Read Your Personal Paleo Code: The 3-Step Plan to Lose Weight, Reverse Disease, and Stay Fit and Healthy for Life for Free Online

environment the Inuit lived in, and it’s a testament to the nutrient density of the animal foods that made up the majority of their diet.
    Nearly a hundred years later, an American dentist named Weston A. Price noticed an alarming increase in tooth decay and other problems in his patients, and he set out to determine whether traditional peoples who had not adopted a Western diet suffered from the same problems. In 1933, he took a trip to the Arctic to visit the Inuit, one of many cultures he studied, and he was deeply impressed by what he found. He praised the Inuit’s “magnificent dental development” and “freedom from dental caries” (that is, they had no cavities).
    It’s especially impressive that the Inuit enjoyed such robust good health when you consider that their diets were 80 to 85 percent fat, a percentage that would surely horrify the American Medical Association!
Aboriginal Australians
    Aboriginal Australians, or Indigenous Australians, were the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and surrounding islands. They traditionally lived as hunter-gatherers, consuming mostly animal products—including land mammals, birds, reptiles, sea creatures, and insects—along with a variety of plants. The quality of their diet depended in large part on where they lived: the subtropical, coastal areas were lush and provided abundant food; the harsh desert interior offered less in terms of both diversity and amounts of food.
    Nevertheless, numerous studies suggest that even those Aboriginal Australians living in marginal environments were free of modern diseases like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Weston Price described them as “a living museum preserved from the dawn of animal life on the earth.”
    Even today, contemporary Aboriginal Australians who maintain a traditional lifestyle are lean and fit and show no evidence of obesity, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, or cardiovascular disease. A study published in 1991 found that this population had optimal blood pressure, fasting-glucose levels (high levels indicate diabetes), and cholesterol levels, with an average body mass index well below that of Australians living in urban environments.
    Aboriginal Australians who make the transition from their traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a Westernized lifestyle develop unusually high rates of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and obesity, according to the same study, and Westernized Aboriginal Australians experience a dramatic improvement in metabolic and cardiovascular health when they return to their traditional ways.
    These three groups of hunter-gatherers have enjoyed good health with their traditional lifestyles into the twenty-first century, although each eats a very different diet. This may indicate that what we don’t eat might be just as important as what we do.
Are people who eat more grains less healthy?
    Another way to evaluate whether traditional Paleolithic diets are healthier than modern diets is to look at cultures and groups that consume large amounts of grains. Are they more likely to have health problems? There’s a great deal of research that says yes. Whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds contain compounds called phytates that bind to minerals such as calcium, iron, zinc, and manganese, making them more difficult to absorb. If a food contains nutrients that you can’t absorb, you’re not going to reap their benefits.
    Studies show that children on vegetarian macrobiotic diets—“healthy” diets composed of whole grains (especially brown rice), legumes, vegetables, and some fruits—are deficient in vitamins and minerals and are more likely to develop rickets than their meat-eating peers. Breast-fed babies of macrobiotic mothers may be getting lower levels of vitamin B 12 , calcium, and magnesium, according to some research, which may result in these babies having delayed physical and cognitive growth.
    Cultures that are heavily dependent on grains often show signs of