The Paleo Diet is a weight loss program that shows users how to eat like our "ancestors." Dr. Loren Cordain, who is not a medical doctor, but has a PhD in Health, created this program. Cordain is self-described to be "the world's leading expert on the natural human diet of our Stone Age ancestors." Cordain has also founded an institute based on this diet and has written three books: The Paleo Diet, The Paleo Diet for Athletes and The Dietary Cure for Acne.
Those who advocate that contemporary humans should regularly consume a Paleo diet base their advocacy on the premise that natural selection had 2 million or more years to genetically adapt the metabolism and physiology of the various human species to such a diet, and that in the 10,000 years since the invention of agriculture and its consequent major change in the human diet, natural selection has had too little time to make the optimal genetic adaptations to the new diet. According to those advocates, physiological and metabolic maladaptations result from those suboptimal genetic adaptations, which in turn contribute to many of the so-called diseases of civilization.
The diet of our pre-agricultural ancestors consisted of meats, insects, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. The advent of agriculture brought us potatoes, legumes (i.e. peanuts, beans, and soy), grains (i.e. corn, wheat, rice, barley, and oats), and processed foods (i.e. sugar, bread, pastries, alcohol, etc.). Furthermore, we have bred our plants to produce the biggest and sweetest (highest sugar content) fruits. The best example of this is the blueberry.
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