Paleo Diet: Can Our Caveman Ancestors Teach Us the Best Modern Diet?

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Nice Post! good content. By the way can we promote your article in our iPad mag?

Rosetta 2:34PM May 03, 2013

This is one of the better articles I've read concerning the paleo diet.
That modern, western culture has adopted unhealthful diets has long been apparent. We have determined quite clearly that early humans did not suffer the diseases, in types or rates, that we do today. We cannot say with certainty that those early humans consumed the best possible diet, i.e. one that cannot be improved upon today. As the article mentions, defining precisely what hunter-gatherers ate and drank 50k years ago is difficult.
The advent of agriculture and settled communities did not, by itself, lead to poor health. It did allow human populations to increase far beyond hunter-gatherer numbers, and played a great role in the growth of knowledge, technology, and our ability to alter our environments. Poor health came in large part, much as the article suggests, because the diversity of our diets became very limited.
Agriculture provided greater quantities of food, but with decreased diversity and quality. Early man consumed a huge variety of foods, especially plants, which provided the many complex nutrients needed for excellent health. Additionally, stores of harvested grains, which enabled adequate food through the winter, suffer a loss of nutritional value over time.
Livestock enabled people to eat much more meat, which provides none of the vital phyto-nutrients supplied by plants. With higher meat intake, modern man may well have damaged his health. Scientific findings or recent decades strongly suggest that high levels of animal protein, specifically 20% or more of total caloric intake, result in greatly increased rates of chronic disease.
Another key factor in health is not directly related to diet, but to the environmental changes wrought by larger permanent settlements and the agricultural practices they depended upon. Human and animal waste contaminated water and ground, causing serious disease. Much of the communicable disease we suffer today, from smallpox to the flu, originated in our livestock. In spite of our greater scientific understanding of these problems, they continue to be serious health threats.
With technology, humans increasingly processed their foods, and this further reduced nutrition. Such processing typically involves removing fiber and water, adding salt, sugar, fats, and many chemicals, while exposing the food to high temperatures. The result is that the food not only fails to provide needed nutrients, but increases our intake of harmful substances.
Without foods produced through agriculture, and especially grains, only a small fraction of the now 7 billion+ humans could avoid starvation. Even if we knew for certain the diet of early humans, we could not obtain it today. While the concept of the paleo diet is intriguing, we must go far beyond it to find the diet that will best serve us today.

Joel Hollis of CO 2:20AM December 10, 2012

I've grown up eating "healthy whole grains" and low fat w/plenty of fruits and veggies. I've stayed fit and trim & mostly healthy but slowly but surely as I approached 50, lots of wacky things started happening to my health which docs could not explain. I tried a diet similar to Paleo when I wanted to get ripped after doing P90x. In just a month, I had never felt better in my life so I continued eating that way and found Paleo for my son who is a high school athlete-I've been eating this way for over a year now. I transitioned my family too. The changes in our health and moods have been astounding. I had the best blood work results in all the years I've been tracking. I don't get when so called experts disagree. When I told my doc that I was avoiding sugar and had been reacting to wheat/dairly and that my diet was grass fed meats, fish, and lots of fruits and veggies, & tubers, she said it was just fine since many of her older patients are reacting to gluten and dairy. We spend less because we are not buying anything processed. This is the easiest and most pleasant lifestyle I could imagine!

Holly of OR 2:11PM January 19, 2012

I think that it's absolutely right.
I had special book which Paleo Recipe book
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tony of NJ 8:59AM December 13, 2011

Although it will be difficult to ever know exactly what our ancestors ate and it's true that different groups would have eaten differently, it's safe to say they didn't eat refined grains. Perhaps some starchy pastes, carbs from vegetables and fruits (probably a lot less sweet than modern varieties) but they simply didn't have access to the the "balanced" diet the USDA proclaims is correct. Although one should always be skeptical and think critically and that advice applies to the Paleo Diet like any other it should also be applied to the current "expert" opinion on what constitutes a proper diet. I'll give this article credit for recognizing that at it's core the Paleo Diet is quite simple and the focus on "whole foods" is aligned with many other diets and in fact I've seen a recent trend in this direction by Weight Watchers who have changed their point system seemingly to emphasize whole foods over processed. I find it amusing that diets like WW are becoming more Paleo-like despite deriding this very sensible and logivcally approach to eating for many years. Also, if you research the history of the lipid hypothesis and the current USDA dietary guidelines you'll discover that in the 70's they used Cordain's research in part as a rationale for promoting low fat diets. Cordain has since revised that research realizing a mistake (like any good researcher should do). The fact remains that the diet mantra (eat low fat for heart health) that so many organizations promote is in a small way based on Cordain's work that is now being questioned by those same people who in the next sentence spout that mantra like mindless automatons.

Concerned Dieter of FL 11:57PM July 24, 2011

Thank you Keith, Richard and CJ for your excellently stated comments! I felt a twinge of rage uprising inside me whilst reading the first three. No doubt my comments would not do Paleo justice, like yours did.
Just a few rebuttals to the first three:
Travis: Dr. Cordain's book came out years ago. Sales dropped as most fad diet books do, but have been rising as of late, not due to any advertising gimmicks. Just because the information is solid and the lifestyle works.
Kay: With so much nutrition research to be done, it's difficult to tackle exercise and diet all together. Do note that Joe Friel, author of a series endurance training books, promotes this diet. Nell Stephenson, a serious triathlete write recipes for paleo websites,blogs, and Cordain's book, "The Paleo Diet Cookbook." Also Professor Cordain has a book called "The Paleo Diet for Athletes." So yes, exercise is important and he does stress is.
s albert: 10,000 years is nothing when it comes to this diet. We are going way beyond this. Think of how many people you know that are lactose intolerant. Evolution takes a long time. Also, Cordain does NOT assume consistency in the population type and heritage. See Richard's notes on the Kitavans and Inuit. Prime examples of a general premise (paleo) adapted to what you have occurring naturally in your environment (lots of veg, fruit, nuts and seeds vs lots of fish, fat, and other meats). Add sugars and wheat to these modern day paleo-like examples, and you get Western diseases. It's been done.
It's great to be skeptical, but I just can't listen to anymore "moderation" or "balanced" diet theories. Change the color and the shape of the pyramid all you want, but there is nothing different about it. Safe, safe, safe suggestions to cover their butts and keep the funding coming in. Sorry USDA, but you're not helping anyone.

Christina of MA 11:01AM June 21, 2011

Basically the Paleo diet is what it is because it takes a gimmick like this to get a diet book published. If you simply wrote a book and said "Exercise regularly and have a balanced diet as per the food pyramid" you'd never get a deal with a publisher. This is where fad diets stem from.

Travis Steffen of CA 3:48PM November 01, 2010

If the author of this newest fad diet is truly an exercise scientist, then why doesn't he emphasize the value of EXERCISE as are every other scientist and doctor today--to improve our lives in just about every way? Sounds to me like he's thought of a marketable new idea and is talented enough to persuade those who simply refuse to eat a healthy balanced diet and exercise daily.

Kay of IA 8:19PM October 21, 2010

You quote Cordain, author of The Paleo Diet, in your article: "Cordain suggests we mimic the diet of our hunter-gatherer forebears," cutting our milk and most grains, but the use of milk as a biproduct of animal husbandry is over 10,000 years old.
Surely, if it is true that "(the) study of how human diets evolved is a rich field" then we would hope it is also sophisticated enough to recognize that in 10,000 years of a milk-based diet evolved on the basis of 'the survival of the fittest' compatibility to that diet.. It is stupid to go back to people a half million years ago, who despite some purist ideal are NOT quite the same as the stratifications of our current populations. IF that is what Cordain said, then he is ridiculous. He assumes consistency in the population type and heritage, and in that D'Adamo in 'Eat Right 4 Your Type' makes a lot more sense, questioning "the standardized one-size-fits-all diets advanced by the diet gurus."

s albert of FL 1:09AM May 06, 2009

A hearty thanks to Katherine Hobson for spelling out the basic tenants of the Paleo lifestyle. Between her article, and Richard's (of Free the Animal) comment, readers new to the “Paleolithic lifestyle” will gain much valuable insight. I hope this sparks a curiosity that will culminate in the conversion of many new “Paleo disciples”. To be critical, though, I have to say that both Unger and Leonard have missed the boat when it comes to exercise prescription and energy balance.
Our paleo ancestors lived an explosive and sprint/power-dominant lifestyle that was anything but what is depicted here as the "slow and steady" farmer/herder lifestyle. This is exactly the point of the Paleo lifestyle – to consume what the body was engineered via eons of evolution to thrive upon, and to push the body physically in such a way as is best suited to encourage development of a powerful, explosive phenotype (i.e., infrequent bouts of short duration, high intensity exercise).
On the point of energy balance, one must remember (1) that the human body is anything but a closed energy system, therefore rendering the “energy balance theory of weight control” the fool’s chase that it is, and (2) the overriding contribution that insulin plays in the partitioning of ingested nutrients, and insulin’s response to the inordinate (and totally alien to our genome, I might add), ingestion of carbohydrates – especially simple carbohydrates, and those derived from grains. This, in effect (and to cop a phrase from Garry Taubes), renders one ingested calorie not necessarily equal to another ingested calorie.
Keith Norris
http://theorytopractice.wordpress.com/

Keith Norris of NC 3:51PM April 29, 2009