THE STONE AGE DIET –

ITS USE IN FOOD ALLERGY

By Jackie Bushell

THE STONE AGE DIET -- ITS USE IN FOOD ALLERGY

BY JACKIE BUSHELL

The Stone Age Diet is a diet which attempts to recreate the way Man ate around 30,000 or

40,000 years ago. It is sometimes also referred to as the 'paleo' or 'paleolithic' diet. Those

who use it believe that going back to eating this way eliminates the root cause of many of

the chronic health problems we experience today, which respond poorly to the symptom-

suppression approach of modern medicine. It is particularly likely to be used in connection

with treatment for IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), other chronic digestive problems, and a

myriad of health problems connected to food allergies or sensitivities and intestinal yeast

overgrowth.

The thinking behind the Stone Age Diet is as follows:

Diet and nutrition is crucially important to our health. The complex systems of our bodies

need specific nutrients to function properly. Exactly what and how much we need is down

to evolution, in the sense that we are only in optimum health when we eat what we have

evolved to eat. Evolution is a slow process, measured in not hundreds, not thousands but

millions of years. As a result, any radical, sudden change to our diet risks problems until

our systems have had time to adapt. Indeed, over the last 40,000 years less than 0.02 per

cent of our genetic code has changed. So our bodies are basically still designed to work

best with the same foods and nutrients they were getting 40,000 years ago. This principle

applies not only to what we readily recognize as our food and drink, but also to any

potentially harmful chemicals which we unknowingly or knowingly take in via the air or in

our food and water. 2

In other words, we have as yet only evolved to cope with the conditions that prevailed back

in the Stone Age. That is to say, when we were existing on a hunter-gatherer diet of game

meat, fish and seafood, insects and grubs, roots and tubers, plants and grasses, leaves,

nuts, seeds, berries and other fruits. At that time, we did not have milk or milk products,

because we had not yet domesticated animals. We did not have grains (wheat,

corn/maize, barley, oats, rice etc) as these came later, when we learnt how to become

farmers in the Agricultural Revolution around 5,000 years ago. And we certainly were not

exposed to the thousands of man-made chemicals which find their way today into our air

and our food and water, such as pesticides, fertilizers and growth promoters, plastics, drug

residues, colorants, flavorings and other artificial additives.

There is a wide variation in individual requirements for nutrients, just as there is a wide

variation in the ability to cope with potentially harmful chemicals. But taken overall, a

population well adapted to its food and environment is generally robust and healthy. On

the other hand, a population ill-adapted to its food and environment suffers high rates of

chronic ill-health, and this is what we are seeing more and more of today.

The problem for us in our modern age is that we have changed our diets radically

compared to what Stone Age Man ate. We have made bread and other grain-based

products our staple foods. We have liberally supplemented these with sugar and other

refined carbohydrates and with man-made fats, all of which were unknown to Stone Age

Man. And we have changed our environment in terms of exposure to toxins and man-

made chemicals beyond all recognition. It hardly seems surprising therefore that chronic,

degenerative diseases are rapidly rising in the so-called 'advanced' populations of the

world. It is illustrative that many researchers on this subject refer to these diseases as the

'diseases of civilization'.3

So what are the 'diseases of civilization'? The term is most often used to refer to heart

disease, hypertension, diabetes, cancer and obesity. However, there are many other

increasingly prevalent conditions which are thought to be linked with this mismatch

between our modern diet and environment and the diet and environment we have evolved

to handle. These include allergies and food sensitivities, asthma, auto-immune diseases

such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis, multiple chemical sensitivities, irritable

bowel syndrome, celiac disease, autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)

and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

It is important to recognize that any attempt to recreate the real Stone Age Diet in our

modern age can only be an approximation. This is because the nutrient and toxic chemical

makeup of the soil is different. Similarly, our plants and animals have been selected and

bred for characteristics such as fast growth, superior color or size or keeping qualities. So

even our 'natural' foods today are different from those our Stone Age ancestors would

have eaten.

In any case, there was no one single diet in the Stone Age, since what was eaten would

have been slightly different from one group of Stone Age people to another, depending on

location, time of year and availability of particular foods. This is why a modern-day Stone

Age diet is probably more correctly termed a Stone Age-style diet. This variation in the

composition of our Stone Age ancestors' diet is reflected in the 'Stone Age Diets'

prescribed by medical practitioners. Whether using it as a diagnostic or curative tool, they

all tend to prescribe their own favored version. What remains constant however is the

premise that it is a diet of organic, natural foods based on fish, meat, game, poultry,

vegetables and fruits.4

There are two main groups of Stone Age Diet devotees. The first consists of people who

feel that the modern environment is simply not a healthy way to live, and view a Stone

Age-style diet as their best defence against succumbing to chronic disease. The second

group comprises practitioners who have specialized in nutritional and environmental

medicine (sometimes called clinical ecologists, allergologists or allergy specialists). They

very often use a Stone Age-style diet as a means of identifying foods or chemicals that

may be causing an individual's ill-health, and also as a basis for a permanent dietary

change which may cure or control the illness.

As can be seen, a strict Stone Age-style Diet is very restrictive and compliance by patients

used to our grain- and milk-based staple foods is likely to be poor. Therefore, some

practitioners prescribe a 'modified Stone Age Diet' which may include some grains and

dairy produce. However, these modified versions virtually always exclude the grains that

we normally eat, wheat and corn/maize in particular. They are also likely to specify duck

eggs instead of our usual eggs from hens, and goat's milk instead of cow's milk.

One of the most problematic aspects of embarking upon a Stone Age-style Diet,

particularly a modified one where the individual is asked to include uncommonly eaten

grains such as millet, quinoa, gram (chickpea) flour and buckwheat flour, is how to

incorporate these items into palatable meals. All too often, the patient simply ignores those

foods. However, this can result in an unnecessarily restricted dietary regime which

increases the likelihood that the patient will abandon the diet before he has had a chance

to benefit from it. Cookbooks which contain recipes specifically for these uncommonly

eaten grains do exist, but they are few and far between. One such example is the 'Stone

Age Diet is Easy Cookbook'.5

Copyright GoodDietGoodHealth.com 2007

Jackie Bushell is passionate about raising awareness of the role of diet and nutrition in

good health and helping those who are affected by obesity, food allergies or sensitivities,

intestinal yeast overgrowth and nutrient deficiencies. Via her website at

GoodDietGoodHealth.com, she provides information, support, cookbooks, how-to guides

and a newsletter for those wishing to understand more about how to improve their health

in a natural way. Amongst the resources she has developed is The Stone Age Diet Is Easy

Cookbook.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jackie_Bushell

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