Yes!!! I grew up poor and inhaled whatever my parents brought home to fill our empty kitchen.

I began to binge at 16. If I had understood what I do now, I would have gone on primal and I doubt I would ever have become a classic yo-yo, losing/gaining approx. 50 lbs. in regular cycles.

I'm pretty sure my joints and GI tract would have behaved very differently during the past 50 years!

I had a discussion with my younger brother (we're about the same age) about the way our youngest brother eats (a typical SAD diet with plenty of junk) and this dilemma came up. My brother argued that we should get on his case about all the crap he ingests and how he should starting cutting out processed foods and whatnot. But I on the other hand felt like he should discover the correct way to eat through his own research and that eating crud is a part of growing up in America. I don't like his diet, but I feel that flooding him with Paleo info would be depriving him of potential self-discovery. I personally don't regret my old habits; if I didn't eat as badly as I used to, I would have never appreciated the wholesomeness of real food! It's an iffy subject to discuss though.

My diet growing up was actually pretty good. My parents gardened extensively and bought our meat in bulk from local farmers. There were grains, of course, but very little junk food. However, I do wish I would have known about WAPF or paleo when I was in my 20s and 30s. I was searching for healthier diets and did gravitate to whole foods (although not nearly to the level I do now). However, I went in the opposite direction from paleo and was vegetarian or mostly vegetarian during much of that time.

But, the past is beyond my control and I don't dwell there. I prefer to focus on the present and the future.

Hellz yeah! I would totally have eaten this way from birth if I had had the choice/knowledge.

I was a very late bloomer, still 4'11" at 13, skinny as a rail, and growing VERY slowly. Fast forward to 21, and I was still only 5'5". I topped out at 5'6.5" after growing a bit more when I was 23. I would've eaten Paleo if only to see if I'd grown anymore, or if my slow growth and slight build was caused by poor nutrition (and I have the overwhelming suspicion that it was...we ate ALOT of bread and pasta and packaged foods when I was growing up). I've always thought I was a hardgainer, and could NEVER gain muscle mass no matter what I did...until I started eating Paleo. I credit it with kickstarting my testosterone, and allowing me to build lean muscle mass much more easily than I've ever been able to.

My paternal grandfather was about 6'1", and my father is 6' tall. My uncle and cousins on my mother's side are all over 6' tall, and my mother is 5'7". Her mother was 6' tall, and my maternal grandfather was 5'11", so it's not like there were a ton of really short people in my family. Ha, my sister is 5'8"...not quite sure WHERE I came from?

Oh yeah, I also had terrible acid reflux from the time I was 14, barely treated with Prilosec. Who knows what kind of long term damage that crap did to my digestive system? Thankfully I was able to wean myself off the purple monkey when I was 19, through cutting out nightshades and high acid foods. If I only I'd known it was all the bread and pasta and cereal that was really killing me!

This is one of those times that I am thankful for the health issues I've had, and sensible rural parents who didn't like a lot of processed foods. Celiac disease really made me get my act together. In a sense, sure I wish I'd found paleo sooner, but honestly, by the time I discovered paleo I was already pretty close, and so paleo for me has been the difference between being generally healthy or being optimally healthy, lean, and strong.

I'm currently 22, and my mate is also paleo. So hopefully we can both undo some of the damage done in earlier years.

I remember always having an interest in nutrition, even as a child. When we did our school job-shadowing assignment I spent the day with a dietician. But after high school I stopped caring at all for some reason. I think it has a lot to do with social environment and whatever we are expected to do by the people we see every day If nobody around you cares about health then you're less likely to care about it, unless you have a health problem, and we see people who have a social environment that doesn't care about health caring about health despite that, because they have to. But if you don't have health problems it is less likely that a social context that doesn't emphasize health will produce someone that cares about it.