Welcome back to snack cast. We’re back and going to do a bit of a series talking about different types of diets. The main ones you hear about read about or you hear a friend did or whatever.
We’ll go over these in the next few episodes. We don’t know how many we’re gonna be talking about yet but we will talk about things like vegan paleo keto, caloric restriction, you name it. We’ll kind of give the highlights and try not to be more accepting or more critical of one than the other. We both have our biases. But, we just want to try and pull the curtain back a little bit. So today, we’re going to talk about Paleo.
So you did a quote-unquote, modified paleo a while ago. Is that correct? No, I think mine’s more of a modified keto. OK, so why is it called paleo? It stems from the Paleolithic era. How old is that? Oh, old. So I read a bunch of different things. But bottom line, it’s like 2 to 3 million years ago up until 10,000 BC, better known as the dinosaur or Stone Age when we started using stones for tools blah blah, blah. Thank you for the history lesson. So what did they not have back then? Microwave oven, refrigerator, ovens. A lot of open-fire cooking? They probably had some makeshift oven-like enclosure almost like a pizza oven made with stone. Probably not. Stone Age. Not a stone oven.
This whole concept of the paleo diet kind of goes back to nature, and how people lived back then. Because of no refrigeration, it was very much hunter-gatherer and you ate it or it went bad. It’s kind of eating in season too, right? So your fruits and vegetables have to be in season? It’s not only seasonal but location-based. Okay, so what kind of foods can you eat on a paleo diet?
Think hunter-gatherer. It’s a lot of meat, fish, and vegetables. There are no beans? Yeah, beans are not paleo. No beans, peas, or lentils. I don’t even know what a lentil is other than a small bean, but those are apparently not paleo. So eggs. Eggs, probably, but no cheeses or butter. I would have had a hard time in the Paleo era. Yeah, I’m not sure what fats you used to cook with. Now that you say that it’s got to be like, olive oil or avocado oil. Traditionally probably animal fats. We just got through beating up oils on our last snack cast. Probably the simplest way to understand paleo, if it looks like it comes from a factory you don’t eat it. Okay. That includes your bottled fruit juices, dairy stuff, butter, and milk. No monster energies? No, paleo, it’s really just water. Our lead developer Graham used to be very strict paleo, he was saying that even black coffee and tea, are not allowed. He however was a big fan of the bulletproof coffee. That’s a whole nother coffee segment we can do on what is bulletproof coffee.
So it’s what can you gather and hunt to consume? Cook in large part over fires. You’re not deep-frying anything. Let’s throw out some of the rumors about the benefits. Why do people do this diet? Weight loss is obviously at the top of the food chain. I would argue heart health is probably up there. Nutritional density. If you cut out factory-made food, you’re just going to eat cleaner. I don’t care if you call it paleo, or what? It’s more nutrient-rich, it’s just simply better for you. Now it takes effort. It takes food prep for one thing. We can’t go out to our farm out back anymore and go, hey, it’s in season or honey, kill the cow. That doesn’t happen anymore. Also, I think some of the strict followers also encourage trying to stick to organic. If the cow comes out of a cow factory, with hormones and antibiotics, oh, very stressful. So even their meats are probably organic. If you’re true, paleo, yes.
I could do this one. Yeah, I could do paleo without a doubt. All right I think vegetarian will be our next topic. In the meantime, thanks for tuning in, and any ideas thoughts, comments, or criticisms, email us at snackcast@yes.fit. And that’s it. Let’s keep moving.