Paleo meal

Paleo meal, which includes grilled chicken with a salt-free herb dry rub, grilled fennel brushed with olive oil and grilled halibut. (Michael Allen Jones/Sacramento Bee/MCT)

Would adopting the diet our caveman ancestors supposedly ate allow modern-day Americans live longer, healthier lives?

Proponents of the Paleo diet (for Paleolithic) say that meals packed with fresh fruits and vegetables and heavy doses of lean (preferably wild) meat, fish and seafood will "swiftly improve your disease symptoms" if you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

Not allowed are dairy, grains and legumes (beans, peas and lentils) because these were a late entry to the human palate, appearing about 12,000 years ago, and aren't foods to which we're "genetically adapted."


While the diet has fans — the recently released "Paleo Diet Cookbook" is fourth in a series of books written or co-written by Dr. Loren Cordain, a Colorado State University professor — dietitians argue that eliminating entire food groups is a mistake.


The problem with the American diet is excess, said Dr. Keith Ayoob, a pediatric nutritionist at New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

"Do I want to see people eating a huge plate of pasta and nothing else? No," he said. "I want to see a reasonable portion with some lean meat and vegetables." Ayoob cites "the rice bowl" as an ideal meal: one cup of rice, two cups of vegetables and three ounces of lean meat in one bowl.


"Grains are really cheap, and for the average teenage boy it would cost a fortune to do this (Paleo) diet," said the food and nutrition professor at University of Minnesota. "Animals are a really inefficient way to get calories, and you don't need that much protein."

Ayoob argues that there's "a mountain of evidence for eating low-fat and fat-free dairy. People who eat dairy have better bone density, they're more likely to be normal weight … plus it's a great source of calcium and vitamin D."




Foraging folks have no set menu

The basic premise of the Paleo diet may be flawed too. Anthropologists say we don't know what Paleolithic man and woman survived on, and they most likely ate whatever was available.

"There is probably no single diet to which our ancestors were adapted," said University of Arkansas anthropologist Peter Ungar. "Recent foragers have varied in their diet from marine mammals (the Inuit) to diets composed mostly of a few plant species in the outback."