This is an excerpt from a study guide my professor wrote up, I saved it because it reminded me of the Paleo diet. For those of you that have never heard of Paleo, it is the belief that we should eat like our ancestors did, our ancestors from thousands of years ago. It is an interesting theory, and definitely worth looking up. It includes animal products, which may not be for most of the people on this site, but certainly interesting. Anyway, this excerpt is intriguing to me because it inadvertently says that as soon as humans became dwellers instead of hunter/gatherers they began eating unhealthily with the rise of agriculture.
“Agriculture allowed for humans to rapidly multiply and inhabit the entire globe. But there were costs too. Agriculture was hard work, put stress on the body, and because lots of human labor was required, people had to live together in larger groups–permanent settlements. Disease easily swept through these settlements and humans died younger from the hard labor and diseases. The human diet was dramatically altered–it would lack diversity and balance for thousands of years. Certainly the amount of labor required of humans in an agricultural society was far, far more than that of a gathering/hunting society. Humans became shorter and less healthy with the coming of agriculture.”
Now this is talking about thousands of years of the same foods over and over again with no variety. But wait, isn’t that what many of us do now? We certainly have more variety, but think about what you like to eat on a daily basis. Breakfast is the same thing every day for so many people. That’s not variety. For lunch people tend to only choose between maybe three options. Sandwiches are probably the most popular lunch option, next to left overs. But left overs are what you ate for dinner the night before.
So what I’m getting at here is that we all get comfortable with foods we like and tend to eat just those foods. Why not take something you love and put a twist on it, find a way to add some vegetables to it and make it healthier. Healthy doesn’t mean “not as tasty” you just have to do it right. This is a great way to start transitioning to a vegetarian or vegan diet. Slowly take the foods you should be avoiding out of the foods your normally eat. There is no reason to completely forget about all the foods you like, just change them a little. I don’t know how you would change a steak… But someone somewhere is probably working on that.