Table of Contents
Praise for THE PALEO DIET
The Paleo Diet helps you lose fat, improve your health, and feel great. Why? Because the Paleo Diet works with your genetics to help you realize your natural birthright of vibrant health and wellness. My books success is due in large part to the revolutionary solutions provided by Professor Loren Cordain and his Paleo Diet message.
Robb Wolf, author of the bestselling The Paleo Solution
Loren Cordains extensive research demonstrates how modern westernized diets drastically depart from the original diet humans consumed for millions of years. In The Paleo Diet and The Paleo Diet Cookbook , Dr. Cordain shows how diets high in grains, dairy, vegetable oils, salt, and refined sugars are at odds with our genetic legacy and then shares his uncomplicated strategy for losing weight and getting healthy.
Arthur De Vany, Ph.D., author of The New Evolution Diet
We found Dr. Loren Cordains scientific research indispensable when we wrote The 30-Day Low-Carb Diet Solution. Cordain provides the most compelling arguments weve seen for why a protein-rich diet is the diet we were born to eat. His weight-loss plan simply works and his recipes are simply terrific.
Michael R. Eades, M.D., and Mary Dan Eades, M.D., authors of Protein Power, The 6-Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle, and The Low-Carb Comfort Food Cookbook
The Paleo Diet is at once revolutionary and intuitive. Its prescription provides without a doubt the most nutritious diet on the planet. Beautifully written, The Paleo Diet takes us from the theory to the day-to-day practice of the native human diet.
Jennie Brand-Miller, Ph.D., coauthor of the bestselling The Glucose Revolution series
Dr. Loren Cordains approach to nutrition is logically compelling, readily understood, and at the cutting edge of health science. Not all scientists can translate their concepts into a straightforward, accessible format, but Cordain has accomplished this feat brilliantly.
S. Boyd Eaton, M.D., lead author of The Paleolithic Prescription
Finally someone has figured out the best dieta modern version of the diet the human race grew up eating. Dr. Loren Cordains easy-to-follow diet plan reminds us that the healthiest foods are the simplest ones.
Jack Challem, author of The Inflammation Syndrome, Stop Prediabetes Now, and Syndrome X
In a world where were surrounded with information overload on dieting, this is a commonsense and effective weight-control approach thats easy to follow.
Fred Pescatore, M.D., author of The Hamptons Diet and The Allergy and Asthma Cure
The Paleo Diet lays out the basic nutrition plan not only for weight loss and good health but also for peak performance in athletic competition. It works.
Joe Friel, author of The Triathletes Training Bible
To Lorrie, Kyle, Kevin, and Kenny for making it all worthwhile
Preface to the Revised Edition
The original version of The Paleo Diet first came into print in January 2002. After its initial release, my book gained popularity and sales were good for the next few years, but it did not achieve chart-topping levels and the national exposure for which I had hoped. Fast-forward eight years to 2010: The Paleo Diet has become one of Americas best-selling diet and health books.
This kind of sales history is almost unheard of in the publishing industry for successful diet books, which typically act like dwarf starsthey burn brightly at first and then fade away. Not so for The Paleo Diet, which started as a gentle glow and over the years has become hotter and hotter until now it is red hot. A diet book that once began as a ripple is now approaching tidal wave proportions.
Why? What is different about The Paleo Diet in 2010 compared to 2002? The material in the book has not radically changed, but the world has radically changed since 2002, particularly how we now communicate and inform one another about our lives, our daily experiences, and our reality. And herein is a clue to my books sustained and increasing popularity.
When I first started to write The Paleo Diet in 2000, the Internet was in its youthful throes (Google had been founded only two years earlier, in 1998), and most people still used telephones (not cell phones) to talk. The U.S. Postal Service remained healthy because Bill Gatess foundational maxim a personal computer in every household had not yet taken firm hold, and snail mail reigned supreme. Then, spam simply meant canned meat. In the era of my books baptism, texting, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and most of the other Internet and electronic wizardry we now routinely take for granted still lay in the future. Then, people found out about the world through newspapers, radio, TV, and weekly news magazines. Now, except for the New York Times and a few other mainstays, daily newspapers have dried up to a trickle. Who wants to hear about outdated weekly news in paid-for magazines when you can get it for free and instantly from the Internet anytime you want? Like newspapers and magazines, radio and TV are not nearly as convenient or as timely as the Webyou can get Web versions of these media, anywayso why bother with the real things?
When I wrote The Paleo Diet a decade ago, electronic interconnectedness was primitive, slow, and noninclusive. Local U.S. news was unavailable, obscure, or unknown in places like Uzbekistan or Botswana and vice versa. In those days, scientists reported new discoveries in their specialized journals, but this information was rarely picked up by newspapers or the popular press. It took years or decades for many discoveries to have an impact on peoples lives. A decade ago, most people didnt argue with their physicians diagnoses and prescriptions because the doctor always knew bestpresumably because, then, the doctor was better informed than the patient was.
The Internet, Web sites, blogs, cell phones, and other various types of electronic wizardry have transformed our world within a mere decade or less. The electronic transmission of news and information and practical data to improve our lives, our financial situations, and our health has become humankinds universal language. Anyone in the world who has access to either a computer or a cell phone can immediately connect with anyone else who has the same technology. We now can and do talk to one another in unprecedented numbersby the billions. A local event can instantaneously become a worldwide happening. Today what your next-door neighbor knows is available not only to you and your close friends, but literally to the world.
With such vast and nearly total information connectiveness, a subtle but crucial upshot of this brave new electronic world has arisen. When someone comes up with an answer to a complex or even a simple problem that is correct and that works, it gains followers like a snowball rolling downhill. Such has been the case for The Paleo Diet. It simply works. In an earlier era, prior to the Web, when human networks were small and noninclusive, information flowed slowly or not at all. Accordingly, correct answers sometimes smoldered for years, decades, or longer before they became widely recognized and accepted. Fortunately,