As a serious athlete, you have a lifestyle and an activity level that are far different from that of the average American. Chances are your training patterns also vary significantly from the daily activity patterns of our Paleolithic ancestors. They were unlikely to ever run 26.2 miles as fast as they could, nonstop. Nor would they work and run at high-intensity levels day after day, week after week. The only reason they would have done so would have been under extreme conditions in which their lives were continually at risk, and the only way to survive was to run far and fast every day. Such situations were rare. As you will see in the next chapter, the more typical manner of “exercise” for the Paleolithic athlete would have involved long, steady hunts and foraging expeditions conducted at a moderate pace until the kill was imminent or the gathered foods were hauled back to camp. At these times their effort would increase, but they would no doubt rest at every opportunity. Ceremonial dance would also provide nearly continuous “exercise,” but the intensity would be relatively low.
What all of this means for you is that your diet must be modified slightly to accommodate your “unusual” high-level training patterns that are a requisite for peak performance during competition. These modifications, as you are now well aware, involve exactly when and what you eat before, during, and immediately following exercise. These critical dietary nuances were discussed extensively in Chapters 2, 3, and 4.
Now let’s get down to the crux of this chapter: What should you eat for the remainder of your day, from the time short-term recovery ends until just before the next workout begins? During this period, you should be eating in a manner similar to that of your Paleolithic ancestors. You’ll quickly discover that your day-to-day recovery is greatly enhanced and, as a result, your performance will improve.
Let’s make it clear from the start: It would be nearly impossible for any athlete or fitness enthusiast living in a typical modern setting to exactly replicate a Paleolithic hunter-gatherer diet. Many of those foods are unavailable commercially, no longer exist, or are totally disgusting to modern tastes and cultural traditions. Do brains, marrow, tongue, and liver sound appealing to you? Probably not, but to hunter-gatherers, these organs were mouthwatering treats that were gobbled up every time an animal was killed. For hunter-gatherers, the least appetizing part of the carcass was the muscle tissue, which is about the only meat most of us ever eat.
Most of the familiar fruits and veggies that we find in the produce section of our supermarkets bear little resemblance to their wild counterparts. Large, succulent, orange carrots of today were nothing more than tiny purple or black fibrous roots 1,000 years ago. The numerous varieties of juicy, sweet apples that we enjoy would have resembled tiny, bitter crab apples a few thousand years ago. Thanks to thousands of years of selective breeding, irrigation, and, later, fertilizers and pesticides, we now eat domesticated fruits and veggies that are larger and sweeter and have less fiber and more carbohydrate than their wild versions. Figure 9.1 contrasts the fiber content of wild and cultivated plants in a 100-gram sample, and Table 9.1 compares the vitamin and mineral content of wild plant foods and their domesticated counterparts. You can see that the B vitamins, iron, and zinc concentrations are comparable between the two, whereas wild plants have more calcium and magnesium, and domesticated plants are better sources of vitamin C. Unless you are fortunate enough to live where you can harvest Mother Nature’s nuts, berries, or other uncultivated plant foods, most of us will rarely eat wild plant foods on a regular basis. Nevertheless, it matters little because the overall nutritional differences between wild and domesticated plants are small and generally insignificant.
TABLE 9.1
Fresh produce is an essential element of contemporary Paleo diets, and I encourage you to eat as much of these healthy foods as you possibly can. The only excluded vegetables are potatoes, cassava root, sweet corn, and legumes (peas, green beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, peanuts, etc.). Fruits are Mother Nature’s natural sweets, and the only fruits you should totally steer clear of are canned fruits packed in syrups. Dried fruits should be consumed sparingly by most nonathletes, as they can contain as much concentrated sugar as candy does. Nevertheless, most trained endurance athletes can eat dried fruit with few adverse health consequences because athletes in general maintain sensitive insulin metabolisms. If you are obese or have one or more diseases of the metabolic syndrome (hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, or abnormal blood lipids), you should sidestep dried fruit altogether and eat sparing amounts of the “very high” and “high” sugar fruits listed in Table 9.2. Once your weight returns to normal and disease symptoms fade away, eat as much fresh fruit as you please.
So you can see there is no need to go out and forage for wild plants and animals to stock your pantry for this lifetime nutritional plan. Nearly all of the performance rewards and health benefits of the Paleo Diet for Athletes can easily be achieved from modern-day foods and food groups that had a counterpart in Stone Age diets.
The fundamental dietary principle of the Paleo Diet for Athletes is simplicity itself: unrestricted consumption of fresh meats, poultry, seafood, fruits, and vegetables. Foods that are not part of modern-day Paleolithic fare include cereal grains, dairy products, high-glycemic fruits and vegetables, legumes, alcohol, salty foods, processed meats, refined sugars, and nearly all processed foods.
The exceptions to these basic rules are fully outlined in Chapters 2, 3, and 4. For instance, immediately before, during, and after a workout or competition, certain nonoptimal foods may be eaten to encourage a quick recovery. During all other times, meals that closely follow the 21st-century Paleolithic diet described here will promote comprehensive long-term recovery and allow you to come within reach of your maximum performance potential.
A crucial aspect of the 21st-century Paleolithic diet is the proper balance of plant and animal foods. How much plant food and how much animal food were normally consumed in the diets of Stone Age hunter-gatherers? There is little doubt that whenever and wherever it was ecologically possible, hunter-gatherers preferred animal food over plant food. In our study of 229 hunter-gatherer societies, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, my research team showed that 73 percent of these cultures obtained between 56 and 65 percent of their daily subsistence from animal foods. In a follow-up study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, involving 13 additional hunter-gatherer groups whose diets were more closely analyzed, we found almost identical results. Our colleague, Mike Richards, PhD, of the University of British Columbia in Canada, has taken a slightly different approach in determining the plant-to-animal balance in Stone Age diets. He has measured chemicals called stable isotopes in skeletons of hunter-gatherers that lived during the Paleolithic era. His results dovetailed nicely with ours and confirmed that hunter-gatherers living 12,000 to 28,000 years ago consumed the majority of their daily calories from animal sources.
Based upon the best available evidence, you should try to eat a little more than half (50 to 55 percent) of your daily calories from fresh meats, fish, and seafood. Avoid fatty processed meats (bologna, hot dogs, salami, sausages, bacon, etc.), but fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel, and herring are perfectly acceptable because of their high concentrations of healthful omega-3 fatty acids.
One of the crucial ideas woven throughout The Paleo Diet for Athletes is that you should eat animal foods at virtually every meal. But the important point here is one of quality and freshness. At all times try to eat your meat, seafood, and poultry as fresh as you can get them. Fresh is always best, followed by frozen—avoid processed, canned, tinned, or salted animal foods. When it comes to beef, chicken, and pork, grass-fed, free-ranging, or pasture-produced meats are superior, although a bit expensive. Check out your local farmers’ market or visit my friend Jo Robinson’s Web site (http://eatwild.com/) to locate a farmer or rancher in your locale who can provide you with untainted, grass-fed meats.
Ninety-nine percent of the beef, pork, and chicken consumed in the United States is produced in colossal feedlots, frequently containing up to 100,000 animals. The motivating force behind feedlot-produced meat is purely financial. The singular goal of these enormous corporate agribusinesses is to produce the largest, heaviest animals possible with the smallest amount of feed. To accomplish this objective, the animals are restricted to tiny spaces where they get little or no exercise and are fed unlimited quantities of grain.
The final outcome is not pretty. Feedlot-produced cattle have a thick fat layer covering their entire body. These artificial creations of modern agriculture are obese and unhealthy and produce second-rate meat laced with hormones, antibiotics, and other toxic compounds. Their muscles are frequently interspersed with fat, which we call marbling, a trait that enhances flavor but makes cattle insulin-resistant and in poor health, just like us. Since feedlot-raised animals are fed solely grains (corn and sorghum), their meat is concentrated with omega-6 fatty acids at the sacrifice of healthful omega-3 fatty acids.
The take-home point is that the nutritional qualities of feedlot-produced meat are second-rate compared with those of meat from grass-fed or free-ranging animals. Nevertheless, I still believe that some, but not all, of these meats can be incorporated into the Paleo Diet for Athletes, especially if you try to eat leaner cuts and concurrently eat fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, herring, or sardines a few times a week. Fattier cuts of feedlot-produced meats are not ideal, because they contain not only more omega-6 fats, but also much less protein than leaner cuts contain. This characteristic in turn lowers your total intake of vitamins and minerals because the lean (muscle) protein component of meats is a richer source of vitamins and minerals than is the fat component. In Table 9.3, you can see for yourself the differences in the total protein and fat content between lean and fatty cuts of meat.
TABLE 9.3
| LEAN MEATS | ||
| % Protein | % Fat | |
| Skinless turkey breasts | 94 | 5 |
| Buffalo roast | 84 | 16 |
| Roast venison | 81 | 19 |
| Pork tenderloin lean | 72 | 28 |
| Beef heart | 69 | 30 |
| Veal steak | 68 | 32 |
| Sirloin beef steak | 65 | 35 |
| Chicken livers | 65 | 32 |
| Skinless chicken breasts | 63 | 37 |
| Beef liver | 63 | 28 |
| Lean beef flank steak | 62 | 38 |
| Lean pork chops | 62 | 38 |
| FATTY MEATS | ||
| % Protein | % Fat | |
| T-bone steak | 36 | 64 |
| Chicken thigh/leg | 36 | 63 |
| Ground beef (15% fat) | 35 | 63 |
| Lamb shoulder roast | 32 | 68 |
| Pork ribs | 27 | 73 |
| Beef ribs | 26 | 74 |
| Fatty lamb chops | 25 | 75 |
| Dry salami | 23 | 75 |
| Link pork sausage | 22 | 77 |
| Bacon | 21 | 78 |
| Bologna | 15 | 81 |
| Hot dog | 14 | 83 |
In the first edition of The Paleo Diet for Athletes, I was adamant in my recommendation that you should avoid fatty processed meats like bologna, bacon, hot dogs, lunch meats, salami, and sausages. That suggestion remains, and from Table 9.3 you can see that processed meats are really more like fat disguised as meat. Processed meats are man-made concoctions of meat and fat synthetically blended at the meatpacker or butcher’s whim with no concern for the authentic fatty acid profile or protein content of the wild animals our Stone Age ancestors ate. In addition to their unnatural fatty acid compositions (high in omega-6 fatty acids, low in omega-3 fatty acids) and low protein content, processed fatty meats contain preservatives called nitrites and nitrates, which are converted into potent cancer-causing nitrosamines in our intestinal tracts. Further, these unnatural meats are characteristically laced with salt, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, grains, and other additives that have many objectionable health effects.
With the Paleo Diet for Athletes I encourage you to consume as much high-quality “real” meat as you can afford. Clearly, the nearer you can get to “wild,” the better off you’ll be when it comes to the fat, protein, and nutrient profile of your meats. Game meat is not required for the Paleo Diet for Athletes, but if you are looking for a culinary adventure, try some. It’s highly nutritious and adds a unique flavor to any Paleo meal. Game meat is pricey (unless you hunt or know hunters) and usually is found only at specialty markets or butcher stores.
Despite being a comparatively high-fat food (62 percent fat, 34 percent protein) and one of the most concentrated sources of cholesterol (212 mg per egg), virtually all recent scientific studies conclude that ordinary egg consumption (seven per week) does not increase the risk for heart disease. You can now find eggs at your local supermarket that are enriched with the healthful long-chain omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA. Alternatively, seek out local growers whose chickens are cage-free, free-ranging and eat insects, worms, bugs, and wild plants. So please, enjoy this extremely nutritious food.
In the original version of The Paleo Diet for Athletes, we suggested that you should avoid fatty cuts of meat such as T-bone steaks, spareribs, lamb chops, and pork ribs because these cuts of meat contain more saturated fat than leaner cuts do. Further, it is known beyond a shadow of a doubt that increases in dietary saturated fat raise total blood cholesterol levels. This information has been known for more than 50 years from human metabolic ward studies, in which diet is strictly controlled and subjects are allowed to eat only the foods provided in the experiment. However, the next supposition, that increases in total blood cholesterol levels elevate the risk for heart and blood vessel disease, has been hotly debated by scientists since the original edition of our book was published. The consensus that is emerging from meta-analyses in which the results of multiple studies are combined indicates that dietary saturated fats have little or no effect upon the risk for cardiovascular disease. I quote Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, MPH, DrPH, and Renata Micha of the Harvard School of Public Health, who published the results of their meta-analysis in 2010, “These meta-analyses suggest no overall effect of saturated fatty acid consumption on coronary heart disease events”
There is absolutely no doubt that hunter-gatherers favored the fattiest parts of animals. There is incredible fossil evidence from Africa, dating back to 2.5 million years ago, showing this scenario to be true. Stone-tool cut marks on the inner jawbone of antelope reveal that our ancient ancestors removed the tongue and almost certainly ate it. Other fossils show that Stone Age hunter-gatherers smashed open long bones and skulls of their prey and ate the contents. Not surprisingly, these organs are all relatively high in fat. Analyses from our laboratories showed the types of fat in the tongue, brain, and marrow are healthful. Brain is extremely high in polyunsaturated fats, including the health-promoting omega-3 fatty acids, whereas the dominant fats in tongue and marrow are the cholesterol-lowering monounsaturated fats.
Most of us would not savor the thought of eating brains, marrow, tongue, liver, or any other organ meat on a regular basis; therefore, a few 21st-century modifications of the original Paleolithic diet are necessary to get the fatty acid balance right. First, we suggest you limit your choice of meats to fresh, nonprocessed types, preferably grass-fed, and try to eat fatty fish a few times a week—it’s good for you, just like the organ meats our ancestors preferred. Second, we recommend that you add healthful vegetable oils to your diet. If you follow these simple steps, together with the other nuts and bolts of this plan, the fatty acid balance in your diet will approximate what our Stone Age ancestors got.
From our analyses of 229 hunter-gatherer diets and the nutrient content of wild plants and animals, our research team has demonstrated that the most representative fat intake would have varied from 28 to 57 percent of total calories. To reduce risk of heart disease, the American Heart Association and the USDA MyPlate recommend limiting total fat to 30 percent or less of daily calories. On the surface, it would appear that, except for the extreme lower range, there would be too much fat in the typical hunter-gatherer diet—at least according to what we (the American public) have heard for decades: Get the fat out of your diet! The USDA’s MyPlate cautions us to cut out as much saturated fat as possible and replace it with grains and carbohydrate. Not only is this message misguided; it is flat-out wrong. Recent meta-analyses have shown that when used to replace saturated fats, carbs increased the risk for heart disease by elevating blood triglycerides and lowering HDL cholesterol levels. More important, these meta-analyses demonstrated that, compared with carbs, saturated fats were neutral and neither increased nor decreased the risk for heart disease.
Now let’s get back to the fat content of our ancestral hunter-gatherers’ diet. They frequently ate more fat than we do, but they also ate lots of healthy fats. Using computerized dietary analyses of the wild plant and animal foods, our research team has shown that the usual fat breakdown in hunter-gatherer diets was 55 to 65 percent monounsaturated fat, 20 to 25 percent polyunsaturated fat (with an omega-6-to-omega-3 ratio of 2:1), and 10 to 15 percent saturated fat (about half being the neutral stearic acid). This balance of fats is exactly what you will get when you follow our dietary recommendations.
Let’s get down to the specifics of the diet. Table 9.4 includes an inventory of modern foods that should be avoided. These recommendations might at first seem like a huge laundry list, with seemingly needless elimination of entire food groups. Most dyed-in-the-wool nutritionists wouldn’t object to our advice to cut down or eliminate sugars and highly refined, processed foods. They would have no problem with our suggestions to reduce trans fats and salt, and they would be ecstatic about our recommendations to boost fresh fruit and vegetable consumption. But they would, guaranteed, react violently to the mere thought of eliminating “sacred” whole grains from your diet. If they heard we also advocate reducing or eliminating dairy products, they almost certainly would brand this diet unhealthful, if not outright dangerous. You may wonder why, just because hunter-gatherers did not regularly eat grains or dairy products, you should follow suit. After all, aren’t whole grains healthful, and isn’t milk good for everybody? How can you get calcium without dairy? And won’t eating a lot of meat increase blood cholesterol levels?
In science, decisions should be made based upon what the data tell us and not upon human bias and prejudice. With these ground rules in mind, let’s take a look at the reasons for and potential benefits of eliminating or severely restricting entire food groups with the Paleo Diet for Athletes. One of the major goals of any diet, for both athletes and nonathletes alike, is to supply you, the consumer, with a diet rich in nutrients (vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals) that promote good health, which in turn promotes good performance. Table 9.5 shows the nutrient density of seven food groups.
TABLE 9.4
DAIRY FOODS
Milk
Cheese
Butter
Cream
Yogurt
Ice cream
Ice milk
Frozen yogurt
Powdered milk
Nonfat creamer
Dairy spreads
All processed foods made with dairy products
CEREAL GRAINS
Wheat (bread, rolls, muffins, noodles, crackers, cookies, cake, doughnuts, pancakes, waffles, pasta, tortillas, pizza, pita bread, flat bread, and all processed foods made with wheat or wheat flour)
Rye (bread, crackers, and all processed foods made with rye)
Barley (soup, bread, and all processed foods made with barley)
Oats (instant oatmeal, rolled oats, and all processed foods made with oats)
Corn (corn on the cob, corn tortillas, cornstarch, corn syrup)
Rice (including brown, white, wild, and basmati; ramen and rice noodles; rice cakes; rice flour; and all processed foods made with rice)
Millet
Sorghum
CEREAL GRAINS-LIKE SEEDS
Amaranth
Chia seeds
Quinoa
Buckwheat
LEGUMES
All beans (kidney, pinto, navy, white, lima, black, and broad beans) including string beans
Lentils
Peas, snow peas
Peanuts (peanuts are legumes, not nuts)
Soybeans and all soybean products
Chickpeas and garbanzo beans
STARCHY TUBERS
Potatoes
Cassava roots
YEAST-CONTAINING FOODS
Breads, doughnuts, rolls, muffins
All fermented foods (beer, wine, pickled foods, foods containing vinegar, and tofu)
PROCESSED AND CANNED MEATS AND FISH
Sausages, bacon
Processed meats (lunch meats, deli meats, preserved or smoked meats such as ham and turkey, and smoked or dried and salted fish)
Canned or pickled meats and fish (tuna, sardines, herrings, smoked oysters and clams, canned salmon and mackerel, chicken, and beef)
ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES
All alcoholic beverages (permitted in moderation; see Chapter 11)
SWEETS
All candy
Honey
Dried fruit (permitted in moderation; see Chapter 11)
Note that these foods are not forever banned from your diet, but are to be regularly avoided; see Chapter 11.
From top to bottom, here’s the ranking of the most nutritious food groups: fresh vegetables, seafood, lean meats, fresh fruits, whole grains and milk (tied for second to last), and nuts and seeds. Why in the world would the USDA include grains in MyPlate if the goal is an adequate intake of vitamins and minerals? This strategy makes no sense for the average American, much less for athletes like you. Had we included refined grains in the list, they would have ended up dead last because the refining process strips this nutrient-poor food group even further of vitamins and minerals. Unfortunately, in the United States, 85 percent of the grains we eat are highly refined, and grains typically make up 24 percent of our daily calories.
Grains and dairy foods are not only poor sources of vitamins and minerals; they also retain nutritional characteristics that clearly are not in your best interest, whether you’re an athlete or not. From Chapter 5, you now know all about the glycemic index and acid-base balance in foods, along with how they impact your performance. Virtually all refined grains and grain products yield high glycemic loads. Further, all grains, whether whole or refined, are net acid-producing. Dairy products are one of the greatest risk factors for heart disease in the American diet, and cheeses produce the highest acidic loads of any foods. If that’s not bad enough, recent studies have found that dairy products, despite having low glycemic indices, spike blood insulin levels similar to the way white bread does and cause insulin resistance in children. Do yourself a favor—get the grains and dairy out of your diet and replace them with more healthful fruits, veggies, lean meats, and seafood.
If you, like most Americans, have been swayed by those milk mustache ads, you probably are part of the mass hysteria, largely generated by the dairy industry, suggesting there is a nationwide calcium shortage that underlies osteoporosis. Not true! Calcium intake from dairy, or any other food, is only part of the story behind bone mineral health. More important is calcium balance, the difference between how much calcium goes into your body from diet and how much leaves in urine. You will be out of balance if more calcium leaves than what comes in, no matter how much milk you drink. What we really need to pay attention to is the other side of the equation—the calcium leaving our bodies. Dietary acid-base balance is the single most important factor influencing calcium loss in the urine. Net acid-producing diets overloaded with grains, cheeses, and salty processed foods increase urinary calcium losses, whereas the Paleo Diet for Athletes is rich in alkaline-yielding fruit and vegetables that bring us back into calcium balance and promote bone mineral health.
Superscripts represent relative ranking per nutrient (7 = highest; 1 = lowest).
Nutrient values represent average of food types within each food group: 8 whole grains, 20 fruits, 18 vegetables, 20 types of seafood, 4 lean meats, 10 seeds and nuts. Food types within food groups were based upon the most commonly consumed foods in the US diet for the 13 vitamins and minerals most frequently lacking or deficient in the US diet.
With the Paleo Diet for Athletes, you’ll be eating fresh meat and seafood, and lots of it, at almost every meal. Consequently, your protein intake will rise significantly. This is a good thing.
Experiments by Bernard Wolfe, MD, at the University of Western Ontario, have decisively shown that when animal protein replaces dietary saturated fat, it is more effective in lowering blood cholesterol and improving blood chemistry than are carbohydrates. In nutritional interventions such as Dr. Wolfe’s, the key to scientific credibility is replication—replication, replication, replication! It is absolutely essential that other scientists get similar results from comparable experiments. To the surprise of some party-line nutritionists, a series of papers from independent researchers around the world confirmed Dr. Wolfe’s earlier work.
Is there a limit to a good thing? You now know that lean animal protein lowers your blood LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, increases HDL (good), and provides muscle-building branched-chain amino acids. How much protein should—or can—you eat?
There is a limit to the amount of protein you can physiologically tolerate. Nineteenth- and 20th-century explorers, frontiersmen, and trappers who were forced to eat nothing but the fat-drained flesh of wild game in late winter or early spring developed nausea, diarrhea, and lethargy and eventually died. Studies conducted in the laboratory of Daniel Rudman, MD, at Emory University, have examined the causal mechanisms underlying the protein ceiling and found that toxicity occurs when the liver can’t eliminate nitrogen from the ingested protein fast enough. Nitrogen is normally excreted as urea in the urine and feces, but with protein toxicity, ammonia and excessive amino acids from protein degradation build up in the bloodstream and produce adverse symptoms.
For most people, the maximum dietary protein limit is between 200 and 300 grams per day, or about 30 to 40 percent of the normal daily caloric intake. On the Paleo Diet for Athletes, you will never have to worry about protein toxicity, as you will eat unlimited amounts of carbohydrates in the form of fruits and vegetables. Further, in the postexercise window, as fully explained in Chapters 2, 3, and 4, you will be encouraged to consume high glycemic, alkaline-yielding carbohydrates to fully replenish your glycogen stores.
From our analyses of hunter-gatherer diets and the nutrient content of wild plants and animals, our research team has shown that the protein intake in the average hunter-gatherer diet would have ranged from 19 to 35 percent of daily calories. Since the protein intake in the normal US diet is about 15 percent of daily energy, we recommend that for peak performance during Stage V of recovery (the period following short-term recovery, lasting until your next preexercise feeding), you boost your protein intake to between 25 and 30 percent of daily calories. At values higher than 30 percent of energy, some people may begin to experience symptoms indicative of the physiologic protein ceiling.
We’ve already mentioned that the fat content in Paleolithic diets (28 to 57 percent total calories) was quite a bit higher than values (30 percent or less) recommended by the American Heart Association and the USDA’s MyPlate. We suggest consuming between 30 and 40 percent of your Stage V energy as fat. How about carbohydrate? In hunter-gatherer diets, carbohydrate normally ranged from 22 to 40 percent of total daily energy. Because of your special need as an athlete to restore muscle glycogen on a daily basis, you should boost these values a bit higher. We suggest that Stage V carbohydrate intake should typically range from 35 to 45 percent of calories. As you personalize the Paleo Diet for Athletes to your specific training schedule and body needs, you will be able to fine-tune your daily intake of carbohydrate, fat, and protein.
Regardless of your final ratio of protein to fat to carbohydrate, you will be eating an enormously enriched and nutrient-dense diet, compared with what you were probably eating before. We’ve partially addressed this concept in Chapter 1, where we compared the Paleo Diet for Athletes with the recommended USDA Food Pyramid/MyPlate diet, and also in Table 9.5. An even better way to appreciate how much more nutritious your diet will become when you adopt the Paleo Diet for Athletes is by looking at what the average American eats. Figure 9.2 shows the breakdown by food group in the typical US diet. Notice that grains are the highest contributor to total calories (23.9 percent), followed by refined sugars (18.6 percent) and refined vegetable oils (17.8 percent). When you add in dairy products (10.6 percent of total energy) to grains, refined sugars, and refined oils, the total is 70.9 percent of daily calories. None of these foods would have been on the menu for our Paleolithic ancestors, as fully discussed in Chapter 8.
Refined sugars are devoid of any vitamins or minerals, and except for vitamins E and K, refined vegetable oils are in the same boat. Think of it: More than a third of your daily calories come from foods that lack virtually any vitamins and minerals. When you add in the nutrient lightweights we call cereals and dairy products (check out Table 9.5, you can see just how bad the modern diet really is. The staple foods (grains, dairy, refined sugars, and oils) introduced during the agricultural and industrial revolutions have displaced more healthful and nutrient-dense lean meats, seafood, and fresh fruits and vegetables. Once you begin to get these delicious foods back into your diet, not only will your vitamin, mineral, and phytochemical intake improve, but so will your performance.
FIGURE 9.2
