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The paleolithic diet is a fad diet based on the foods that proponents believe Paleolithic humans might likely have eaten, such as meat, nuts, and berries, and excludes food which proponents think Paleolithic humans did not eat, like dairy. The Paleolithic era was a period lasting around 2.5 million years that ended about 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture. It was characterized by the use of flint, stone, and bone tools, hunting, fishing, and the gathering of plant foods.

The diet is based on the academically unsupported premise that Paleolithic humans evolved nutritional needs specific to the foods available at that time, and that the nutritional needs of modern humans remain best adapted to the diet of their Paleolithic ancestors. Proponents believe that modern human metabolism has been unable to adapt fast enough to handle many of the foods that have become available since the advent of agriculture. Thus, they believe modern humans are maladapted to eating foods such as grain, legumes, and dairy, and in particular the high-calorie processed foods that are a staple of most modern diets. Proponents claim that modern humans' inability to properly metabolize these comparatively new types of food has led to modern-day problems such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. They claim that followers of the Paleolithic diet may enjoy a longer, healthier, more active life.

Critics of the diet have pointed out that although little is known about the diet of Paleolithic humans, it is very likely that they consumed wild grains and legumes. Additionally, during the 2.6 million year long Paleolithic era, the highly variable climate and worldwide spread of human population meant that humans were, by necessity, nutritionally adaptable, in stark contrast to the claims made by Paleo diet supporters.

Effectiveness

A 2015 systematic review of the effects of paleolithic nutrition on metabolic syndrome concluded that there was insufficient evidence for the diet's supposed beneficial effects and treatment potential. As of 2014, there was no conclusive evidence the paleo diet is effective in treating inflammatory bowel disease.

The British Dietetic Association judged the paleo diet a "Jurassic fad" and listed it as one of the five worst celebrity-endorsed diets of 2015, saying it was "unbalanced, time consuming, socially isolating" and so "a sure-fire way to develop nutrient deficiencies". David L. Katz and Stephanie Meller have written that the paleo diet presents a "scientific case" in part because of its anthropological basis, but that there is comparatively limited evidence supporting its health benefit over other popular contemporary diets.

According to evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk of the University of Minnesota: "Those who follow the diet may be missing out on vital nutrients, and it is believed that could create long term health problems, in particular for adolescent girls who may be at risk of developing osteoporosis later in life as a result of not getting enough calcium."

History and terminology

The idea of a paleolithic diet can be traced to the work in the 1970s by gastroenterologist Walter Voegtlin. The idea was later developed by Stanley Boyd Eaton and Melvin Konner, and popularized by Loren Cordain in his 2002 book The Paleo Diet. The terms caveman diet and stone-age diet are also used, as is Paleo Diet, trademarked by Loren Cordain.

In 2012, the paleolithic diet was described as being one of the "latest trends" in diets, based on the popularity of diet books about it; in 2013 the diet was Google's most searched-for weight-loss method. The diet is one of many fad diets that have been promoted in recent times, and draws on an appeal to nature and a narrative of conspiracy theories about how nutritional research, which does not support the supposed benefits of the paleo diet, is controlled by a malign food industry.

Foods

Cordain has said the diet requires:

• More protein and meat: meat, seafood, and other animal products represent the staple foods of modern-day paleo diets, since advocates claim protein constituted 19–35% of the calories in hunter-gatherer diets. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention likewise recommends that 10–35% of caloric intake should come from protein. The increased uptake of meat and proteins should consist of meats from grass-fed animals. Livestock raised on a grass diet are able to incorporate omega-3 fatty acids from grass into their tissue, as opposed to a grain fed diet high in omega-6 rich corn. This includes grass fed meats that are “finished with grains.”
• More fats: advocates recommend that paleo diet adherents should have moderate to higher fat intake, relative to contemporary diets. The fat intake should consist mainly of monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and omega-3 fatty acids, and avoiding trans fats, and Omega-6 fatty acids.
• Less carbohydrates: non-starchy vegetables. The diet recommends the consumption of non-starchy fresh fruits and vegetables to provide 35–45% daily calories and be the main source of carbohydrates. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the acceptable macronutrient distribution range for carbohydrates is 45 to 65 percent of total calories. A typical modern diet mostly provides carbohydrates from grains and dairy products, but both these are excluded in the paleo diet.
• More fiber: a high fiber intake not from grains, but from non-starchy vegetables and fruits.

Exclusions

Food groups that advocates claim were rarely or never consumed by humans before the Neolithic agricultural revolution are excluded from the diet. These include:

• Dairy products
• Grains, e.g. wheat, rye, canary seed, and barley, which make it a gluten-free diet
• Legumes, e.g. beans and peanuts
• Processed oils
• Refined sugar
• Salt
• Alcohol
• Coffee

Rationale and counter-arguments

Adaptation

The rationale for the Paleolithic diet derives from proponents' claims relating to evolutionary medicine. Advocates of the diet state that humans were genetically adapted to eating specifically those foods that were readily available to them in their local environments. These foods therefore shaped the nutritional needs of Paleolithic humans. The physiology and metabolism of modern humans have changed little, if at all, since the Paleolithic era. Natural selection is a long process, and the cultural and lifestyle changes caused by westernized culture have occurred much more quickly. Thus, modern humans have not yet been able to adapt to the new circumstances. The agricultural revolution brought the addition of grains and dairy to the diet.

According to the evolutionary discordance hypothesis, "many chronic diseases and degenerative conditions evident in modern Western populations have arisen because of a mismatch between Stone Age genes and recently adopted lifestyles." Advocates of the modern Paleolithic diet, including Loren Cordain, take the evolutionary discordance hypothesis for granted, and form their dietary recommendations on its basis. They argue that modern humans should follow a diet that is as nutritionally close to that of their Paleolithic ancestors as possible.

The validity of the evolutionary discordance hypothesis has been brought into doubt by recent research. Studies of a variety of populations around the world show that humans can live healthily with a wide variety of diets; humans have evolved to be flexible eaters. Lactose tolerance is an example of how humans have adapted to the introduction of dairy into their diet. While the introduction of grains, dairy, and legumes during the Neolithic revolution may have had some adverse effects on modern humans, if humans were not nutritionally adaptable, these technological developments would have been dropped.

Diseases of affluence

Advocates of the diet argue that the increase in diseases of affluence after the dawn of agriculture was caused by the change in diet, but it may be that pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers did not suffer from the diseases of affluence because they did not live long enough to develop them. Based on the data from recent hunter-gatherer populations, it is estimated that at age 15, life expectancy was an additional 39 years, for a total age of 54. At age 45, it is estimated that average life expectancy was an additional 19 years, for a total age of 64 years. That is to say, in such societies, most deaths occur in childhood or young adulthood; thus, the population of elderly - and the prevalence of diseases of affluence - was much reduced. Excessive food energy intake relative to energy expended, rather than the consumption of specific foods, may underlie the diseases of affluence. "The health concerns of the industrial world, where calorie-packed foods are readily available, stem not from deviations from a specific diet but from an imbalance between the energy humans consume and the energy humans spend."

Historical diet

Adoption of the Paleolithic diet assumes that modern humans can reproduce the hunter-gatherer diet. Molecular biologist Marion Nestle argues that "knowledge of the relative proportions of animal and plant foods in the diets of early humans is circumstantial, incomplete, and debatable and there are insufficient data to identify the composition of a genetically determined optimal diet. The evidence related to Paleolithic diets is best interpreted as supporting the idea that diets based largely on plant foods promote health and longevity, at least under conditions of food abundance and physical activity". Ideas about Paleolithic diet and nutrition are at best hypothetical.

The data for Cordain's book only came from six contemporary hunter-gatherer groups, mainly living in marginal habitats. One of the studies was on the !Kung, whose diet was recorded for a single month, and one was on the Eskimos. Due to these limitations, the book has been criticized as painting an incomplete picture of the diets of Paleolithic humans. It has been noted that the rationale for the diet does not adequately account for the fact that, due to the pressures of artificial selection, most modern domesticated plants and animals differ drastically from their Paeleolithic ancestors; likewise, their nutritional profiles were very different from their modern counterparts. For example, wild almonds produce potentially fatal levels of cyanide, but this trait has been bred out of domesticated varieties using artificial selection. Many vegetables like broccoli "did not ... exist in the Paleolithic period". Broccoli and many other genetically similar vegetables (like cabbage, cauliflower, kale, etc.) are in fact modern cultivars of the ancient species Brassica oleracea, a wild plant also known as wild mustard.

Trying to devise an ideal diet by studying contemporary hunter-gatherers is difficult because of the great disparities that exist; for example, the animal-derived calorie percentage ranges from 25% for the Gwi people of southern Africa to 99% for the Alaskan Nunamiut. Recommendations to restrict starchy vegetables may not be an accurate representation of the diet of relevant Paleolithic ancestors.

Not all processed foods were introduced after the agricultural revolution; there is evidence early humans processed plant food and possibly prepared flour 30,000 years ago. Researchers have proposed that cooked starches met the energy demands of an increasing brain size, based on variations in the copy number of genes encoding for amylase.

See also

• Inuit diet
• Modern primitive
• Nutritional genomics
• Paleolithic lifestyle
• Low carbohydrate diet

References

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Further reading

• Bijlefeld M, Zoumbaris SK (2014). Paleo Diet (2nd ed.). ABC-CLIO. pp. 164–166. ISBN 978-1-61069-760-6. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
• Gorski D (18 March 2013). "It's a part of my paleo fantasy, it's a part of my paleo dream". Science-Based Medicine. Retrieved February 2015. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
• Zuk M (2013). Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live. W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 978-0-393-08137-4.
• George Bryant (2014). The Paleo Kitchen: Finding Primal Joy in Modern Cooking. Victory Belt. ISBN 978-1-628-60010-0.

External links

• "Paleo isn't a fad diet, it's an ideology that selectively denies the modern world"

• Diets
• Bush medicine
• Raw foodism