Problems with Modern Food Production and Consumption

The “Paleo-diet” in short can be described as a diet plan mimicking the diet of the hunter-gatherer species that lived in the Paleolithic era. The Paleo-diet consists of animal proteins, plants, fruits, and nuts, while excluding all processed foods, dairy, and certain grains. One reason the Paleo-diet was created is that in theory, if one adheres to the Paleo-diet, they will minimize their chances of getting some modern diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease. Another reason the Paleo-diet was formed is because it is said to help with weight loss.

Health problems did not only stop at diseases, but continued on to physical health as well. Both hunter-gatherers and farmers have to work to obtain food, however farming requires a lot of hard physical labor. Farmers have to work hard to maintain their crops because that is their only food source, and taking care of crops is not easy and it took a toll on their health. It is shown in evidence that farmers had “an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, probably reflecting a lot of hard physical labor” (Diamond, 118). Between diseases and physical defects farming was making a huge impact on humans’ ability to survive, so much that even life expectancy went down from twenty six years in hunter-gatherers to nineteen years in farming communities (Diamond, 118).

The Paleo Diet is eating anything except processed food and grain or any base grain products. A big saying is “If the cavemen did not eat it, neither should you.” Meat, eggs, and fish are all encouraged in this diet. This is a low carbohydrate diet. This diet is also known as the Caveman diet because of the foods that are allowed to be eaten in this diet. Having to constantly check your calories will not be a problem. The diet appeals to nature.

As seen by analysing a Neanderthals feces from the Ice Age, it is seen that they had to consume a larger portion of greens to meat during this time. Thus proving the paleolithic way of eating, to be able to adapt to the environment. Essentially meaning in a contemporary world a person on the paleo diet can consume anything in their surroundings. This can range from Vegemite to

The Paleo diet, based on the diet of our early ancestors, is also called the Caveman and Stone Age diet. The only foods eaten are those hunted (meat, fish, and poultry) or gathered (nuts, berries, seeds, fruits, and vegetables).

For starters, “farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes” while hunter-gatherers got “more protein and a better balance of other nutrients” by eating a variety of wild animals and plants (3). The balance of nutrients that a hunter-gatherer obtained made their overall health better. For instance, the “average height of [Greek and Turkish] hunter-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages” was five to six inches taller than the average height of people after the adoption of farming. Even today only “3 high-carbohydrate plants-wheat, rice and corn--provide the bulk of the calories that we eat” (pg__). The author makes a good argument when he says, “the farmers gained cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition” because all that farming did in a health standpoint was provide an abundance of poor nutritious food when people already had a balanced diet as

To start with, meat is very important in a Paleolithic diet, yet most people today try to limit how much meat they eat. During caveman times, meat was a huge part of where the calories came from. In a typical Paleo diet plan, meat accounts for a large part of caloric intake. In addition, many Stone Age diet practitioners only eat grass-fed, free-range meat to get as close to paleo meat as they can.

Many of the farmers were less healthy than the hunter-gatherers, the farmers even died, on average, earlier than the hunter-gatherers. Many of the farmers had more serious diseases than the hunter-gatherers did too. Some people, including the northeastern Australian people even saw their neighbors practicing domestication and farming but did not take up what their neighbors did because they preferred the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Some hunter-gatherers did, in a way, produce food. For example some Australians burned the land they hunted on to encourage new seeds to grow so they could eat them. A reason why the hunter-gather way of living got less popular is simply because over the years less wild food was available. Over the past 13,000 years the amount of animals and edible plants has got less prevalent. The reason why many people still believe that food production was better than hunting and gathering is because food production led to more people and more technological advancements like guns and

The paleo diet is trying to get you to cut out everything we eat today and eat what they ate over 15,000 years ago. They think we ate healthier 15,000 years ago than we do today. Eating lots of nuts, fruits, meats from only grass-fed animals, salmon, and vegetables. While cutting out most of dairy, sugar, salt, grains, and beans.

According to its website (www.thepaleodiet.com), the Paleo Diet is "based upon everyday, modern foods that mimic the food groups of our pre-agricultural, hunter gatherer ancestors." Foods one should eat when following the Paleo Diet include grass produced meat, fish/seafood, fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, nuts and seeds, and healthful oils. One should avoid cereal grains, legumes, dairy, refined sugar, potatoes, processed foods, refined vegetable oils, and salt. The logic behind this is to recreate the diet that Homo sapiens were evolved to eat. This is where the line begins to get a little fuzzy.

The man behind the current Paleo Diet craze is Dr. Loren Cordain. He has his Ph.D. in Health from the University of Utah in 1981. He also served as a professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science at Colorado State University from 1982-2013. Dr. Cordain became interested in healthy eating from a very young age. He was also interested in reading about Stone Age people and how they lived off the land. While in college in the 60’s and 70’s he was involved in sports and became interested in improving his performance and began reading on vegetarian diets. Then while doing research during his time as a professor at Colorado State University he read “Paleolithic Nutrition” by Dr. Boyd Eaton and became increasingly interested. He contacted Dr. Eaton and the two ”hit if off” and began sharing ideas. From there Dr. Cordain began the road we know with his many published works. Dr. Cordain is an accomplished scientist with may awards and recognitions, the most recent being, “The American College for Advancement in Medicine’s annual “Denham Harmon Lecture,” May 2004. This lecture is awarded to a scientist whose research was judged to have the greatest national impact upon complementary medical care by the American College for Advancement in Medicine.” Dr. Cordain has also written and published over 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles.

As most know, humans have existed in a hunting-gathering system for the majority of our time on earth. During the Paleolithic, population sizes were low and settlements were sparse. At the dawn of the Neolithic, large settlements begin to appear and something strange occurred. Agricultural systems began to develop and civilization emerged as our ancestors evolved from a foraging society to an agricultural society. Following the transition from hunting and gathering, the Neolithic resulted in a dramatic change in population density and size that affected the public health drastically and one of the first epidemiological transition leading to an increase in infectious and nutritional diseases occurred.

In early history of humans, geography was the chief driver of the nutritional diet. During this early period, called the Paleolithic Era, humans were labeled as “hunter-gathers” and did primarily what their named implied. Later, in the Neolithic Era, the hunter-gathers transitioned into early famers, left the nomadic life and settled into a stationary area. Both of these groups were limited to rudimentary technology and their diet was mostly dependent on what the land and nature allowed them to eat. This is not the case now as other factors other than nature affect diet. In the modern human diet, several factors affect the dietary choices of individuals, which is chiefly driven by the culture of society and the institutions that control it;

Too many people pick up food products off of the shelves and put it into their shopping cart without knowing what exactly it is or what the product has been through. After watching an absolutely disturbing documentary called "Food Inc." I started to feel strongly about the problems of the Food Industry. The problem is that our food is no longer being produced in an all American farm, but in dirty abusive factories. Not only is the food unhealthy for us after all of the processing, but the workers and animals are being abused. I know that I single handily cannot change all of the problems with the twisted food industry, but I know that I can do my part by making others aware so that they can make sure that they can make fully informed decisions about what they are putting into their carts at the grocery store and eventually into their bodies.

We live in an age in which we have come to expect everything to be instantaneously at our fingertips. We live in an age of instant coffee, instant tea, and even instant mashed potatoes. We can walk down the street at 5 in the morning and get a gallon of milk or even a weeks worth of groceries at our discretion. Even though it is great that food is now readily available at all times, this convenience comes at a price, for both the producer and the consumer. Farmers are cheated out of money and are slaves to big business, workers and animals are mistreated. And, because food now comes at a low cost, it has become cheaper quality and therefore potentially dangerous to the consumer’s health. These problems surrounding the ethics and the