The How To Go Primal cheat sheet
Inspired by reader comments on How To Go Primal (without really trying), I’ve created a handy HTGP cheat sheet that lays out the options for three types of diets (and by “diet”, I mean “eating routine”, not “thing you do to get skinny”).
The premise here is that there are three very general types of categories of diets, based on human technological and cultural changes.
1. Modern diets are generally characterized by things like:
- industrial and mass production
- highly processed food
- food generally divorced from context
- a focus on taste, “nutrients” and chemical properties of foods
- food information transmitted by “experts” and external “authorities” (such as labels)
For more on the characteristics of modern diets, see Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.
2. Traditional diets are generally characterized by things like:
- small-scale, mostly local production
- some processing and agriculture, which varies depending on group, region, and food type
- food eaten generally in context (e.g. region, season, within a community, etc.)
- a focus on sustenance, maintaining traditional/ancestral practices, and community norms
- food information from hands-on transmission (e.g. from parent to child) as well as some cultural/community norms (e.g. religious observance)
Traditional diets are an intermediate step between industrial food production and primal-style eating.
For more on traditional diets that bridge this gap, see Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price.
3. Primal diets are generally characterized by things like:
- hunting and gathering mostly what one can eat in a given situation (with some small attempts at preservation, e.g. by air-drying meat)
- almost no processing beyond basic butchering and cooking; any fermentation is naturally occurring
- food always eaten in context (e.g. region, season, according to eaters’ needs, within a symbolic relationship to the land, etc.)
- a focus on sustenance and survival
- food information from hands-on transmission (e.g. from parent to child)
For more on the characteristics of primal diets, see The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain and the materials at RobbWolf.com. Also see this excellent piece Eat Your Habitat by Josh Leeger.
The dietary continuum
There is no specific timeframe given, as various regions have adopted food technology and production methods differently.
These diets are on a continuum.
There is no hard-and-fast division between them. For instance, some traditional diets may have elements of primal diets, or pre-modern diets.
Likewise, to transition from modern to primal can involve many steps, and blending the best elements of all diets, as you see fit.
The only underlying truth is that the farther away you get from a “modern” diet, the healthier — mentally, emotionally, and physically — you will probably be.
So even if you only stop the bus at “traditional light”, that’s still an improvement.
I’ve laid out the available options for animal- and plant-based protein.
So whether you hang your hat as carnivore, omnivore, or herbivore, you should be able to figure out how to transition your eating away from modern-style eating. (See also How To Dump Sugar… For Good)
Don’t sweat the small potatoes regionally varying tubers
Don’t get up all up in my grill about the details, e.g. whether this sheet is perfectly historically accurate, or when rice was domesticated, or that fungi are not “veggies”, or “where is beer?”, or whether So-and-So still makes tofu the traditional way.
Focus on the big picture here.
Grasp the overall ideas and fill in the blanks yourself.
This is a set of general concepts only, which you can use to decide where and how you might want to make changes to your eating habits and approach.
And ya know, as a printout, it sticks nicely on your fridge. Or yurt.
Please share. (However, you will need to produce your own cuneiform or orally transmitted version.)