The Paleo diet is a fad diet that encourages its supporters to only eat food that were supposedly eaten by humans in the Paleolithic era. But a new study has been released that states that the diet could actually cause weight gain and long term health issues.
A study from Nature's journal called Nutrition and Diabetes has announced that the Paleo diet should not be followed by people that are already overweight, especially those that lead a sedentary lifestyle.
In the study, scientists used overweight mice and gave one group their normal diet and another group of them a diet similar to the Paleo diet. The mice that were on the Paleo diet suffered increased insulin levels (meaning this type of diet is especially dangerous for those suffering from diabetes), and an increased risk for depression, arthritis and anxiety.
These fad diets target the exact type of person that should not be on them. The diets promise fast weight loss with little to no effort — all the people have to do is eat the "correct way," (by eating vegetables, fruits, nuts, roots, and meat while ridding foods such as dairy products, grains, sugar, legumes, processed oils, salt, alcohol or coffee from their diet), and will amazingly lose weight.
These diets do not even necessarily promote a complete lifestyle change. They have names like Whole 30, which promotes eating this way for 30 days in order to lose weight. The scientists that created this study hope that if the public takes anything away from it, that they take away that they should not play around with diets with little to no scientific backing.