I, like the vast majority of the world, have eaten grains (wheat and rice in all their various forms) all my life with no seeming ill effects. It was only when I was introduced to the Paleo Diet at my gym (Flatirons CrossFit) last year that I began to learn about "healthy" eating, which I had previously shrugged off as I had always thought I had a healthy diet.

Once I began learning about it, the concept of a "paleo" diet started making sense. The underlying ideas is explained in this excerpt from Wikipedia:

clipped from en.wikipedia.org

The modern dietary regimen known as the Paleolithic diet (abbreviated paleo diet or paleodiet), also popularly referred to as the caveman diet, Stone Age diet and hunter-gatherer diet, is a nutritional plan based on the presumed ancient diet of wild plants and animals that various human species habitually consumed during the Paleolithic—a period of about 2.5 million years duration that ended around 10,000 years ago with the development of agriculture. In common usage, such terms as the "Paleolithic diet" also refer to the actual ancestral human diet.^[1][2] Centered around commonly available modern foods, the "contemporary" Paleolithic diet consists mainly of meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, roots, and nuts; and excludes grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar, and processed oils.^[1][3][4]

Of course, there are plenty of detractors and skeptics. Read the Wikipedia article for the full story: Paleolithic diet

A big part of the paleo diet is the complete elimination of grains. Loren Cordain, of the Department of Exercise and Sport Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, and author of the "The Paleo Diet," has written an excellent and detailed paper on why grains are not meant to be consumed by humans. He makes a very compelling argument, at least to me.

Dr. Cordain states,

The sum of evidence indicates that the human genetic constitution has changed little in the past 40,000 years. The foods which were commonly available to preagricultural man were the foods which shaped modern man’s genetic nutritional requirements. Although our genetically determined nutritional needs have changed little in the past 40,000 years, our diet has changed dramatically since the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago. Cereal grains as a staple food are a relatively recent addition to the human diet and represent a dramatic departure from those foods to which we are genetically adapted. Discordance between humanity’s genetically determined dietary needs and his present day diet is responsible for many of the degenerative diseases which plague industrial man. Although cereal grains are associated with virtually every highly developed civilization in mankind’s history and now occupy the base of the present day food selection pyramid in the United States, there is a significant body of evidence which suggests that cereal grains are less than optimal foods for humans and that the human genetic makeup and physiology may not be fully adapted to high levels of cereal grain consumption.

Read the complete paper:
Cereal Grains: Humanity’s Double-Edged Sword

What do you think? Do you agree, or disagree?