Not one to have ever been on a diet, I am a bit loath to admit that I am currently on one. It began last week after a seminar I took at the Krav Maga center where I train. The seminar was called, "Food as Fuel" and was billed as teaching a habit of eating that would improve athletic ability. I know and like the woman teaching it and I am preparing for a belt test so I bashfully signed up for a class I heretofore would have thought totally flaky. After all I'm in pretty good shape, have a great immune system, and eat, I thought, fairly healthily.

The system of eating proposed was the paleo diet. Paleo diet seems to be a large umbrella for a few different diets but the basics are all the same. The fundamental theory behind the diet is that people's bodies have not evolved to eat what our culture (read civilization) feeds us.

The paleo diet as described to me by the chiropractor and fitness trainer conducting the seminar cuts out all cereals and grains. In that way it looks like the faddish low carb diet, but the resemblance stops there. You can have as much fruit as you want, but little to no dairy. Vegetables, eggs, nuts, seeds and meat are the main parts of the diet. The basic guideline is that if it was around 10,000 years ago, dig in. If it was developed later, chances are most people have some some inability to process it effectively.

The goal of this eating style is to reduce unnecessary inflammation. Acute inflammation can be beneficial, such as a fever to rid your body of an infection. Chronic inflammation, though, is linked to diabetes, Crohn's disease, cancer, ovarian cysts, and acne, just to name a few.

Foods that cause inflammation are foods that are high in simple sugars. 2/3 of the body's defenses reside in the intestines, therefore what you eat has a great affect on your bodies inflammatory responses. Unfortunately, in the contemporary American diet carbohydrates supply 53% of calories, the vast majority are simple sugars.

A diet high in refined sugars typically leads to vitamin deficiency because usually the percentage of simple starches an individual eats is inversely related to how many vegetables they eat. One study found that Americans on average get 17.2% of the daily recommendation of B-12, 33.2% of folate, and 73.3% of zinc. Virtually all other vitamins had similar deficiency levels. Unfortunately vitamins in tablet form will not be able to help, as I learned at the seminar. Only 8% of a vitamin tablet such as Centrum is absorbed by the human body. This is why the paleo diet recommends vegetables at every meal and snack. Certainly the oddest thing for me (after not eating any bread or rice) is to have a large handful of vegetables at 6:30 in the morning.

The seminar speakers gave convincing reasons as to why we would be mal-adjusted to so much of what constitutes a normal civilized diet.

The first reason being that cereals are very new to humans. The longest cereals have been around is 10,000 years, but it's significantly shorter in most parts of the world. Because of the way evolution, works humans have a very hard time adapting to these diet changes. For evolution to happen there needs to be a gene mutation that allows certain individuals greater reproductive success (RS).

RS is determined by the number of grandchildren an individual has. For example: if you take two individuals, one who has no genetic predisposition for Type II Diabetes, and one who does, and both eat a diet heavy in cereals, its unlikely you would notice a difference in the individual's RS because diabetes would not significantly impact someone having children, as it is usually a disease that develops later in life.

Therefore, the gene favoring those whose bodies can handle cereals is not passed on to a greater number of people than the person whose body reacts negatively. Many of the inflammatory diseases are similar to diabetes in that they manifest later in life, or are like acne and do not affect an individuals reproductive success.

The second reason that makes reconsidering the standard western diet seem necessary is just looking at the health of Americans today. Right now 70% of us are overweight. The onset of Type 2 Diabetes is starting younger and younger.

At the same time, for example, children in Oakland, California have developed rickets, a disease causing softening of the bones due to severe malnutrition and usually only found in developing nations. Clearly our food is not nourishing us. Seemingly the same food that has allowed humans to proliferate in such huge numbers (rice, wheat, barely) is the same food causing us to live unhealthy lives that typically end after years of slow physical degradation due to an illness.

So, I have now gone an entire week without grain or cereal, alcohol or coffee. I have never eaten so many almonds in my life. Different types of squash now fill the spot on my plate once occupied by tasty noodles. I feel like I have more energy, but after only one week it may be psychosomatic. There are cravings though. It's not out of hunger that I get the cravings but more like a physical addiction, like trying to not have a cigarette. It's a bit unnerving to respond to food like a drug.

The aspect I find most striking about this diet, however, is that it would be absolutely impossible to feed all of the people in the world on it. There simply is not enough land to support the veggies and animals required. Seems like an ominous choice to make as humans; either we have enough food to feed everybody, but it will be toxic to them, or we feed a portion of people food that they can thrive on.

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