Real Paleo Diet: early hominids ate just about everything

[Panich52]

Real Paleo Diet: early hominids ate just about everything
By Ken Sayers, Georgia State University
Mar 23, 2015
EarthSky Voices in » Human World, Science Wire
http://earthsky.org/human-world/real-paleo-diet-early-hominids-ate-just-about-everything?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=cb15d536a6-EarthSky_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-cb15d536a6-393525109

Hominids didn’t spread across Africa, and then the entire globe, by utilizing just one foraging strategy or sticking to a precise mix of carbohydrates, proteins and fats

Reconstructions of human evolution are prone to simple, overly-tidy scenarios. ... the imagined diet of our ancestors has also been over-simplified.

Take the trendy Paleo Diet which draws inspiration from how people lived during the Paleolithic or Stone Age that ran from roughly 2.6 million to 10,000 years ago. It encourages practitioners to give up the fruits of modern culinary progress – such as dairy, agricultural products and processed foods – and start living a pseudo-hunter-gatherer lifestyle, something like Lon Chaney Jr. in the film One Million BC. Adherents recommend a very specific “ancestral” menu, replete with certain percentages of energy from carbohydrates, proteins and fats, and suggested levels of physical activity. These prescriptions are drawn mainly from observations of modern humans who live at least a partial hunter-gatherer existence.

But from a scientific standpoint, these kinds of simple characterizations of our ancestors’ behavior generally don’t add up. Recently, fellow anthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy and I took a close look at this crucial question in human behavioral evolution: the origins of hominid diet. We focused on the earliest phase of hominid evolution from roughly 6 to 1.6 million years ago, both before and after the first use of modified stone tools. This time frame includes, in order of appearance, the hominids Ardipithecus and Australopithecus, and the earliest members of our own genus, the comparatively brainy Homo. None of these were modern humans, which appeared much later, but rather our distant forerunners.

...

... Researchers have found, for example, that hominids even 2.6 million years ago were eating the meat and bone marrow of antelopes; whether they were hunted or scavenged is hotly debated.

More at top link

[jeff47]

1. Another thing to keep in mind about the paleo diet

is that nothing in any grocery store resembles the food available in the stone age. We've spent the last 10,000 years heavily modifying every plant and animal we eat.

[snooper2]

2. how did we modify this?

[jeff47]

6. The oranges and limes are much larger

and have a lot more sugar than the plant our ancestors started with.

[jmowreader]

11. Our ancestors probably wouldn't have eaten this in the first place

It's hard to pass on your genes to the next generation after you've been eaten. It's a safe assumption that any alligator that dies on its own gets eaten by other gators and we hadn't yet invented firearms, so these bastards stayed in the swamp where they belonged.

[Orsino]

3. And then there was the dearth of excess calories.

Our ancestors had to eat everything they could possibly get. Those who didn't didn't leave descendants.

[ananda]

4. I bet they didn't eat ..

.. Franco American spaghetti or Kraft macaroni
and cheese.

Just sayin.

[yuiyoshida]

26. Its not to hard to imagine early man

squatting over an open flame, and digging into a can of Spahetti O's... that's rather humorous I think, when you think about it. For my people, they would be using something akin to Chopsticks!!!

[GliderGuider]

5. To me the bottom line is to listen to your body

None of us have identical dietary tolerances or requirements, so any slavish one-size-fit-all approach - whether it's Atkins, Ornish or anything in between - is bogus. It's not the diets themselves that are necessarily bogus, but the insistence that they're good for everyone sure is. What helps one person thrive may mean slow death for someone else. Your body is your own body, not an epidemiological survey.

I get the large majority of my calories from animal meats and fats, because my body can't cope with significant levels of carbohydrate. Others do just fine on a diet high in grains and tubers. I suspect most people are better off if their diet has a low glycemic index, but how you get low-glycemic calories depends on the rest of your metabolism.

YMWV (Your Mileage Will Vary...)

[Panich52]

7. Many say food cravings are all f/ junk food/sweets, but not always for me. If I start craving OJ,

cheese, & chocolate in rapid succession, I know a cold is coming on. I even occasionally crave liver -- hardly a usual treat.

[Revanchist]

9. do you have any trouble with your blood iron levels?

Could be a reason your body is craving liver.

[Panich52]

21. Kind of my point -- I don't have such problems, possibly because my body tells me when I need a

particular nutrient. I'm sure it doesn't always alert me to every deficiency, but liver/iron is an easy connection to make. And fix, as long as it's not chronic or severe.

Haven't quite figured out cheese-oj-chocolate connection, other than vit C

[nomorenomore08]

8. Well said. I try to eat a good amount of protein - mostly from poultry and fish - and not go

too crazy on the carbs, though I do admittedly have quite the sweet tooth. Any "junk" or desserts I eat, I try to balance out with something healthier.

I do notice that high-carb and/or vegetarian meals tend not to keep me "full"/satisfied as long.

[sendero]

10. They may have eaten "everything"..

..... but there WAS no refined sugar then, there WAS no corn or wheat as we have now then either. So "everything" that was available, sure.

[hobbit709]

12. The human species survived because it is an omnivore.

We can eat anything above the level of grass and get enough nourishment to keep going until we find something better.

[HereSince1628]

13. in your reply what does 'above the level of grass' mean?

not trying to be cute, I just don't know if you're referring to height above ground or something else.

[hobbit709]

14. We don't have cuds.

[HereSince1628]

15. I understand that as a reference to human's lack of cellulase

or sufficient digestive symbionts to rely on cellulose as a primary energy source

But, not being able to digest cellulose hasn't prevented us from exploiting grasses for food.

We do eat sugar & molasses and sugar cane and sorghum are pressed to get the juices containing that.

And we do eat grass seeds which, I thought might be a reference to higher than grass leave as the seeds typically occur at the tip of the flowing stem...

And although you and I might not do it very often in the US, people do eat the tender shoots of bamboo, which also is a grass.

Interesting that we, humans, wouldn't have gotten to those edible parts of plants considered generally non-edible if across human pre-history and history our forebears weren't broadly sampling the environment for food...essentially sampling almost everything as potential food...

[hobbit709]

16. True but the calorie count is relatively low.

Like I said, it gave you enough food to find something better.

From a foraging standpoint there's lots of things with more food value. And you have to know what plants to eat-some are quite deadly.
Of course so are some animals but the basic rule is, if it moves, it's edible.

[HereSince1628]

17. Calorie counts of seeds are actually pretty high...but that swings from the point

which is that humans from early on have broadly sampled their environment for edibles.

[hobbit709]

20. Seeds, not green growing grass.

[bemildred]

18. The most voracious predator on the planet. nt

[mulsh]

19. Early humans shopped at Whole Foods darling, then bored their friends with endless remarks

about how fantastic the paleo-diet is. Didn't the Leaky's unearth a very early check stand and artisan made chocolates a few dozen meters away from Lucy?

[Eleanors38]

33. jeeez, were they that wealthy,?

[FLPanhandle]

22. I say screw sticking to any one "diet"

Eat whatever you want in moderation and get some exercise.

[whatchamacallit]

23. Crap article

It's poorly written and provides little evidence to support its assertion. It also misses the salient point, which is not what starving hominids would stuff in their mouths if they got the chance, but what foods were regularly or frequently obtainable. I'm not a paleo adherent, but there is no doubt the 24/7 availability of any and all foodstuffs has made America a very sick nation. I'm wary of sciency articles that poke fun at people for being proactive about their health and diet choices. They all seem to whisper the same message in your ear: "Your fad diet is unscientific... Just continue to eat what you want... Go on, indulge..."

[Nye Bevan]

24. Apparently brontosauruses tasted like chicken (nt)

[Zorra]

25. Dumpster Divers Rule! nt

[lumberjack_jeff]

27. Shackleton's crew survived for a year eating only penguins. n/t

[ND-Dem]

28. +100. That was the advantage of being an omnivore.

[Cleita]

29. I wasn't impressed with the idea of the paleodiet.

Many early hominids had various diets from mostly vegetarian to hunting meat. But most likely the only meat they got was grubs, termites and other insects. Yum.

[FLPanhandle]

30. or let over meat from other bigger predators

Probably not the freshest meat either.

I doubt the new Paleo Diet includes insects and leftover carrion.

[Cleita]

31. Yes, I forgot about the carrion. eom

[Retrograde]

32. Carrion? I don't think most Paleos even eat organ meats

like those high-calorie, fat-filled brains and minerally hearts and livers, things our ancestors would have considered delicacies, since they were highly perishable and sought after by other carnivores. There are some arguments that the stomach contents of prey animals - partially digested vegetable matter - were a big source of vitamins for early peoples.