Overall, a pretty good diet book which is easy to read and understand and follow.

However, in the book Dr. Cordain claims that milk/dairy is bad for you. He claims that our Paleolithic ancestors did not drink milk, which is probably true, but what he fails to mention is that the European and Near Eastern Caucasian people underwent a natural selection process that enabled them to digest milk. Meaning, that ancient individuals that couldn't digest milk died off, and the ones that could digest milk thrived and reproduced, and thus furthered their genetic makeup of adult milk consumption. So obviously, mother nature thought it best to consume dairy products.

No, I refuse to give up dairy products. Milk, yogurt, ice cream, creamer for coffee is what I live for. I hate chalky tasting soy.

I am a certified weight consultant & the author of Asian Slim Secrets. I can agree with the author that lean meat, seafood, fruit & vegetables are healthy. However, I do not agree that one should get rid of cereals and legumes from their diet. It is not consistent with the food pyramid. Unprocessed cereals and legumes contain a lot of fiber and resistant starch which are beneficial for weight loss.

While this book was correct most of the time, and suggests a diet that would likely be effective, it doesn't really have any novel information, or even present the information in any terribly new way. If you do your reading, you will find this information from a million other sources.

Paleo Diet follows the great concept of eating how we were designed to eat and does so in a thorough, enlightening way. There are issues to consider, however, like the lack of variety in the foods they recommend and negative non-natural foods the book suggests (like flax seed oil for cooking). Despite the drawbacks, we recommend this book.

As a young-earth Creationist, I love the concept of this diet, and it really works. I have been losing about 1/2 lb a day very consistently over time, I have more energy than before, I've lost that "brain fog" that so many people have on a high-carb way of eating, my general mood and outlook are improved, I'm certainly not starving. I'm in ketosis most of the time, so my body is a fat-burning machine, without me even trying - I don't even exercise, although I'll start soon. Why is this great from a Creationist viewpoint? The same principles apply -- what did the first human beings eat? Genesis 1 tells us that God created 1) grasses, 2) edible plants (vegetables,fruits,herbs) with seeds on the outside, 3) edible plants with seeds on the inside. Then, God tells us to eat those edible plants. Nowhere does He say to eat grass (grain) or seeds (grains, legumes, arguably potatoes). In Gen. 9:1-3, right after Noah's flood, God finally gives people permission to eat meat. Sure, people began to eat grain, beans & potatoes later in the Bible, that is an historical fact recorded in scripture. But going back to the beginning, what did our Intelligent Designer create for us to eat, originally? Fruits, vegetabes, herbs, (arguably) nuts and later on, meat too. Not grass, and not foods in which the entire food items IS the seed (grain, beans, potatoes). Some animals can eat those foods fine, but human beings aren't designed by our heavenly Creator to eat those things. We can if we have to, but in a free society today, we have the freedom to eat the way we were designed! I give this 4 stars. I withheld one star only because Dr. Cordain is very vocal about his foolish belief in the fairytale of evolution and its supposed basis for this diet. Frankly, this should be more aptly titled "The Creationist Diet!" It fits perfectly hand-in-hand with biblical Creationism, so I wholeheartedly recommend it to bible-believing Christians everywhere!

I read this book a few years ago and at the time, thought it was too extreme and unworkable.

Then, about 6 weeks ago, I read it again, tried this new way of eating and have lost 10 pounds so far.

It takes some getting used to, but you don't have to restrict calories, you just have to eat plenty of LEAN protein (unlike the Atkins diet), and plenty of fruits and veggies. No dairy, no grains, no legumes, no sugars. Yikes! For most Americans, used to eating bread, pasta, potatoes, milk, ice cream, cheese, etc., it will seem like blasphemy to give those things up.

Try it and you'll be surprised. I'm a cheese hound, love desserts, and have eaten my share of pasta, rice, bread and potatoes. I don't crave these things the way I used to, although don't get me wrong, I still like them. I just eat them occasionally and find that eating the paleo way is quite satisfying and my desire for the other foods has diminished greatly.

Speedy shipping and my package was as promised. I would order from this seller again.

The Paleo Diet took me awhile to actually digest. I read it, set it aside, and then came back to it. There are many similar approaches to explaining how we should eat, but The Paleo Diet gets to the core of who we are and why we should be "eating Paleo." Being human, I have deviated from "eating Paleo" repeatedly, and I can redeem myself in just a couple of days by refocusing on the principles of the diet. The very term, "diet," creates a problem because it suggests something temporary, something to do for awhile to set oneself aright. That's why I have adopted the term "eating Paleo," which is what I endeavor to do for optimal health.

The Paleo Diet is simply essential for everyone who wishes to appropriately nourish through the most appropriate nutrition. Some, who may have problems that had not seemed related to diet, may go through an "Aha" experience as they read through the pages. Eating Paleo is not just for the overweight. It is for everyone seeking optimal health.

The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat
At first I was all excited because I believed this books concept. I lost a few pounds but this was all water since you stop using salt. Dropping weight is hard for me beause I am not very overweight. I need to lose ten pounds. I really enjoyed eating all those steaks and liver while eating fruits and veggies also. The only problem was, my body rebelled against all that meat. I became very sick. so sick I could not leave the house if you know what I mean. This went on for 10 days, I almost went to the Dr. over this. I finally gave up on the dieting and found how many calories I needed per day and then cut back only about 4-5 hundred cals. per day I am now slowly reducing my weight and feel a lot better.

I have been following the Paleo Diet, and it's cleared up a a lot of unhealthy physical symptoms I was having. I discovered, like others, that I just cannot tolerate grains in any form.

I am also losing weight, PAINLESSLY for the first time in my life.

I wish I had known about this plan years ago. 5 Stars+ from me.

It is a good review of what has been written before. I learned something from it, which was helpful.

As a professional ski instructor, speaker, and author, I am almost constantly shocked at what people tend to eat--and the resulting catatonic state that I find so many struggling to overcome. The Paleo Diet helps to illustrate why that is. Basically, we're not eating the way that we are designed to eat, instead giving in to the very modern "convenience" of prepared and manufactured food (from wheat to sugar) and reaping the consequences.

I have long studied the more scientific approaches to diet and learned what works well for me. Dr. Cordain's perspective matches my experience and my observations. You owe it to yourself to learn this side of the options for eating and to consider why you feel the way you do.

What do you have to lose?

My doctor recommended this diet to me. When I got the book I didn't think
there would be any way I could adhere to it--it seemed too extreme.
The premise is that foods we ate for thousands of years before the agricultural revolution (meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts) are the foods that are the healthiest and best suited to us today. The author advises the elimination of all grains and dairy products. What makes it doable are three "Open" meals per week in which the dieter can enjoy foods from the forbidden list. I've found it easier to stay on than I imagined in the short term. I don't know how well someone can adhere to the diet in the long term but the pounds seem to come off quickly in the beginning.

This is one of the few diet books that actually make sense to me--it focuses on how our bodies were meant to eat, and what we're genetically programmed to process. There are no magic tricks, no "fat burning miracles," no tricks, no drugs, no 30-days-to-a-new-you, just solid, and (to me) sensible and easy to follow guidelines.

The book emphasizes fresh foods, rather than processed--that makes sense and avoids who knows what chemical additives. Lean meat, healthful oils, fish or seafood, fresh vegetables and fruits--simple. No need to try to interpret complex labels, count calories, carbs, or whatever. Just lean meats, fresh vegetables and fruits.

This is not to say you have to eat all game meats and raw vegetables and fruits to benefit--you can adapt many of your favorite recipes and snacks and even eat out, if you pay attention to what you're ordering.

As the author of The Wild Foods Cookbook for Stephen Greene Press The Wild foods Cookbookin the early 90s, I'm delighted to find how often this book parallels my own research. Again, no need to forage as our ancestors did--with care, we can shop at our local supermarket or farmer's market.

Cordain's not the world's greatest writer, and he tends to repeat his points more than I really enjoy, but the basic tenets are easy to grasp, make sense, and make me, personally, feel very good.

The book has a section of great recipes and appendices, solid research, and personal success stories...this one, at least, doesn't feel like a fad diet.

This book teaches you the way you are supposed to eat before man got involved and started processing everything. Not only do you lose weight,
you feel much healthier, too.

Let me begin by saying that I am a 100% believer in the paleo diet/ caveman diet concept. I am a national-level olympic weightlifter and have tried every combination of high/low carb/fat diet to find something that allowed me to stay in the same weight class as I got older. The only thing that has ever worked is the paleo diet.

For a good, concise description of the paleo diet, search for it on wikipedia.

Having said that, I will now be critical of this book. I found this book to be very verbose and never provided a convincing argument for the paleo diet. Very little evidence was provided that the diet described in this book was what was eaten 20,000 years ago. Most of the argument for this diet was modern research on how ingredient X (e.g. omega-3 fatty acids) is good for you. I have heard excellent evidence supporting the paleo diet during a few lectures by a scientist that studies coprolites (few thousand year old petrified excrement), unfortunately, similar evidence is not in this book.

Furthermore, there are a few technical issues I have with what is presented in this book. I have a PhD in theoretical chemistry. Having gone through graduate school, I know that just about anyone can get a PhD or become faculty if they are patient. Because of this, I'm immune to the Doctor/Professor name dropping used throughout this book.

Repeatedly, the author asserts that chloride from salt causes the body to become more acidic. Offhand, it is not at all clear to me how this could happen. Chloride ions in solution are basically inert. I have to believe that this conjecture is wrong.

The author also makes repeated comments about how bad salt is for you. A few years back, there was an article in the journal Science (one of the two highest tier scientific journals) about the politics of salt. The article describes a political agenda to show that salt caused medical problems. A few hundred million dollars and a half dozen project leaders later, the program was shut down because the researchers could not prove what the politicians wanted. I'm not suggesting that people should eat a lot of salt, since cavemen ate much less sodium and more potassium than we do today, but I am suggesting the health problems blamed on salt have sketchy research backing them up.

In spite of this book's problems, it is worth reading. The description of the paleo diet is good enough to be effective when followed.

I'd like to take a moment and congratulate Mr. Cordain on a great diet plan, but also stress the differences between his diet and my "Evolution Diet". While the books are similar in concept- eating like we were designed to eat- there are some major differences that readers should note before forming any opinion of either.

First off, the Paleo Diet recommends all natural, healthy foods- foods that one could find while walking around in nature: vegetables, fruits, animal meats (Cordain promotes lean meats) and the like. This certainly mirrors a Stone-Age person's diet, at least one who has the benefit of modern farming and shipping.

"The Evolution Diet," on the other hand, includes some slightly-processed foods with all-natural ingredients, such as cheese, skim milk, whole-grain breads/crackers as well as the foods listed above. We believe that these foods are close enough structurally to natural foods, that we promote them as healthy additions to your diet. Cordain rightly sees these foods as artificial to an extent and wants you to avoid them (those with allergies to these foods may already be doing so).

Another discrepancy is that "The Evolution Diet" describes 'when' to eat certain foods, not just 'what' to eat. This is integral to perfect health and is lacking, unfortunately, in "The Paleo Diet".

Aside from that, "The Paleo Diet" is a great eating plan and one can achieve a very healthy lifestyle if one follows this plan.

To our health!

I'd like to take a moment and congratulate Mr. Cordain on a great diet plan, but also stress the differences between his diet and my "Evolution Diet". While the books are similar in concept- eating like we were designed to eat- there are some major differences that readers should note before forming any opinion of either.

First off, the Paleo Diet recommends all natural, healthy foods- foods that one could find while walking around in nature: vegetables, fruits, animal meats (Cordain promotes lean meats) and the like. This certainly mirrors a Stone-Age person's diet, at least one who has the benefit of modern farming and shipping.

"The Evolution Diet," on the other hand, includes some slightly-processed foods with all-natural ingredients, such as cheese, skim milk, whole-grain breads/crackers as well as the foods listed above. We believe that these foods are close enough structurally to natural foods, that we promote them as healthy additions to your diet. Cordain rightly sees these foods as artificial to an extent and wants you to avoid them (those with allergies to these foods may already be doing so).

Another discrepancy is that "The Evolution Diet" describes 'when' to eat certain foods, not just 'what' to eat. This is integral to perfect health and is lacking, unfortunately, in "The Paleo Diet".

Aside from that, "The Paleo Diet" is a great eating plan and one can achieve a very healthy lifestyle if one follows this plan.

To our health!

I'd like to take a moment and congratulate Mr. Cordain on a great diet plan, but also stress the differences between his diet and my "Evolution Diet". While the books are similar in concept- eating like we were designed to eat- there are some major differences that readers should note before forming any opinion of either.

First off, the Paleo Diet recommends all natural, healthy foods- foods that one could find while walking around in nature: vegetables, fruits, animal meats (Cordain promotes lean meats) and the like. This certainly mirrors a Stone-Age person's diet, at least one who has the benefit of modern farming and shipping.

"The Evolution Diet," on the other hand, includes some slightly-processed foods with all-natural ingredients, such as cheese, skim milk, whole-grain breads/crackers as well as the foods listed above. We believe that these foods are close enough structurally to natural foods, that we promote them as healthy additions to your diet. Cordain rightly sees these foods as artificial to an extent and wants you to avoid them (those with allergies to these foods may already be doing so).

Another discrepancy is that "The Evolution Diet" describes 'when' to eat certain foods, not just 'what' to eat. This is integral to perfect health and is lacking, unfortunately, in "The Paleo Diet".

Aside from that, "The Paleo Diet" is a great eating plan and one can achieve a very healthy lifestyle if one follows this plan and exercises.

To our health!

The book brings forward the thinking on diets by looking to our past primitive diets. It advanced for me the concept of acid/alkaline balances and omega 3 to omega 6 fat ratios.

I was recommeded this book by a fitness coach. I was about 50 lbs overweight and suffering health problems. Anyhow, I been following the program for about 2 months now and occasionally work out and have lost 25 lbs. I tried Atkins before and did lose about 40 lbs, but as soon as I went off and added carbs back I gained weight like no tomorow. I wore everything I ate. With this program I eat a lot of fruit and vegtables and the part that is great is it seems to kill your hunger after awhile. I used to think about food most of the time and with this program, I actually sometimes have to remind myself to eat. That is completely un-heard of for me prior. Additionally, I feel much better, my compexion, and skin is much healthier looking. I ve lost about 25 lbs already and I have energy to want to work out. With Atkins I had no energy and no endurance. Occasionaly when I cheat, and eat bread, it actually upsets my stomach now. I used to have indigestion frequently, now that is also gone. I highly recommend this program.

I received this book as a gift. There are quite a few books on this subject on the market and this one is the best. I too could not put it down and finished it in 3 days. It's a huge book, a great resource that is well researched and written.. I have a few friends who've purchased this book and really loved it too. I can highly recommend this book.

Author of
The Truth aboutt
Cafffeine

This version of the "protein" diet brings the whole eating craze back to the center where it belongs. It just doesn't make sense to eat dripping bacon and greasy cheeseburgers without any checks and balances. The Paleo diet calls for a sensible approach to eating lean protein as did our distant ancestors, and reinstitutes the idea that fruit and vegetables should be a mainstay. I do wish there was a more prominent place for whole grains, but who says you have to follow Paleo exactly?
Good nutritional information included in this book.

I got this book because I, being a current health advocate, X-nurse, and cookbook author, wanted to see how it compared to The Seventh-day Diet. It is true that most people did not get ill until folks started bleaching flour and consuming white sugar. I go back to the original diet in the Bible and see that we are to eat grains, veggies, fruits, olives, and nuts. Yes, we can eat clean meat IF the blood is drained- but most folks don't buy kosher foods. Most folks, like she says in the book, eat processed foods. So I have to agree with her on some points; however, some points, like eating unclean meat, I do not agree with at all. Also, I have done vast research on diary and it causes sinus infections. I was by the side of the Amish Hex doctors on several occasions when he treated people that had consumed lots of dairy with herbs and apple cider vinegar. My suggestion is to buy the Seventh-day Diet book, which is on Amazon. I am a Seventh-day Adventist now and feel so much better, being a vegan. While in nursing school, I did a study on people in a cancer unit- just to see how many ate alot of veggies- only one lady ate a pretty good amount. Also, one of my test questions in my laste semester at Eastern Kentucky University was what you wouldn't feed your patient- the answer was a hot dog- because the sodium nitrates cause cancer. Lastly, I am glad that she did include some valuable viewpoints of more veggies and how bad the sugar and processed food are.
Sicily Yoder aka Teresa Phillips
Author of, Amish Cooking with Sicily Yoder", and "Leaving Lancaster County."

The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain, Ph.D. is a monumental work that brilliantly explains and popularizes what may well be one of the biggest breakthroughs in scientific understanding in human history: the evolutionary hypothesis of human nutrition and lifestyle. This hypothesis does what no other diet and exercise regime does: it builds a scientific model that can be used to make predictions that can be tested and it does so upon the very foundation of biology--evolution.

This book does an excellent job of explaining this model and how to put it to use. Dr. Cordain's style is eminently readable, so it is understandable to the layperson while maintaining a scientific and evidence-based approach. Endnotes would make the book even better.

Those scientists who are using this evolutionary model of nutrition predict that the healthiest foods for humans will be the natural foods that humans have been eating for the last 2.5 million years--not the agrarian and processed foods of the last ten thousand years--and that an optimal diet will approximate as much as possible the types of diets that Paleolithic peoples consumed.

Most other diets take a hit-or-miss, after-the-fact approach, focusing on the micro level of what certain scientific studies and anecdotal evidence suggest about the healthiness of certain foods and diets, and from the aggregation of some of this data, try to determine the optimal dietary approach. As new data comes in that contradicts the old, upheavals in dietary fads occur and many people become confused and discouraged by the conflicting signals they receive over the years. As others have noted, Paleolithic-based diets are the only non-fad diets, since they span hundreds of thousands and millions of years, not decades.

The most common criticism of the evolutionary hypothesis of diet and lifestyle involves comparative life expectancy. Assumptions are made that people live much longer and healthier lives today than Stone Agers did, and that Stone Agers did not live long enough to acquire the chronic degenerative diseases of modern civilization. The idea that hunter gatherers' lives were "nasty, brutish, and short" is actually an exaggeration that was popularized by Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. Dr. Cordain explains (as have others) the scientific findings that human life expectancies DECLINED when Stone Age hunter-gatherers adopted an agrarian lifestyle at the start of the Neolithic era. The later increases in life expectancy were mainly due to public health advances in sanitation, food safety, quarantine systems, immunizations and childbirth survival rates. Thirty three years was the estimated AVERAGE life expectancy of a Paleolithic hunter-gatherer male, not the maximal lifespan of all hunter gatherers. A hunter gatherer who survived childbirth, infectious disease, accidents, battles, and wild animals could be expected to live as long as we do today. Moreover, archaeological and anthropological studies of Paleolithic records and contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures show much lower prevalence of heart disease, sudden cardiac death, cancer, stroke and even acne than in modern societies.

Professor Jared Diamond, the famous evolutionary biologist and author, went so far as to state that "recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence." He further declared that "Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we're still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it's unclear whether we can solve it."

Those questions that Cordain didn't handle thoroughly in his book are addressed on his website (http://thepaleodiet.com/faqs/). Perhaps future editions of the book will include the additional details and defenses that Cordain has posted on his site. For example, Cordain responds to another common objection to The Paleo Diet--that hunter gatherers favored fatty cuts of meat and that Cordain is therefore wrong to suggest that we restrict our intake of saturated fat. Cordain agrees that "There is absolutely no doubt that hunter-gatherers favored the fattiest part of the animals they hunted and killed" (such as the tongue and brains). But this does not mean that we should eat unlimited quantities of fatty domestic meats, as Cordain explains: "Not surprisingly, these organs are all relatively high in fat, but more importantly analyses from our laboratories showed the types of fats in tongue, brain, and marrow are healthful, unlike the high concentrations of saturated fats found in fatty domestic meats. Brain is extremely high in polyunsaturated fats including the health-promoting omega-3 fatty acids, whereas the dominant fat in tongue and marrow are the cholesterol lowering monounsaturated fats." Cordain points out that modern feedlot cattle typically have 30% body fat or greater, versus the 10% body fat that wild Paleolithic animals averaged on a year round basis.

Cordain also explains on his site that the question of saturated fat is more complicated than a simple good-or-bad debate would indicate. Some saturated fat is good (stearic acid) and some is bad (palmitic acid, lauric acid, and myristic acid). Wild animals have more of the good saturated fat than domestic animals.

As scientific understanding of the new field of evolutionary nutrition advances, some of Cordain's recommendations may well be revised. Cordain has already modified one of his recommendations: he no longer recommends using flaxseed oil in cooking (he still recommends consuming it cold, adding it to meats after cooking them and to salads) and acknowledges that was an error. This is a new field in science and there is still much to learn.

Cordain was first "enlightened" about diet by S. Boyd Eaton's 1985 article in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled "Paleolithic Nutrition." Accumulating evidence and growing scientific opinion suggests that S. Boyd Eaton, Loren Cordain and others have indeed started a scientific revolution. I believe that this book will be seen in retrospect as an early classic in this revolution's development.

One doesn't even need to accept the evolutionary model in order to recognize the wisdom of this dietary approach. Cordain says that a blueprint for optimal nutrition is built into our genes and "Whether you believe the architect of that blueprint is God, or God acting through evolution by natural selection, or by evolution alone, the end result is still the same: We need to give our bodies the foods we were originally designed to eat."

Every nutritionist, MD, chef and charliton has a diet theory. "Low Fat" is good. "Low Carbs" is good. "Balanced (whatever that means!)" is good. Loren Cordain also has a theory. His theory makes as good or better sense than most of the others: Our body and mind are probably better off if we eat the foods we evolved with over a couple of million years of evolution. What makes Cordain's approach different is that he backs it up with real science, that is, testing his theory with real research and real tests on real subjects using the scientific method. If the tests don't show that the one or another part of the theory is working it gets cut out and the theory modified. I'm tired of trying out untested theories which are politically correct or sound good. I want science. Cordain delivers.

By the way, just because I've lost wieght, feel great and really enjoy my food is just anectotal evidence, not a double blind test with statical significance, but it got me to write this review!

I think this is a good book on diet and nutrition and culture. The author is correct, I think, to criticize the typical U.S. diet, which is literally killing millions of people, because it is heavily based on sugar, carbohydrates, fat, and sodium (salt). Processed foods are full of bad things like hydrogenated fats, and fast food has all kinds of bad things in it. I also think that the idea of eating lean protein, fruits and vegetables is a very good idea. For example, you can literally eat as much fruit as you want. By the time your stomache is full, you will stop eating, but the energy density to volume of food is very low, so you won't gain weight. I think one big factor in the U.S. obesity epidemic is lack of exercise and movement (driving everywhere) and also the fact that portions keep increasing in size. Going to a lean protein and fruit and veggies diet is a good idea, because protein make you feel full far longer than carbs do. So in essence, I like this book and will do this diet. However, I mean, let's get real, the average paleolithic man or woman lived probably to be about 22 on average, whereas we today live to be 74. Paleo man died probably mostly of infections and parasites. He did not live long enough to develop heart disease or the types of diseases the author associates with our "high carb diet". So it is a bit of an unfair comparison. I would take our modern lifestyle over that of paleo man any day of the week, and I think it is a bit odd to hold up as a model a people that died so young. Another issue I have is, if our genetic code designs us for eating lean protein and veggies, why do the things we crave tend to be other things (donuts, pizza, etc.). If my genes are specifically built for eating veggies and lean protein, why do I like pizza and donuts more ? It can't all be "cultural factors". I once read an interview of a top European nutrition expert, and he said, they did research on what is in uncooked vegetables, and he reported that many of the things are very harmful. Brocholi has some really nasty substances in it ! He also said that we should tune more into what our body tells us, because it doesn't lie. For example, you body self-regulates, and will give you signals for what to eat and when, if you know how to listen to it. So the idea in the Paleo diet that uncooked veggies are all good and that we are genetically designed to eat them and lean protein makes me wonder a bit, because moms all over the world have to force their kids to eat stuff like brocholi. Maybe nature knows a lot more than we do, and those kids are right, if they listen to what their body is telling them. I think the truth is, our paleo genetics doesn't know we live in an environment of extremely easy access to food (especially in the U.S.), and we tend to love fats and sugars and salt because in a resource-scare environment, we HAD to love them, because they were so rare. On the other hand, veggies were everywhere. So I think there are some very good concepts in this book, and everyone should think this through. It is fascinating and I appreciate that the author wrote this book, because it puts us on the right track.

THERE ARE SO MANY DIETS TODAY, ONE CAN HARDLY MAKE AN INTELLLIGENT CHOICE. EACH HAS ITS COMPLICATED REASONS FOR BEINB THE BEST. IN CASE OF THE PALEO DIET THESE REASONS ARE EASILY COMPRREHENSIBLE AND MAKE SENSE,

What I like most in this book is the emphasis on adaptation. In all living organisms adaptation is achieved via a few simple processes: mutation, fusion/ recombination, and selection of the genes that occur during the reproduction process only while the organism prepares its genes to transmit them to the next generation. The resistance of bacteria to antibiotics demonstrates that an adaptation necessitates about one thousand generations. Bacteria divide rapidly and can have thousand generations in one year. In human one thousand generations takes about 15 to 20,000 years. This is why we are poorly adapted to the changes in the diet resulting from agriculture that started 10 to 12,000 years ago. This is why we are absolutely not adapted to more recent changes, like starch and sugar excess, deficiency of other carbohydrates than those found in starch and sugar,the refining of food, additives and pesticide residus, mineral and vitamin scarcity and the essential fatty acid imbalance of the American diet. This is why our genes still prefer the ancestral Paleo diet!

My Doctor recommended this diet. It's a decent book and diet although as is always the case I find it improbable to follow every tenent and some I just choose not to follow, like no coffee and only 3 eggs.

But I've managed still to loose 15 lbs in 3 weeks, although if I was able to avoid all the NO foods I would have lost more.

...and this book is a MUST have for anyone serious about performance nutrition. I have been a serious student of health and nutrition since I was diagnosed with Cancer as a teenager. I have been cured and healthy for well over 15 years and nutrition is an enormous part of the reason I have been able to become as fit as I am now. "The Paleo Diet" is state of the art information backed by solid scientific research on how your body is designed to eat.

As with any "diet" book or advice, I think this one needs to be taken with a grain of salt, so to speak.

Removing grains and legumes, and processed foods from the diet has proven to be highly beneficial to me. Removing dairy is logical, since the human body is not intended to process any milk other than mother's. Since making these adjustments to my diet, I have felt so much better, and when I occassionally have a piece of cheese, my body has difficulty processing it. Sugar had already been removed from my diet years before I found this book.

However, there are a few points I do not follow. I do not calculate the acidity and alkalinity of my diet. That is too much bother. I do not avoid all salt, as avoiding it altogether can cause it's own problems, as sodium is necessary in some amount. I do not restrict myself to lean meats, as a certain amount of dietary fat is necessary for satiety. I do not avoid vinegars or oils.

I use sea salt, rather than iodized salt, as it is less processed. I have changed my oil selections, in part from his recommendations, and in part from others, but I now use olive, grapeseed, coconut, and nut oils (not peanut, which is a legume), rather than soybean or canola. I eat a healthy balance of lean and fattier meats. I use vinegar when I want to.

Overall, this is an interesting concept that is not necessarily well executed. But it is a good springboard to start adjusting your diet to what your body needs.

I am a medical doctor and have studied diet since I was a high school athlete. While not perfect, this book outlines the basic principles of paleolithic eating. It gives the paleolithic background, scientific rationale and practical instructions. Adoption of this diet in the USA would plummet our health care costs across the board.

There is a mounting body of evidence that diet is important in mental health issues as well. This even extends to violent behavior, particularly in our deficient omega-three fatty acids and excessive omega-six fatty acids. Here is a huge benefit that could cut down on criminal court costs and incarceration, not to mention quality of life.

My objections are few. Cooking flax is questionable. Canola is a genetically engineered alteration of a toxic substance, the rapeseed. He probably maligns saturated fats too much. The answer here is probably more moderate than the Atkins-esque and the author's more polarized rec's.

Finally personal experience... I found myself in 1999 at 230# at 6'3." I started eating low grain diet (a daily serving), moderate produce and plenty of animal protein, fat and all (meat, seafood, eggs, cheese). I cheated a few times a week and drank beer a few times a week. In two months I lost twenty pounds and was a muscular athletic looking guy again. My girlfriend said I was "hot"-at age 39. Of course I drifted off and got up to 250 this last holiday season. I have been gradually eating more this way and already lost 12 pounds and feel much better. And this while exercise is limited by multiple injuries. This may not seem very impressive, but it is when you consider I'm not really more than doing a partial version here and not getting enough exercise.