"The food you eat can be the safest and most powerful medicine or the slowest form of poison."

-Ann Wigmore

I don't know Ann or her ideas about food, but that doesn't matter because she nailed this one.

I couldn't have said it better myself (and I've tried plenty of times).

Food is a powerful substance that either improves your health or is an insidiously slow poison that kills you.

Are you being too harsh or sensational? You're mistaken if you believe that. Very wrong.

We are made to eat natural food, also known as Real food.

Just look at the forms of death that directly result from the food and drink one puts into their human body: diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and other autoimmune disorders.

These "Western diseases" are seldom, if ever, found in indigenous hunter-gatherer tribes worldwide.

Listen, since you are here, you are interested in this stuff. I only have time to go into some of the Paleo or Primal elements and what makes each one different based on their recommendations. That's all a waste of time.

All "diets" are labels used to separate themselves from other "diets" or brands. It's all marketing.

Whether you call it Paleo, Primal, Raw, or whatever, they are just variations of one fundamental basis. This basis is REAL FOOD.

If a "diet" recommends eating anything that is not Real Food, it is a failure. It is a fraud. It's as simple as that. (See diets like Slim Fast or Shakeology, or Nutrisystem. Barf.)

After you get Real Food down as the basis of your "diet," you can do a million variations. You can go higher-carb, lower-carb, high-fat, low-fat, high-protein, low-protein, moderate-everything, and on and on and on. It doesn't matter as long as it's Real Food (of course, the most optimal performance is what we would find in nature: lower-carb, lots of fat, low-to-moderate protein, and plenty of fasting).

Eating Real food is the only (healthy) way to get results from a diet. So, what is Real Food? I take this for granted because I've been doing this for so long, but not many know. (And plenty of Paleo eaters still mess it up.)

A few things to clarify on Real Food:

• It should come in a raw state and go wrong if you leave it on the counter (besides honey).
• It should require some preparation (most of the time).
• It should be as fresh as possible.
• It should not include anything on the label under "Ingredients" that is not the food ingredient itself.
• It should not be highly processed or refined, or preserved.
• In general, it should not be baked or cooked. You want to cook food yourself, and each time you let a corporation cook for you—like in the case of a bar, chips, and pre-cooked anything—you are giving up some health.

In a nutshell: Buy real, raw food and cook it yourself.

There you go: "The original human diet."

There you go: "The diet."

There you go: "The way you are made to eat."

There you go: "You don't need to keep reading books and articles; just eat Real Food."

Colin Stuckert

‍Founder/CEO, Wild Foods