Nature has provided every creature that roams the earth a diet designed to sustain and maximize its life. What these diets are composed of is based on a creature’s location, climate, accessibility, and physical prowess. As humans, our ancient forefathers—and mothers—were raised and nourished in the same manner as the beasts that surrounded them. These Stone Age diets, now called Paleo diets, reflect the types of foods that nature intended us to eat. Unfortunately, we have lost touch with how nature intended us to live and mistakenly think we can eat anything sitting on our supermarket shelves. Paleo in a Nutshell is an eye-opening guide to restoring our health by eating the foods for which our bodies are designed to consume. Author Geoff Bond is a world-renowned scientist who has extensively researched forager societies of the past and present. What he has discovered is that our hunter-gatherer ancestors had never experienced the health disorders that plague us today. This is because their diets, environments, and daily activities were far more in touch with their bodies than our way of life today. Although our diet has become our most dysfunctional feature, other aspects of the Paleo lifestyle are essential to explore as well. In Part One of this book, we learn how and why our ancestors thrived and explore how things went wrong when we stopped behaving in agreement with our evolutionary past. In Part Two, we are provided with an “Owner’s Manual”—a guide to appropriate and healthy foods with which to fuel our bodies—and a step-by-step plan for implementing this way of eating. While you may no longer have time to hunt and forage for your food, this book offers modern and simple substitutions for you to use, as well as several delicious recipes. Written in simple-to-understand language, Paleo in a Nutshell is all you need to find your way back to a healthier and more natural way of living. "In his new book, Geoff Bond takes readers on a journey to discover a lost way of life and encourages readers to relearn the ways he believes nature intended us to live." -- Kelli Ann Wilson ― Taste for Life Magazine "Eye-opening . . . easily understood by the layperson." -- Ellen Sue Jacobson ― Menupause Geoff Bond graduated with honors in applied sciences from London University. He spent his early career living and working in remote African villages, where he widened his studies in anthropology, biochemistry, and evolutionary human development. Using both research and firsthand observation of tribal societies, Bond developed guidelines for living in harmony with our naturally adapted lifestyle. He is the author of Deadly Harvest and Natural Eating and, with his wife, Nicole, the coauthor of Paleo Harvest. Introduction Many people seem to think that nothing can influence their state of health—it’s just like a ticket in the lottery. They do not realize that it is optional, and that the way we eat and lead our lives will decide how we will end up! Recent studies suggest that each of us has the capacity to live for 100 years, fully functioning to the very end.1 But that is not happening in today’s world. Instead, the average American man will live for 76.4 years and the average woman for 81.2 years.2 And worse yet, they will spend, on average, the last eight years of life disabled. Paleo in a Nutshell is going to show you that it doesn’t have to be like this! We can take control of our lives and live in harmony the way nature intended—and, by doing so, maximize our lifespan. What do we need to do? Let me give you an idea: Even a child knows that if you put a cat, a canary, and birdseed in a cage, the cat eats the canary, not the birdseed. We accept, without doubt, the principle that cats and canaries eat differently. Yet we naively think we can feed ourselves—and our kids— anything . Many researchers and consumers now know that this is totally wrong and that there is a special feeding pattern for us humans, too. But the realization does not stop there. Just as zoos now recognize that it is vital for an animal’s health that it live the uncaged lifestyle that is right for its species, so we now recognize that it is vital for human health to live the lifestyle that is right for our species. A new science explores this fascinating subject: “Evolutionary Lifestyle Anthropology.” That is a bit of a mouthful, so we will call it simply “Paleo Lifestyle,” so called after the way of life forged in humanity’s crucible during the Paleolithic era. This will be explained further in Part 1, “The Paleo Lifestyle.” “The Paleo Lifestyle” is the spellbinding story about what it means to be human, in lifestyle terms. It provides an extraordinarily powerful understanding of how, by living in harmony with the way our bodies are designed, we can rejoice in the best possible health and relish the prospect of a long life. In this book, we focus on the main aspects of our lifestyle that mismatch the way nature designe