Centered on commonly available modern foods, the “contemporary” Paleolithic diet consists mainly of fish, grass-fed pasture raised meats, vegetables, fruit, fungi, roots, and nuts, and excludes grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar, and processed oils.

(from wikipedia)

As you can imagine, as someone who has had a lifelong interest in nutrition, I have tried out my fair share of strange diets. From heavy bulking “see food diets” (you see food, you eat it. Yuk yuk yuk) to ultra low carb ketogenic diets, I have done almost all of them. Aside from drugs I’ve experimented with almost everything you can put in your body nutrition wise.

However, I ended up settling on a paleo diet which I’ve been eating for over two years now. Why did I stick with it? Paleo foods might be some of the best survival foods around. I have a few reasons why eating paleo is the best from a preparation perspective.

1. You’ll be doing it anyways

Preppers all around the world are obsessed what’s in their pantries. I don’t criticize, I think it’s a fine plan for many kinds of potential disasters. But the problem with this sort of strategy is that it’s dependent on the eventual return to civilization. What’s going to happen after infrastructure cuts down and you finish your last can of beans? You’re back to square one, living in the wild.

That’s if you have a choice. There are a lot of disaster scenarios in which you won’t be able to stay in your house. In the case of large scale civil unrest, you might not be able to defend your home. Sometimes it’s hard to think of what could happen if your house was attacked, but if you end up being the only person in the neighborhood with food things will turn Mad Max pretty quick.

Not a good discussion to get in with the neighbors

It’s probably not hard to guess but at BugOut Nutrition we’re fairly fond of, well, bugging out. There is food to be found in every climate in the world if you know where to look for it, it’s how we made it so far in the first place. By eating paleo, you’re one step closer to switching back to those roots if you need to.

2. Your health will be better

Paleo diets have been touted far and wide as one of the healthiest diets you can possibly eat. There are massive communities based around the results people can get from paleo style diets such as Mark’s Daily Apple. Check out some of the transformations people have seen when they go on paleo diets, they’re incredible.

Some of the stuff you can expect:

• Safe fat loss
• Improved muscle mass
• Clearer and healthier skin
• Improved mental performance
• Better energy and libido

3. You’ll have fun doing it

Finding out ways to eat paleo food has brought me into a lot of fun situations. A little while ago my girlfriend and I went into a deep dive with paleo cooking for a strict month of paleo cooking. We ended up having to go way outside of our comfort zones when it came to shopping, checking out all sorts of weird grocery stores, farmer’s markets and holes in the wall to get ingredients we had never heard of. Learning how to cook a different style makes every meal an adventure of sorts.

There’s a sense of satisfaction from making something like paleo spaghetti and meatballs , indulging in it and knowing that you’re making yourself healthier. You’ll never know until you try though – so give it a shot!