"So easy a caveman can do it!", says the Geico commercial.
Well, I have news for Geico. An article about the
Paleolithic diet (see 'Consumption of Trace Elements and
Minerals by Preagricultural Humans' by Eaton and Eaton in
'Clinical Nutrition of the Essential Trace Elements And
Minerals') tells us that cavemen were far from stupid: they
had a smart dietary regimen. In fact, their diet can tell
us what is wrong with the modern one.
Meat was very important. They especially ate the organs,
bone marrow and brains of animals, which are the most
nutrient-dense parts. They also ate wild plants and
berries but rarely grains. Stone Agers lived in small
groups as nomadic hunters and gatherers. The time and
energy needed to gather and mill grains into digestible
forms with primitive technology was not worthwhile for them.
The authors list the nutritional advantages Stone Agers had
over modern people.
They got their energy from foods with far more nutrients
per unit of energy than do modern humans. They consumed no
'empty calories': energy intake without associated
nutrients such as you find with soda, sugar and white flour.
They probably took in two to 8 times more minerals than us.
Uncultivated plants and wild game generally have more
nutrients per unit of energy than do comparable foods
available in the local supermarket. The authors compare
wild honey with commercial honey. Wild honey has far more
iron, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium, as do uncultivated
fruits and vegetables compared with cereal grains or wild
game with commercial meats.
Stone Agers generally consumed more energy per day than
most modern humans because of their need to wander and
hunt, so took in an absolute higher number of nutrients.
Most modern people are not as physically active as they
were.
Our diet is so different because two revolutions have taken
place in nutrition.
The first is the transition from nomadic hunting and
gathering to an agricultural lifestyle. Grains such as
wheat became the main source of energy in the first
agricultural civilizations. Humans lived in larger groups
than the Stone Age bands of hunters and gatherers. They
built city states such as in ancient Greece and Mesopotamia
or river-mouth states in ancient Egypt and China. It
became more worthwhile to cultivate large crops of grains
and gather and mill them in established land with better
technology and a division of labor.
I have not seen a definitive account of how much the health
of the population changed because of the transition from a
diet of predominantly wild game and wild plants to
cultivated cereal grains. We can only look at modern
research and opinions about the role of grains in our diet
and health to guess how our newly-civilized ancestors fared
on their new diet. Some, such as Dr. Mercola, say that a
no-grain diet is optimal while others, such as Dr. Hark,
recommend a whole-grain diet which is presumably what the
ancient Egyptians, Sumerians and others ate.
I do not believe we know whether intolerance for many
grains such as wheat, oats, barley and rye, but not corn or
rice, is purely a modern health problem or not. For
example, is wheat intolerance caused by the properties of
wheat itself so that ancient populations in agricultural
societies would have experienced it even if they did not
know the cause or is it a modern phenomenon caused by the
treatment and processing of wheat as part of industrial
agriculture?
I lived in Morocco for a year in the eighties. It is an
agricultural country where farming is done with far less
use of fertilizers and pesticides than in western
countries. The population eats bread as a staple and
appear very strong and healthy. Their wheat is usually
unadulterated, so I think it is the quality of the wheat
rather than the attributes of wheat itself, such as gluten,
which cause intolerance.
The second revolution in nutrition is the transformation of
diet during the Industrial Revolution when people left the
land for factories and cities. Humans lost their
connection with the land. Agriculture became mechanized
and industrialized as described in Thomas Hardy's novels,
designed to feed large urban populations as cheaply as
possible. The effects of this second revolution on health
are much clearer and negative in many ways.
Affluent Western nations now consume categories of food
which never existed before: refined flours, sugar and other
sweeteners, cooking oils, and pasteurized milk. Many of
these only provide 'empty calories' while accounting for
possibly two-thirds of our energy intake and contain
preservatives, taste enhancers and coloring agents never
used before. Chronic degenerative diseases such as cancer,
arthritis and diabetes are the consequence.
It is difficult to know for sure whether cavemen were
healthier than humans in agricultural societies or modern
times. However, the article takes the position that we can
see Stone Age nutrition as the gold standard because human
biology evolved as an adaptation to the circumstances of
preagricultural times.
The first human lived maybe 2 million years ago. The first
agricultural civilization came into existence maybe 10,000
years ago in the Middle East. Human biology takes many
generations to evolve and could not possibly adapt to
changes in diet in the short time since the founding of
agriculture. Our bodies are built to thrive on the food
that was available before then. We remain very similar
genetically to our Stone Age ancestors of 20,000 years ago
or more.
This theme is explored in another interesting article: 'The
Late Role of Grains and Legumes in the Human Diet, and
Biochemical Evidence of their Evolutionary Discordance' by
Loren Cordain, Ph.D. on www.beyondveg.com.
We now suffer
from what Dr. Loren Cordain describes as 'evolutionary
discordance' - undesirable results of having genes
developed for a different environment to the current one.
Many suffer from living on a modern diet with a body built
for a preagricultural diet. To the extent that modern life
and diet is different from that of the preagricultural era,
we are exposing ourselves to ill-health and chronic
degenerative diseases.
The most practical remedy is to avoid processed foods and
just stick to the food you find around the periphery of a
supermarket: fresh fruit and vegetables and fish and meat
(organic if you can afford it). That is probably the
closest you can get to the cavemen's diet and eating in
harmony with your genes. So, Geico, you owe cavemen an
apology!
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I work in information technology supporting the health care
program of a pension system, so am familiar with the issues
of our health care system.
I also believe that your health and fitness is a statement
- how you perceive yourself and how you want others to
perceive you. My site summarizes what I have learned. For
more information on how you can achieve health and fitness
at 50 or any age, go to =>
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