Those who adhere to the 'Paleo Lifestyle' should avoid grains, sugar and foods with artificial additives. “What wasn't on a caveman's menu doesn't belong in your diet either,” is the adage. But what did that caveman actually eat? Did prehistoric humans adhere to the paleo diet themselves?
Paleo Lifestyle is the name of the magazine that has been floating around in our house for a few weeks now. It's a glossy full of recipes and photos of delicious-looking dishes, including ancient porridge with chocolate and coconut, crab avocado salad, detox soup and banana bread. Some of the ingredients in those recipes are a bit hard to come by or expensive, but they can easily be replaced:if you use butter instead of the coconut oil that goes almost everywhere, and use regular granulated sugar instead of coconut blossom sugar, it all becomes a lot. simpler. Only… that is just not the intention.
Paleoproof
The recipes in Paleo Lifestyle are paleoproof, because “eating the paleo way gives you energy”, as editor-in-chief Mitchel van Duuren writes in the foreword. “When you get hungry, your body doesn't want food, but nutrients!”
Eating as our predecessors did is therefore the motto:“If an ingredient was not on the menu of a caveman, it does not belong in your diet either.” But what did that caveman actually eat? Did the ancient man himself eat paleoproof ?
That question is difficult to answer. Firstly, much is still unknown about the menu of our predecessors. Secondly, it makes a lot of difference which ancient man Van Duuren has in mind, so from which area and what time it came.
Mammoth Hunters
Van Duuren writes that he talks about man who walked the earth from 150,000 years ago to the beginning of agriculture (about 10,000 years ago), but that is little specified. Does he mean the Homo sapiens who lived in Ethiopia in the warm Eemian of 120,000 years ago, and could probably feed on fish and fruits in favorable times?
Or is he perhaps referring to the mammoth hunters from Europe, who, during the last ice age (the Weichselian, which lasted from 116,000 to 11,000 years ago), hunted as nomads after the herds of mammoths, wisents and reindeer? You would think that the latter would not have gone out for a while after the hunt to look for coconut flowers and avocados to complete the dish..
What people eat – even now – strongly depends on where they live. Could you travel back in time, and see prehistoric man in a Future-style If you want to treat yourself to a dish, it could just as easily be sushi as an Indian curry or burgers with fries – and in this case you are also dealing with all dishes from the same period.
Wednesday
Knowing that prehistoric man was dependent on his own environment to look for food, I decided to see how many kilometers you would have to travel now to live a day like the Paleo Lifestyle magazine that prescribes. I picked the Wednesday, for which the following menu suggestion is made:
Breakfast:Rich breakfast smoothie with chocolate and avocadoLunch:Frittata with spinach and minced meatDinner:Beef strips with shiitake and broccoliDessert:Chocolate custard
To do that you need:
Almond milk, Almond paste, Avocado, Banana, Beef strips, Organic honey, Spring onions, Broccoli, Cherry tomatoes, Chia seed, Eggs, Ginger root, Gluten-free soy sauce, Vegetable stock cubes, Celtic sea salt, Garlic, Coconut oil, Coconut blossom sugar, Medjool dates, Nutmeg, Paprika, Olive powder , Dark chocolate chips, Raw cocoa powder, Ground beef, Sesame oil, Shiitakes, Onion, Vanilla extract and Fresh Spinach .
Hypermodern transport
I couldn't find everything in the supermarket, and the country of origin was not indicated everywhere, but I could determine that (at least in this shop) the dates came from Israel, the onions from the Netherlands, the beef from Ireland , the avocado, garlic and broccoli from Spain, the cherry tomatoes from Morocco, the coconut from the Ivory Coast and the ginger root from Peru. This includes distances of more than 10,000 kilometers – as the crow flies.
To live according to the Paleo Lifestyle from Mitchel van Duuren's magazine, a hypermodern food transport system is therefore a prerequisite. In any case, that would not have been possible for the prehistoric man…