Is the Paleo Diet Good for Your Digestive Free Essay Example

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The Paleo diet, often called the “caveman diet”, is designed to resemble a diet that hunter gatherers lived off of during the early stone age. If followed to the letter, the paleo diet enables a person to live the same way our ancestors did thousands of years ago. The basic food choices of Paleo are foods that could be theoretically gathered or hunted, this includes unprocessed meats or fish along with vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, herbs, and certain types of high-fat dairy.

Foods you cannot eat on a paleo diet are foods that have been significantly altered before consumption, this means staying away from sugar -based foods like rice or cereal grains like barley in addition to legumes (black beans, lima beans, kidney beans). Serving sizes are not strictly required on a paleo diet, as after cutting out so carbs one will have to consume more to stay energized.

Weight loss is a major benefit of the diet, as it eliminates the food groups of, lowering the overall sugar consumption in favor of a protein-heavy diet.

The high level of protein boosts your metabolism and reduces your appetite, passively lowering your insulin metabolism as well. Insulin metabolism is what helps the weight loss process in the biggest way. Most overweight people have a high insulin resistance, which makes the digestive system make more insulin to break down various carbs and sugars from the bloodstream. It has not been entirely confirmed that being obese or overweight causes insulin resistance, but a decrease in insulin resistance results in greater weight loss.

Some randomized controlled trials have shown the Paleo diet to produce greater short-term benefits than diets based on national nutrition guidelines, including greater weight loss, reduced waist circumference, decreased blood pressure, increased insulin sensitivity, and improved cholesterol. However, these studies were of short duration and with a small number of participants.

Weight loss is a major benefit of the diet, as it eliminates entire food groups, lowering the overall calorie count. The high level of protein boosts your metabolism and reduces your appetite, passively lowering your insulin metabolism as well. Insulin metabolism is what helps the weight loss process in the biggest way. Most overweight people have a high insulin resistance, which makes the digestive system make more insulin to break down various carbs and sugars from the bloodstream.

Despite the benefits of a paleo diet, due to a limited experimentation there are potential drawbacks to eating paleo for a long period of time.

• Is there potential for a nutrient deficiency for calcium and vitamin D, when following this diet for longer than one year that may make it inappropriate for certain at-risk groups.
• Are there long-term harmful side effects of neglecting entire food groups, especially if the diet is not specifically constructed to include the nutrients from the omitted foods?
• Is this diet safe and beneficial for everyone, for example, higher risk individuals with chronic diseases, the elderly?

The aim of a paleo diet is to return to a way of eating like early humans ate. Practicing dieters believe is that the human body is not compatible to the modern foods that have emerged with newer farming practices. Farming has changed what people eat, established dairy, grains and legumes are now staples in the human diet. This relatively late and rapid change in diet is outpacing the body’s ability to adapt. They hypothesize this incompatibility is believed to be a contributing factor to the increase of obesity, diabetes and heart disease today.

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