
All in all, it wasn’t the worst, but I can’t do without my carbs. 🍝
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