Email:

 

Diet History

Many consider that the healthiest diet is the diet humans evolved to eat, the diet eaten prior to the introduction of agriculture. The Paleolithic or Stone Age era is the time when our ancestors were hunter gatherers. As can be seen when studying the information below, just what the Paleolithic diet contained is open to different interpretations.

This link provides a resource to many links discussing the Paleolithic diet. Reading the links one can see how many varying and conflicting opinions there are. Many considered the diet was probably made up of nuts, fruit, vegetables and small game, believing large amounts of meat were not consumed until man had the ability to capture big game. Others are questioning this recognising that man at that time consumed the entire carcass of an animal and not simply the muscle meat. This will have included the offal, tongue, fattiest parts of the animal and marrow with the animal providing all the nutrients required by man.

Quoting Garry Taubes' book The Diet Delusion page 69: "Reversing the earlier conclusion, Eaton, Speth and Cordain now suggested that Paleolithic diets were extremely high in protein (19%-35% of calories), low in carbohydrates 'by normal Western standards' (22%-40% of energy) and comparable or higher in fat (28%- 58% of energy)." You can read Cordain's paper - Cereal Grains - a double edged sword by clicking the link.

Agriculture only started around 10,000 years ago, introducing cultivation and grains into the diet. This was made possible by the introduction of "fire" providing the ability to cook food. The principle sources of energy from vegetation are grains, beans and potatoes. Unfortunately they are toxic to the body unless heated sufficiently to render the foods edible. These entered the food chain in Neolithic man. Advantages of these foods were seen as:

Some known disadvantages:

The introduction of agriculture eventually enabled movement from the country to cities and manufacture to commence. With people now wanting to purchase food, methods of preserving the food, creating interesting products etc. were introduced. The last 150 years has seen significant changes in the way is achieved as a result of:

Dr. Barry Groves also has published some excellent discussions on the history of our diet.

This article, Our love affair with fat - a historical perspective, illustrates the importance of animal fat throughout history as the basic energy source for man.

This is a long article well worth reading, but the relevent parts to this discussion are:

We are not a vegetarian species
Fossil Evidence
The Diet revolutions
Fossil evidence
Fats and brain size
Toxicity of raw vegetables
'Homo carnivorus'
The diet revolutions

Compare the health of those consuming the modern diet of industrialised countries and the remaining tribes of hunter gathers still able to follow their original diets to accept that as proof that modern diets and food production are the cause of many of today's modern diseases. Those tribes do not suffer from arthritis, diabetes, and all the other diseases listed. These diseases have continually increased as our own diets reduce the levels of animal fats and meat protein and increase the intake of carbohydrates, vegetable fats, processed food products and ready meals. Milk has gone from a healthy food to one that has been adulterated and altered through heat treatment and removing vital nutrients.

It is clear that our natural diet is meat and fat, with the optimum ratio of 80% of calories provided from fat and 20% provided from the lean meat. Those eating such a diet report total satisfaction, ability to operate efficiently all day with high levels of energy expenditure and no disease.

Diet Home Page	History of Diet	Traditional and Healthy Diet	Modern Unhealthy Diet
Nutrients Home Page	Low Calorie Diet	Low Fat, High Carb	Low Carb, High Fat
Glycaemic Index	Low GL Diet	Milk	Soya
Calories	Carbohydrates	Cholesterol	Energy
Fats	Protein	Vitamins and Minerals	Vitamin D
Multiple Sclerosis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A word about the adverts that appear on this site The adverts on this site come via a service known as Google Adsense or Amazone deemed appropriate to the content on the site appear automatically, and are not selected or vetted by me. The site does not endorse any of the adverts that appear on the site nor the products or services they promote. The editorial content of the website is not influenced in any way by these advertisements.