Paleo Diet: Can Our Caveman Ancestors Teach Us the Best Modern Diet?

By Katherine Hobson, U.S. News & World Report

Should we look backward for clues to the perfect human diet? And not just back a few generations-to a world before french fries were a major source of vegetables and the Super Big Gulp encouraged the downing of 64 ounces of soda in one sitting-but waaaaaay back? Some people think so, arguing that we ought to turn to a "caveman diet" or "paleo diet" based on what they think early humans and human ancestors ate for millions of years, from the Paleolithic era until the agricultural revolution began about 10,000 years ago. "Seventy percent of our calories come from foods these folks never would have consumed," says Loren Cordain, an exercise scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and author of The Paleo Diet.

There's certainly broad agreement that in the past few generations we have strayed far from an eating pattern that supports maximum health. Whatever our ancestors ate, it sure wasn't the current Western diet, which is heavy in saturated fat, salt, and processed foods based heavily on soybeans and on corn. That style of eating has been associated with a variety of health problems and is, by all accounts, a mess.

http://health.msn.com/nutrition/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100237691&Gt1=31036