The Paleo diet has become super popular, but is it synonymous with environmental friendliness? I wanted to find out...
I'm the kind of person that likes to eat seasonal and mostly vegetarian meals. I don't follow any kind of diet, but cooking wholesome and healthy food is one of my greatest loves in life.
I like to read a lot about how I can make sure my food choices and the way I cook are as sustainable as possible, and recently I've been seeing a lot online about the Paleo Diet being the most sustainable way to eat.
A family member of mine was Paleo for a while, so I know a little bit about it. If you've never heard of it before, basically it's a diet that follows a nutrition plan based on the eating habits of our ancestors from the Paleolithic period, between 2.5 million and 10,000 years ago, when people were still hunter-gatherers.
The modern Paleo eats a lot of meat, animal fat, vegetables, nuts, some fruit, a bit of honey, but no dairy, grains, sugar or anything processed.
It sounds healthy, yes! But healthy doesn't necessarily mean sustainable.
Now, I'm not here to criticise the diet, or anyone who follows it. Also, I know many people go Paleo for certain health reasons, like my family member did. I'm not a dietary expert, these are just my own thoughts in response to it being called the most sustainable way to eat.
The number one problem I see with the diet in terms of sustainability, is the heavy reliance on meat at a time when reducing our meat consumption is advised because of the environmental implications of raising livestock.
Furthermore, the diet is based on that of our ancestors, but in actual fact it's likely they only ate meat when they could get it. Plus, today's meat is nothing like that of the hunter-gatherer, even the free-range, grass-fed options (which, the Paleo community does encourage) are still very different to the wild lean animals of our ancestors.
Enjoying meat in moderation or even following a plant-based diet in my eyes seems the more sustainable option.
Secondly, Paleo cooking depends heavily on almonds (in the form of flour, milk, oil, and whole), coconut (flour, water, oil), and other whole nuts. None of these are local to a single place, and relying on imports from all around the world using fossil-fuel-powered airplanes isn't that sustainable, and seems un-cavemen-like too.
I acknowledge this is hardly the fault of the diet that nuts are imported and exported all around the world, but embracing a local approach to food, preferably organic, and with the fewest imported items, would ultimately be more sustainable.
A real positive I can see with being Paleo is that nearly all meals are cooked from scratch using fresh ingredients, as there aren't large scale, industrially-processed foods which fit the Paleo template. This is absolutely a more sustainable approach to cooking food, but it has to married with buying local ingredients to be truly long-term sustainable.
I'm not trying to say it's unsustainable to be Paleo, and there are a lot of arguments about whether more grain production (which Paleo's dont eat) is actually a sustainable way to feed more people.
However, I do think if you are considering to go Paleo solely for sustainability reasons, then do your research first!
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