Eating like a caveman

For the last month I've been following my first ever conscious diet. I started it because I happened to stumble across an online article which led me to the homepage of Arthur De Vany, a professor of economics and fitness guru who's developed something called Evolutionary Fitness. His fairly simple argument is that the best possible diet and fitness regime for humans is the one to which evolution adapted us over millions of years. This does not include any foods produced by agricultural techniques.

This got me looking into the so-called Paleo Diet, which led in turn me to the low-budget comedy documentary Fat Head by Tom Naughton, a kind of rebuttal to Morgan Spurlock's problematic Supersize Me. The basic message of the documentary is that the dietary meme that has been repeated in western societies for the last fifty or so years (saturated fat = higher cholestoral = heart disease) is completely bogus, and always has been.

According to this new (for some people, not so new) theory the healthiest diet for human beings is high in vegetables and high in saturated fat from meat, fish, eggs and nuts, with liberal amounts of sugar from fruit. The most important thing is to avoid simple carbohydrates and trans-fatty acids, since they raise blood sugar levels, cause the body to store the sugar as fat and in many people can lead to diabetes and heart attacks. This means no cereals or grains or starchy foods - corn, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes - and only naturally occurring oils for cooking, so out with corn oil, sunflower oil, any kind of vegetable oil, all of which has to chemically extracted from the plant, and in with ladlefuls of butter and extra-virgin olive oil.

As an experiment I decided to go cold turkey on all cereals and grains and stick with the diet for a month. Since for years I've basically eaten some kind of cereal or grain with almost every single meal, this left me rather disoriented for a few days, but I bought a basketful of herbs and spices, explored forbidding corners of the vegetable market and looked for good lean meat, and soon, for the first time ever, I realised that cooking was actually rather fun.

Having tried it out quite strictly for a month, I see no reason to stop. I've decided there's no point being fascist about it if I'm in the mood for a hot cross bun or a pizza or a takeaway, but so far I haven't missed bread or pasta or rice at all. That in itself says something about my body's needs, I think. I've been experimenting with a few different recipes which I may post at some point. The best thing about the revelation, though, is that suddenly this...

... is good for me. Yes. A good heavy fry-up of quality meat and eggs in a pan of olive oil or melted butter is good for me. All that oil and saturated fat does not clog up my arteries. It was all a humungous myth which has been soundly debunked by the latest research, even if the massive momentum of the health and food industry, with the occasional exception such as the Atkins Diet, will not advertise this fact for years. Provided I also eat lots of fresh vegetables, I could have a fry-up every morning for the rest of my life (minus the bread, of course), and my body would thank me for it. This is happy news indeed.