Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond Paleo for Total Health and a Longer Life

This book is the most helpful and practical book I have found on the issue of dietary health. I only wish I had read this a decade ago.

'The USDA Food Pyramid should be renamed 'The Feedlot Pyramid.' It's nutrient profile is the same as swine fattening chow...' If you're relying on your doctor, the media, etc. to give you accurate information on proper nutrition, be forewarned: much of their information is alarmingly and dangerously skewed, either out of ignorance or the not so surprising fact that certain 'powers that be' value profits over your health! You best bet by far is to educate yourself; take control of your own health; and this book, above all others I've read, is the best one to help you do that. This book goes into (just enough) detail about human physiology; then clearly explains how the different types of macronutrients (proteins, fats, carbs) affect not only on our physical health, but also our mental health and the aging process. Then it gives clear steps on how to optimize your health in all 3 areas with a diet based on our biological history; which is a far cry from the 'typical' North American diet. This book is written in such a 'condensed' fashion that you're likely to discover important, revealing, useful information on virtually every page. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Unga bunga! Me Tarzan. You Jane. How we eat? Meat yummy. Fat yummy too. Fish sometimes yummy. I eat few plants, berries, and nuts. No worry about calories. And run real fast from hungry predators from time to time, too. That is, in a nutshell, what Paleolithic living was like thousands of years ago when grocery stores and gyms didn't even exist. And author Nora Gedgaudas uses humor, science-based facts, and sometimes common sense to debunk many of the myths we have been told about weight and health control in the 21st Century. She shares quite heavily throughout the book on the benefits of consuming fat for burning stored body fat while allowing your body to function at the highest level possible. In our bassackwards world of high-carb, low-fat eating, Gedgaudas notes that our early ancestors understood healthy nutrition and exercise much better than we do and we could learn a lot from our primal predecessors. Quoting and referencing some of the biggest names is the world of healthy high-fat, low-carb nutrition research and education-Eades, Enig, Fallon, Schwarzbein, Stefansson, Cordain, Mercola, Gannon, Pollan, Ravnskov, Taubes, Shai, Sears-this is yet another book to complement your healthy lifestyle change away from the conventional wisdom of our day back to the diet we were meant to be eating all along. My only criticism of the book has absolutely nothing to do with the content inside the pages-but the front cover is so dark and drab it makes the book look like it was published in caveman times. Perhaps that was by design to match the theme of the book, but it could pose a marketing nightmare promoting this book. Just get it and you'll be glad you did!

Primal Body-Primal Mind covers a wide range of health topics - nutrition, metabolism, exercise, weight loss, vitamins and supplements, depression and other emotional issues - but ties them all back to one central idea: physically, we are virtually identical to our Paleolithic ancestors. We may drive minivans and listen to modern jazz on iPods, but our bodies and brains haven't really evolved past the stone-tools era. Your great-grandfather to the 10th power thrived on particular foods and types of exercise (although he never called it that), and so will you. Nora obviously ploughed through an enormous amount of research to write this book, and she summarizes it quite nicely. She explains biochemical concepts clearly, while managing to sneak in a bit of humor here and there - always a plus with me. I enjoy a book when the information is dense, but the writing style isn't. The sections dealing depression and alcoholism are especially eye-opening. We've been told over and over that these are mental or spiritual conditions. Perhaps they are ... but perhaps they are caused or at least aggravated by the wrong diet as well. Overall, an excellent read and an excellent resource.

I was right in the middle of writing my cookbook, eliminating gluten from the recipes and only including "safe" natural sugars, when a friend handed me this "Darn" book, Primal Body-Primal Mind by Nora Gedgaudas and said I had better be ready to have my mind blown. Of course my mind was saying (I don't need any more information right now and what more could there possibly be?) Well.. The more I read Nora's book, the more truth I was seeing and knowing in what was being said. I began ordering more supplements and "trying" to wean myself, even more, of my "whole grain"carbohydrate intake, now realizing that the "good" grains were causing health problems and continued cravings. The cookbook book I am writing has been a process of integrating and learning new and useful information about foods and continuing to eliminate concepts that are no longer useful and possibly even harmful. Nora has written a book that is, once again, upsetting the apple cart. She clearly and without apology cuts through dietary materialism and dispels our so called 'truths' about soy, dietary fats, cholesterol and grains. As a result I have now re-written my cookbook to reflect the dietary wisdom in Nora's book. I take my hat off and bow low to Nora Gedgaudas. Pauli Halstead, author of 'Cuisine for Whole Health, Recipes for a Sustainable Life'

Substance, science and humor; what a great combination to put into a book on a subject that has the potential to touch so many in ways that, ironically, most people in our culture are not even remotely aware of. Being a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, I have lots of books on my shelf that extol the value of eating nutrient dense foods, prepared properly for maximizing and enhancing the available nutrients. I also have scores of books and articles on how our physiology deals with these nutrients and what happens when good nutrition is lacking or absent. To date, none of what I have and what I've read comes close to comparing with Nora's excellent Primal Body - Primal Mind in terms of clearly explaining how what we take into our bodies affects our cells, our various systems and our whole being. This is a compendium of information, written in a very easily readable form that covers the gamut of what one needs to know to be truly healthy from the point of view of what we eat. Each chapter of her book could be a stand-alone reference guide on a particular aspect of good nutritional health. She has a way of telling a story and wrapping it up in deeply and clearly researched facts, data and information, and presenting it in a way that is readable, fun, poignant, eye opening and sometimes "catch-your-breath" scary. I'm reminded somewhat of one of the first science writers I was introduced to, many years ago, who put things together in a similar way - Isaac Asimov. This is a book that I will share with as many people as I can because I think it has the possibility to really change lives. If I had the skills, knowledge and experience that Nora has, this is the book I would want to write.