Primal dieting is becoming more and more popular among those looking to lose weight and improve serious health conditions, like osteoperosis. Read about the similarities and differences between primal and low carb diets.
As you know, diet fads are a mainstay of modern culture; it seems that a new one springs up every year, and for a time, dominates the diet industry. Low carb and gluten free diets have proven to have longevity — mainly because they work — but the newest “fad” diet is actually one that has been used before — by primitive man. The so-called “primal” diet is becoming increasing popular among people who are looking to lose weight and even fight terminal diseases, like cancer.
The primal diet was coined by nutritionalist Aajonus Vonderplanitz, and it focuses on eating high amounts of protein, little or no sugar, and raw foods that have not been cooked or otherwise processed through methods such as Pasteurization. Like the low carb diet, it has plenty of detractors: the medical industry continues to seek to destroy any revolutionary diets that seek to challenge the high carb, low calorie diet — even if a diet like the primal diet has been literally millions of years in the making!
In point of fact, if you are on or ever have been on the Atkins diet, then you’ve experienced the primal diet in one way or another: the induction phase of the Atkins diet is essentially “primal.” And interestingly enough, it can be argued that Dr. Atkins himself espoused the primal diet by pointing out that man is mostly a meat eater, and that our metabolisms are still not developed enough to handle the substantial amounts of carbohydrates and sugars that we ingest on a regular basis. To be sure, even the remaining tribal societies in the world today focus their nutrition on hunting, so that meat and high levels of protein become their main dietary focus. In this way, tribal peoples’ bodies — while often malnourished in terms of vitamins and minerals — are much closer in fat-to-lean-muscle balance than people maintaining “modern nutrition.”
The primal diet, however, does depart from low carb in significant ways: primal eaters eshew refined sugar, but they also reject artificial sweeteners and other additives as well. This hard-line stance to processed sugars and food means that many of the low carb food products are off the menu. Primal eaters also eat raw foods as well, such as raw eggs, raw butter, and raw milk, citing the benefits of enzymes preserved in raw food as an excellent means of battling disease. Low carb dieters may not necessarily be motivated by these same goals, and when it comes to milk, low carbers generally do not drink it, anyway.
Given these changes, what can you, the low carb dieter take from the primal diet that is worth using? Reinforcement.
The primal diet provides a valuable piece of anthropological evidence that Dr. Atkins was right, and that, although we are indeed herbivores, our metabolisms are optimized for higher levels of protein and fat, and lower levels of carbs. Sugar, after all, was discovered b y the western world on the eve of the modern era beginning. Just like so many other factors, its introduction into modern culture has had a profound effect, with one of those effects being obesity and blood sugar disorders.
If you are a low carb dieter, good news: you’re already embracing “the primal” in you.