Fruits and Vegetables
The ground rules for fruits and veggies on the Paleo Diet
are pretty simple. If you are lean and healthy, eat as much
of these nutritious foods as you like, but make sure they are
as fresh as you can get them. The only banned vegetables
are potatoes and corn. Potatoes are excluded because
they maintain high glycemic loads that may adversely affect
your blood sugar and insulin levels. Corn actually is not a
vegetable, but rather is a grain, and like all other grains was
not a staple component of preagricultural diets.
Fruits are Mother Nature’s natural sweets, and the only
fruits you should completely avoid are canned fruits packed
in syrup. Dried fruits should be consumed in limited
quantities, as they can contain as much concentrated sugar
as a candy bar (see the table below). If you are obese or
have one or more diseases of metabolic syndrome
(hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, or abnormal
blood lipids), you should avoid dried fruit altogether and eat
sparingly the very high and high sugar fresh fruits that are
listed below. Once your weight normalizes and your
disease symptoms wane, feel free to eat as much fresh fruit
as you like.
(^)