If the caveman diet is sound, should, er, people from the savanna eat differently?

April 28, 2009 12:22 AM

I'm interested in knowing more about the caveman diet, and the logic behind it. Does the reasoning behind this diet dictate that the modern Korean should eat differently from the modern Englishman? But maybe more importantly, is the reasoning indeed sound? Or is it pseudo-science? Is this really what evolutionary biology would suggest? If so, how much of it should really dictate what a modern human, Korean or English or otherwise, should or shouldn't eat?
posted by Busoni to science & nature (17 comments total)

The Out-of-Africa hypothesis supposes that Koreans and Englshmen had the same common ancestors in the Era of Evolutionary Adaptation.

If Out-of-Africa is wrong and Koreans ancestors also includes Asiatic Homo erectus individuals, presumably they had a similar diet to early sapiens.

In either case, diets would not have fundamentally diverged until the advent of agriculturalism (or pastoralism), and would have consisted of small portions of meat, fruits and some roots, but no milk and far fewer grains than modern diets.
posted by orthogonality at 12:39 AM on April 28

Does the reasoning behind this diet dictate that the modern Korean should eat differently from the modern Englishman

No, evolutionary fitness is only good to getting you to become a grandfather/mother, which is age 35 or so. After that (IMHO) fitness doesn't really do much for your genes, and in general the species and your germ line within it is better off if you kick the bucket sooner rather than later.

Cardio health and cancer health wasn't a big factor for cavemen -- chances are one these hit their offspring were long gone -- but is for us, so a diet should focus on the long haul cardio health and any cancer-fighting attributes that are found.

Plus cavemen didn't have cars and elevators and the great division of labor to make life the 24/7 picnic it is for us modern people. I think the modern body needs a totally different diet for maximal health.
posted by mrt at 1:26 AM on April 28 [4 favorites]

There's a lot of evidene that high protein/low carb diets are good for you. In particular it's recommended that you eat lots of fruit and vegetables, a decent amount of meat, some nuts/seeds/etc and as few processed grains as possible. The only logic behind it is the evidence that it seems to be healthier. Any speculation about evolutionary theory or the physical health of cavemen is rather beside the point. But the currently recommended diet probably resembles what a caveman used to eat, and a lot of people like to romanticize cavemen.
posted by creasy boy at 2:01 AM on April 28

Many dietary ideas don't need much firmer grounding then "it seems like that would make sense, no?" At any rate, if you go back to when both the korean and the englishman were 'cavemen', properly speaking (if you can properly speak about being a caveman) their diets would be very similar, in broad strokes if not in specific flora/fauna terms.
posted by cmyr at 2:40 AM on April 28

If Out-of-Africa is wrong and Koreans ancestors also includes Asiatic Homo erectus individuals, presumably they had a similar diet to early sapiens.

No credible researchers believe this anymore, fwiw, and even its defenders have watered down the theory in light of mounting evidence to something like "we can't rule out possible genetic contributions from local Homo erectus populations."

Anyway, the paleolithic diet is somewhat off as it was thought up back in the '70s before a lot of good research was done on how paleolithic people ate. For instance, meat is now thought to have made up a much smaller portion of the diet than was believed in the '70s. A real paleolithic diet would be something like "Eat whatever you can forage, because you don't have cars and are going to get a hell of a lot of exercise every day." Which is just a reformulation of "Eat real food, eat less, and exercise more."
posted by The Michael The at 3:42 AM on April 28 [1 favorite]

Part of the reasoning is that we simply have yet to adapt to the foods we're currently eating.

Take milk. Some of the adult Caucasians are tolerant to lactose because they continue to produce an enzyme that shuts off as most humans develop. The Paleo diet would suggest that we stay away from milk because our digestive systems simply are not able to cope well with it. And this is after thousands of years of following around herd animals and using their milk as an addition to their diets — there's still a lot of European descendants who do not do so well with dairy.

So, Twinkies. We've had three generations, at most, of Twinkies. We're probably not going to handle Twinkies well. Evolution has not caught up with the Twinkie.

The sense of the Paleo diet is not romanticizing early humans; it's realizing that, as omnivorous as we are, we do not seamlessly adapt to various foods because they are some kind of fungible ur-Calorie which our body will magically digest for us. We have to have the enzymes, the systems to deal with various byproducts, etc. That takes time to evolve. If humanity is just barely starting to get a handle on dairy, imagine how little time it has had to evolve responses to optimally handle, say, processed white flour.
posted by adipocere at 4:07 AM on April 28 [1 favorite]

It was all explained in an early Daffy Duck cartoon. Caveman says "Aah, Duck! My favorite vegetable!"
posted by Namlit at 5:45 AM on April 28 [4 favorites]

The naturopath I've seen claims that we should eat local. Eskimos have a different diet than Polynesians, and both are healthier than those whose diet is controlled by shareholders.
posted by larry_darrell at 5:46 AM on April 28

There are lots of foods that humans in general didn't eat for long enough to make much of a dent in our physiology. Grains are the big one, dairy can be a problem, most sweats that aren't fruit are another. Humans are pretty adaptable so we can eat things and live a long time being sedentary over eaters, but that doesn't mean that what we're doing is optimal. Grass fed beef is much higher in EPA omega3 fatty acid than our corn/soy fed beef. EPA is linked to decreased levels of depression and good cardiac health. There's clearly something that's to be said for trying to eat live and eat like a human. The truth of the evolutionary narrative behind the diet aside there is some scientific evidence for some of it's specific recommendations.
posted by I Foody at 5:51 AM on April 28

Don't eat processed things. The rule is: if it has more than five ingredients, do not consume it. Eat whole grains. Sprouted grains (i.e., live grains) are even better. Eat lots of seeds, berries, fruits, and vegetables. Eat some grains (brown rice, quinoa, lentils, oats ... rarely bread and pasta). Eat a bit of protein, preferably lean animal proteins and not much dairy. Do not eat processed sugars and weird unpronounceable edible chemicals. The end.

Remember, cavemen / early humans only needed to get to 35 or so (survive to have a few children, starting at 14 or 15, makes them 'middle aged' around 22-25. And old by 35). You, on the other hand, will probably want to get to 70. So eating low fat / low cholesterol is going to be more important for you than for your 50,000 year old cousins.
posted by zpousman at 6:33 AM on April 28

Pseudoscience. Actually, not even that. More like, romanticized idea of prehistoric hunter-gatherers bolstered by the naturalistic fallacy.
posted by electroboy at 7:05 AM on April 28 [1 favorite]

Pseudoscience.
posted by OmieWise at 7:07 AM on April 28

Cordain's book (one of the biggest proponents of the paleo diet) is largely pseudoscience. While his diet may be healthy, his reasoning and justification are wrong.

That said, I still choose to follow what could be considered a "paleo" diet because I have seen a great improvement in my health by focusing on high quality meats and fishes, veggies, fruits, nuts and legumes.
posted by Loto at 7:23 AM on April 28

And the key to pseudoscience is that it makes a good book title.
posted by smackfu at 7:29 AM on April 28

After all, you've never seen a fat caveman, have you?
posted by electroboy at 7:50 AM on April 28 [2 favorites]

The bulk of the academic research comes from Staffan Lindeberg and Loren Cordain. You can find many of their papers in pubmed.

I agree generally with adiopcere it's realizing that, as omnivorous as we are, we do not seamlessly adapt to various foods because they are some kind of fungible ur-Calorie which our body will magically digest for us. We have to have the enzymes, the systems to deal with various byproducts, etc. That takes time to evolve. If humanity is just barely starting to get a handle on dairy, imagine how little time it has had to evolve responses to optimally handle, say, processed white flour.

I have done a paleo-type diet for some time now, but I've realized several flaws. The antinutrients/hormone disruptors/novel proteins in "new foods" that Paleo dieters go on and on about with regards to soy, wheat, corn, and potatoes are also present in varying amounts in "paleo" foods too. It's impossible to emulate paleolithic diets anyway because even the vegetables we eat have been selectively bred to be quite different from their wild progenitors. Maybe if you only ate game and wild plants, but even then, depending on where you live you will encounter families of plants and animals that are relatively new to the human diet like nightshades.

Also, Cordain and others often make arguments based on looking at archaeological remains of agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers that lived in the same area and time, which is unfair because it's not necessarily that the food was bad in itself that made them stunted and sickly, it was because their agricultural systems weren't very sophisticated and they experienced regular famines. It's wild food vs. a very paltry diet of farmed foods.

I also read Weston A. Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration as well as Gary Nabhan's Why Some Like it Hot, which document agriculturalists with the sort of health that Paleo Diet people prescribe only to hunter-gatherers.

A good thing about the Paleo diet was that it trained me to eat lots of vegetables and made me realize that my stomach is very sensitive to grains. It also made me realize that a good diet is about eating good foods, not about macronutrient ratios. Cordain's research on healthy hunter-gatherers shows that some of them eat as much as 98% meat or as little as 15%. It's ironic that the Kitvan islanders Cordain studies eat a pretty high-carb diet loaded with such paleo no-nos as yams and taro.

A favorite blog of mine is Whole Health Source, which is about traditional food of all kinds. It has lots of info about the Kitavan Islanders.
posted by melissam at 8:36 AM on April 28

I think a lot of the justification for eating "Paleo" is based on bunch of wacky woo-woo derived from poor evolutionary science and anthropology.

However, in my experience the diet itself is FANTASTIC. I ate the whole-food, healthy-food way with grains and sugars, and I ate the whole-food, healthy-food way without grains and sugars (i.e. "Paleo") and the difference is night and day. My acne has cleared up, my body fat has decreased, my lifting and conditioning performance has increased, my sleep is better, menstrual cycle side-effects are down, I don't get sick unless I'm seriously sleep-deprived or slip back into bad eating habits, I could keep going on. And I know it's from cutting out the grains (even whole-grains), because the minute those go back in my diet my workouts get shittier, the acne comes back, and the waistline starts increasing. Cholesterol and bloodwork, by the way, is perfect despite the intake of fat and saturated fat.

I think the message here is you should try it, and if you feel better on it stick with it and don't worry too much about the woo-woo.
posted by schroedinger at 4:44 PM on April 29 [1 favorite]