Paleo Diet and Carbohydrates: Eat Your Carbs!
Paleo diet today means the human diet before civilization, before agriculture. Most people interpret “paleo diet” as that which includes cooking meat and vegetables and sometimes even cooking fruit. And this cooking means condimenting as well.
Raw Paleo Diet on the other hand goes back much further before cooking. Theorizing that the original human beings, represented by “Adam and Eve” were not born with pots and pans and had lived in harmony with nature in the “Garden of Eden”. And the original humans ate the original diet of raw animals (aquatic or terrestrial), raw fruits in season, raw vegetables and raw root crops and raw ocean vegetables.
Guess which diet cures the medically impossible and the medically incurables? Of course the original human diet, a raw paleo diet in its many forms and practices.
Back to paleo diet and carbohydrates… whichever paleo diet you practice. There has been this erroneous notion amongst paleo diet books and forums that paleo diet is necessarily VERY LOW CARBOHYDRATE. Some even think fruits are evil. Such hogwash.
The amounts of carbohydrates people need depends on the activity they do, what foods are in season, what season it is. For example, in winter time, there are no fruits available in season, so it most probably is a bad idea to fruit binge at this time. Winter may be a largely carnivorous time eating the available animals of the land such as elk, or sea lions or buffalo.
When spring comes, the fruits are out, and whatever fruits there are in season, may probably be good for you. In the case of tropical countries, you follow the fruit seasons as those are the times those fruits are at their natural nutritional peak as fruits are made by the trees and the bushes specifically for animals like us to spread their seeds… especially if we like those fruits… so these plants work hard at giving us nutritious fruit for their own self interest and our benefit.
Some newbie paleo diet practitioners get in trouble when they continuously practice paleo diet with specific ratios in mind such as very low carbohydrates and very high fats all the time. Geeezzzz, original human design does not go that way, we are flexible. Specific ratios are for athletes trying to reach peak goals to optimize their performance. For the rest of us, we just want to be healthy or are healing from years of wrong SAD dieting.
In fact, we humans have a self regulating system. If you eat all your foods raw and un-condimented, your natural regulating system kicks in and you get to choose which foods may be beneficial to you in that moment of time. For example fruits… most of the time you eat your fruits raw and uncondimented. So when you are in the market you can smell and see and taste what your body needs. You, your body knows what it prefers at that moment in time. Just like pregnant women with cravings for certain foods, that is what her body needs at that time.
If you ate all your food raw and un-condimented… your instincts kick in. If you had tasted enough various raw animals and raw fish and raw vegetables and raw root crops and raw fruit… your mental database of foods is widened. And your body can and will choose precisely what you need. Instinctive nutrition.
So what about paleo diet and carbohydrates? Eat your carbs!
It is easy to discern without a doubt when your diet is raw and un-condimented. A year ago I was craving raw starches. I found my raw starches in sinkamas, a kind of root crop. Notice that carbohydrate food sources can be further segregated… if it is starchy or fruity. So please do not fall into the trap that all carbs are bad for you. Which carbs? Which specific fruit? Which specific root crop?
It is time to get into specifics then:
Carbs are paleo.
I eat RAW paleo carbs.
Carbs are good for you.
My favorite carbs lately are:
Durian
Papaya
Mango
Yakon
Raw wild Honey in lemon juice
Banana (when there is nothing else)
And for those cooked paleo dieters, Celtic Cave Girl contributed her cooked starches:
at paleo starches!
try
butternut squash
pumpkin
parsnips
celeriac
swede
turnip
beetroot
jerusalem artichokes
chestnuts
banana
* from Caveman Forum about carb cravings.
So for all you new paleo diet practitioners out there. Be flexible. Your dietary requirements change over time. Welcome the change, expect the change. And if you are a cooked paleo dieter, try getting rawer and rawer as the months go by, it is a natural progression to something much better… a raw paleo diet.