Looking at the Latest Fad Food Diet

Here are some interesting bits from an article about the "Paleolithic Diet" that is all the rage these days. This is from interviewing four scientific experts by Good magazine:

GOOD: When you look at popular representations of early humans—in the American Museum of Natural History’s diorama of Neanderthals, in Gary Larson’s "The Far Side," or in books advocating a paleo diet—meat often appears central to the diet. How important is meat?

Leonard: Although there’s an extraordinary range of variation, based on the climate and the environment, hunter-gatherers get a fair amount of meat in their diet. We require a diet that is more energy-dense than other primates and historically, we may have reached that point by incorporating more meat. It’s reflected in evolutionary changes in our face, our teeth, and in our gastrointestinal tract. Indeed, the GI tract of modern humans looks more like a carnivore's than a large primate's. Because early humans increasingly used tools to hunt, we don't show the same kinds of dental adaptations as modern carnivores.

Ungar: Two and half million years ago, we see enamel on the teeth of our ancestors get thinner; the teeth become smaller and more crested. The teeth can wear down and you get sharp edges that you didn’t have before. So we start to see ability to shear and slice with early Homo, which could indicate the consumption of some tougher foods such as meat.

Henry: Looking at plant micro-remains—tiny residue of plants—on the mineralized plaque of Neanderthal remains, it appears they were eating date fruits, starchy tubers, and wild relatives of barley. Not only were they eating them, they were cooking them too.

Milton: Humans evolved to eat a high-quality diet, but that doesn’t mean eating a lot of meat—especially today. Even the Eskimos and Inuits don’t eat a lot of meat. They eat marine mammal fat. No one eats a lot of meat. The only people who eat way too much meat are Americans, who are addicted to eating huge steaks, chops, and roasts.

...

GOOD: Judging by the proliferation of diet books, we’re really fascinated with the paleo diet. Some people swear by it and say it’s best to eat foods humans evolved to eat. Should I try it?

Leonard: In the modern, industrial world, we have become ever better at creating diets that are dense in calories and don’t require a lot of energy to procure them. No one recommendation is going to fit everybody, so the challenge is to find what works for you individually, and, at the same time, what fits the broad nutritional requirements of our species.

Ungar: There was no single Paleolithic diet. Still, I think these are valuable diets in that they remind us what we shouldn’t be eating. Our ancestors didn’t have the processed foods we have today. To say what we should be eating is more difficult, but I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that australopiths did not eat corn dogs and drink milkshakes.

Henry: The diet may be perfectly good, but its theoretical underpinnings are wrong. The Paleolithic period is very long and very varied. Are you talking about the Middle Stone Age of Africa? Or the Upper Paleolithic of Europe. They were eating completely different things. We’re in a quest to understand that, but, to say, this is how you have to eat because this is how our ancestors ate is a fallacy.

Milton: While I don’t know what the paleo diet is, what I do know is that if you’re talking about trying to eat unprocessed foods, a high percentage of fruits and vegetables, and only as much animal source as you need to meet protein and essentially amino acid requirements, then that’s a good diet, especially if you get up and around for an hour each day out in the fresh air.

I've lived long enough to see food fads come and go. They are mostly silly. The breakfast cereals of today are the legacy of health nut John Harvey Kellogg, of Kellogg Corn Flakes fame. I highly recommend the film The Road to Wellville to get a sense of this fashionable kookiness.

Our paleolithic ancestors lived an average of 35 years and were diseased, lame, and suffered premature aging. How a "diet" that they were forced to endure would recommend itself to an affluent society of today makes as much sense as the enema-addicted quackery of Kellogg's Battle Creek clinic. But common sense never stopped anybody from going off the deep end. So I expect this new diet to live on like the infamous Scarsdale Diet and the charms of the pseudo-science of naturopathy.