Hi everyone this is Monica Reinagel and you're listening to the nutrition

Divas quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous. Countless numbers of you have asked me to weigh in on the popular

paleo diet trend. To be perfectly honest, I've been stalling for months now, hoping that the

furer would die down. It's not that I think

it's such a terrible diet. It's more because from what I see on the web, paleo dieters tend to be

very intense and rigid about their philosophy and as you

probably know by now my approach to healthy eating is anything but rigid

but the paleo diet doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

If anything, it's gotten even more mainstream.

So today, I'm going to wade into the fray with a short list of what I see as the primary

pros and cons of this approach.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the paleo diet trend,

the premise is that we should try to emulate the diet eaten by the hunter-gatherer humans who roamed the earth millions of years ago before the dawn of agriculture and domesticated livestock.

These early humans ate primarily wild-caught meat and fish

and whatever edible plants they could forage.

Their diets did not include grains, legumes, dairy, or Oreos.

The argument is that our 21st century bodies are still better adapted to this prehistoric diet

than they are to the more eclectic dietary patterns that emerged later in

our history after we learned to grow wheat and cook beans and make cheese.

Those who buy into this argument see today's widespread rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes

as evidence that these more modern foods are actually toxic to us.

I think there are several weaknesses in this argument. For one

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