I don't know much about the so-called Paleo Diet, other than the fact that it emphasizes eating a lot of meat and avoiding carbohydrates. This could be a good diet, for all I know, but it's pretty clear that there's nothing particularly "Stone Age" about it. So many changes have taken place in our food over the millennia that we probably couldn't eat like cavemen even if we wanted to. The wild plants available in the Paleolithic were a lot different from the cultivated plants and grains we have today, and the wild game was more rangy. And we don't really know that much about the real Paleo diet to begin with. For instance, it now appears that Stone Age people ate a lot more carbs than commonly believed:
"Analyses of Stone Age settlements reveal that the hunters were healthy and would gladly eat anything they could get their hands on, including carbohydrates – contrary to the modern definition of the Paleolithic, or Stone Age diet." Source: "Stone Age Hunters Liked Their Carbs," Science Nordic (2013).
"The low-carbohydrate Paleo diet has attracted star advocates, including professional golfer Phil Mickelson, actor Matthew McConaughey, and Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush. But experts are now debating whether or not people in the Paleolithic Era did actually eat carbs." Source: "The Paleo Diet Has It Wrong: Cavemen Did Eat Carbs?, Market Watch (2015).
The Paleo Diet has been pushed with a lot of Conan-the-Barbarian marketing hype. You know the sort of thing -- "follow this diet and turn yourself into a savage, blood-drenched Cimmerian." That's not necessarily a bad thing, however. It's entertaining, at least. I'm a big fan of Robert E. Howard and I've read all of his Conan stories. From what I remember, though, Conan ate just about everything he could get his hands on. If he had a particular "diet," I'm not sure what it would be.
The biggest problem with the hype surrounding the Paleo Diet is that "we are not biologically identical to our Paleolithic predecessors, nor do we have access to the foods they ate. And deducing dietary guidelines from modern foraging societies is difficult because they vary so much by geography, season and opportunity." Source: Scientific American (2013).
Having said all this, however, I've got to admit that I've been cutting down on my carb consumption, partly due to my exposure to information about the Paleo Diet. I also avoid processed foods like the plague. As a result of this change in my diet, combined with a six-day-a-week weightlifting and aerobics routine, I've managed to lose almost 25 pounds. Whether my reduced carb intake had anything to do with my weight loss is another question because I've also been reducing the amount of calories I consume every day. I'm in reasonable shape, I suppose, but I'm not exactly Conan the Barbarian.
Making that transformation requires a lot more than eating more meat and cutting back on the pasta.
"In what likely is the first study on the evolution of dietary preferences across the animal kingdom, researchers report several unexpected discoveries, including that the first animal likely was a carnivore and that humans, along with other omnivores, belong to a rare breed." Source: Science Daily.
"...The survey suggests that across animals, carnivory is most common, including 63% of species. Another 32% are herbivorous, while humans belong to a small minority, just 3%, of omnivorous animals."
Comment: Humans are omnivores. That's obvious. Prehistoric hunter-gatherers ate meat and plants -- that's why they're called "hunter-gatherers" -- and modern humans still have a mixed diet. This basic fact doesn't stop people from constantly arguing about whether we're omnivores, carnivores or herbivores by nature, however. The whole debate is insane, if you ask me, but Homo Sapiens seems to have an endless capacity for losing contact with reality.
"The early humans that consumed most meat were the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe many thousand years ago, but were not our ancestors. Meat formed the crucial lean-season food for the Neanderthal people during successive winters when plants were seasonally buried under deep snow, but later also for the modern humans who spread through Eurasia and displaced them around 40,000 years ago." Source: Phys.org (2015).
Note: I'm not sure how anyone could determine that Neanderthals ate the most meat, but other studies have shown that they also ate vegetables. For instance, according to Science Daily (2016), "Studies of the isotope composition of individual amino acids in the collagen [of Neanderthal bones] offer proof that plant matter constituted approximately 20 percent of their diet." And some Neanderthal groups apparently lived almost entirely on plants:
"Researchers studying the teeth of the heavy-browed hominids have discovered that while Neanderthals in Belgium were chomping on woolly rhinoceros, those further south were surviving on plants and may even have used naturally occurring painkillers to ease toothache." Source: The Guardian (2017).
The Neanderthals' diet depended, naturally enough, on the season and where they were living. In other words, they ate whatever they could get their hands on at the time. If game was available, they ate meat and supplemented their diet with plants. When game was scarce, they ate more plants and at times they ate each other. And the diet of the first true humans probably followed the same pattern, so the idea that there was something you could call the Paleo Diet is an oversimplification, if not a complete misconception.
Note: "Analysis of ancient cadavers recovered at a famous archaeological site confirm the existence of a sophisticated culture of butchering and carving human remains, according to a team of scientists from the Natural History Museum, University College London, and a number of Spanish universities." Source: Science Daily (2015).
These remains were discovered in Gough's Cave, Somerset, England, where "excavations uncovered intensively-processed human bones intermingled with abundant butchered large mammal remains and a diverse range of flint, bone, antler, and ivory artefacts." The remains are thought to date back to around 14,700 years ago.
Must Farm Bronze Age Settlement, Cambridgeshire, England.
"'Coprolites' from the Must Farm archaeological excavation in East Anglia, UK, shows the prehistoric inhabitants were infected by parasitic worms that can be spread by eating raw fish, frogs and shellfish." Source: Science Daily.
"The Bronze Age settlement at Must Farm, located near what is now the fenland city of Peterborough, consisted of wooden houses built on stilts above the water. Wooden causeways connected islands in the marsh, and dugout canoes were used to travel along water channels.
"The village burnt down in a catastrophic fire around 3,000 years ago, with artefacts from the houses preserved in mud below the waterline, including food, cloth, and jewellery. The site has been called 'Britain's Pompeii.'"
"Archaeologists diving off the southeastern coast of Cyprus just discovered an ancient treasure: the first known 'undisturbed Roman shipwreck' in the country's history, according to a statement put out by the Cyprus Department of Antiquities." Source: Live Science.
"The divers found the ship's remains off the coast of Protaras, a resort town known for its beaches. Not too far from sunbathing tourists rest the remains of the ancient ship's cargo — transport amphorae, or ancient jugs that have handles and narrow necks and often held precious liquids, such as oil and wine."
"Analysis of plant, animal and human remains from Portus, the maritime port of Imperial Rome, has reconstructed for the first time the diets and geographic origins of its inhabitants, suggesting a shift in food resources following the Vandal sack of Rome in AD 455." Source: Science Daily.
"New discoveries made at the Klasies River Cave in South Africa's southern Cape, where charred food remains from hearths were found, provide the first archaeological evidence that anatomically modern humans were roasting and eating plant starches, such as those from tubers and rhizomes, as early as 120,000 years ago." Source: Science Daily.
"What kind of beer did the Pharaohs drink? In ancient times, beer was an important ingredient in people's daily diet. Great powers were attributed to beer in the ancient world, particularly for religious worship and healing properties. The pottery used to produce beer in antiquity served as the basis for this new research. The research was led by Dr. Ronen Hazan and Dr. Michael Klutstein, microbiologists from the School of Dental Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI). They examined the colonies of yeast that formed and settled in the pottery's nano-pores. Ultimately, they were able to resurrect this yeast to create a high-quality beer...that's approximately 5,000 years old." Source: Science Daily.
Is The Paleo Diet Really "Stone Age?"
I don't know much about the so-called Paleo Diet, other than the fact that it emphasizes eating a lot of meat and avoiding carbohydrates. This could be a good diet, for all I know, but it's pretty clear that there's nothing particularly "Stone Age" about it. So many changes have taken place in our food over the millennia that we probably couldn't eat like cavemen even if we wanted to. The wild plants available in the Paleolithic were a lot different from the cultivated plants and grains we have today, and the wild game was more rangy. And we don't really know that much about the real Paleo diet to begin with. For instance, it now appears that Stone Age people ate a lot more carbs than commonly believed:
"Analyses of Stone Age settlements reveal that the hunters were healthy and would gladly eat anything they could get their hands on, including carbohydrates – contrary to the modern definition of the Paleolithic, or Stone Age diet." Source: "Stone Age Hunters Liked Their Carbs," Science Nordic (2013).
"The low-carbohydrate Paleo diet has attracted star advocates, including professional golfer Phil Mickelson, actor Matthew McConaughey, and Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush. But experts are now debating whether or not people in the Paleolithic Era did actually eat carbs." Source: "The Paleo Diet Has It Wrong: Cavemen Did Eat Carbs?, Market Watch (2015).
The Paleo Diet has been pushed with a lot of Conan-the-Barbarian marketing hype. You know the sort of thing -- "follow this diet and turn yourself into a savage, blood-drenched Cimmerian." That's not necessarily a bad thing, however. It's entertaining, at least. I'm a big fan of Robert E. Howard and I've read all of his Conan stories. From what I remember, though, Conan ate just about everything he could get his hands on. If he had a particular "diet," I'm not sure what it would be.
The biggest problem with the hype surrounding the Paleo Diet is that "we are not biologically identical to our Paleolithic predecessors, nor do we have access to the foods they ate. And deducing dietary guidelines from modern foraging societies is difficult because they vary so much by geography, season and opportunity." Source: Scientific American (2013).
Having said all this, however, I've got to admit that I've been cutting down on my carb consumption, partly due to my exposure to information about the Paleo Diet. I also avoid processed foods like the plague. As a result of this change in my diet, combined with a six-day-a-week weightlifting and aerobics routine, I've managed to lose almost 25 pounds. Whether my reduced carb intake had anything to do with my weight loss is another question because I've also been reducing the amount of calories I consume every day. I'm in reasonable shape, I suppose, but I'm not exactly Conan the Barbarian.
Making that transformation requires a lot more than eating more meat and cutting back on the pasta.
Related: PALEO DIET: Big Brains Need Carbs
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