Micah Stanley
Dr. In her talk Debunking the paleo diet, Christina Warinner argues that there is no scientific evidence for the paleo diet — at least not when it’s high in meat and eggs. Also explains Dr. Warinner that a real Paleo diet can hardly be implemented today since most cultivated vegetables and fruits no longer have much in common with the original plants from prehistoric times. The Paleo diet is therefore nothing more than a fad that many people find just in time to defend their high meat consumption.
The following article is a condensed translation of the lecture “Debunking the paleo diet” by Dr. Christina Warner. dr Warinner received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2010 and is a pioneer in the field of biomolecular analysis of archaeological calculus – a method that is very useful for identifying the diet and health of people in the Stone Age and earlier.
The editors of the Health Center would like to draw your attention to the following points:
- A CORRECT diet, which would correspond to Stone Age criteria, is undoubtedly healthy. The following article, therefore, does not discuss the health value of a high-quality and well-put-together (!) so-called Paleo diet.
- The following article is much more about the fact that the actual diet of our ancestors did not necessarily contain large amounts of animal food based on archaeological and scientific investigations. On the contrary. If the climate in a few regions had not required it, our ancestors would have preferred to stick to plant-based food – because their bodies (like ours today) were perfectly adapted to it.
- At the same time, nowhere is it claimed that humans are pure plant eaters. Our ancestors certainly did not scorn easy-to-find animal foods, which may have included insects, reptiles, and rodents, which many primitive peoples still eat today. However, one probably only went hunting for a big game if it was unavoidable and hunger drove one to do so.
Enjoy the lecture by Dr. Warner!
Paleo Diet – Just a fad
dr Christina Warinner: “I am an archaeologist and my research focus is on the health and nutritional history of our human ancestors. Among other things, I carry out biochemical investigations of bone finds and analyses of primeval DNA.
However, today I’m here because I want to tell you something about the so-called Paleo diet. This is one of the fastest-growing and most popular fashion trends in nutrition, at least in America.
The basic idea behind the Paleo diet is the following:
- The key to longevity and optimal health is to avoid eating modern farm-based diets that would otherwise make you ill because they are said to be inconsistent with our biological needs.
Instead, we should mentally go back to the time of our ancestors and eat as it was common in the Palaeolithic around 10,000 years ago. - I have to say that I am extremely fascinated by this idea in itself, mainly because in this context we can apply archeology practically for once – and we as archaeologists can actually use information that we have snatched from the past in the present – namely directly for our own benefit.
Paleo advocates claim to know what was eaten in the Stone Age
In many books about the Paleo diet (“Paleo Diet”, “Primal Blueprint” (Orig.: “Primal Blueprint”), “New Evolution Diet” and “Neanderthin” (e.g.: thin like the Neanderthals) one refers directly to anthropology, nutritional science, and evolutionary medicine
The preferred target group seems to be men – at least that’s what the advertising for the Paleo diet or Paleo products suggests, as they show particularly virile men, reminiscent of cavemen, who enthusiastically eat a lot of red meat and use phrases like “Live originally!” give away.
So you signal that you know exactly what the diet looked like at the time – namely red and bloody. So they say they prefer to eat meat, supplemented by some vegetables, fruit and a few nuts. But certainly no cereals, legumes or dairy products would have been on the menu.
Paleo-Thesis has no archaeological-scientific foundation
Unfortunately, the version of the Paleo diet as presented today and praised by Klee – whether in books, talk shows, websites, forums, or magazines – finds no foundation in archaeological reality.
I would also be happy to explain to you why this is the case and in the following, I will take many a myth ad absurdum, especially when it is claimed that one is based on fundamental archaeological-scientific concepts.
Finally, I want to talk about what we REALLY know – from a scientific, archaeological point of view – about the diet of our Stone Age ancestors, that is, about what was really on the menu of people in the Paleolithic period.
Myth #1: Humans are made to eat a lot of meat
Myth number 1 is that the human body is supposed to be made for extensive meat consumption, and Stone Age people, therefore, consumed large amounts of meat.
In reality, however, it is the case that humans have no known anatomical, physiological or genetic adjustments (adaptations) that would make meat consumption particularly easier for them.
On the other hand, we are made for eating plant-based foods. Let’s take vitamin C for example.
Carnivores must be able to synthesize vitamin C themselves since they consume only a small amount of vitamin C-rich plant foods.
Humans cannot form vitamin C, so they have to consume it with plenty of plant-based food.
We also have a different intestinal flora and a significantly longer digestive tract than carnivores, since plant food has to stay in the body longer to be properly digested. A short intestine would suffice for the digestion of meat.
We have a set of teeth that is reflected above all in large molars, with the help of which we can perfectly break up plant tissue that is rich in fiber. On the other hand, we do not have the so-called scissor bite typical of carnivores, which would clearly be an advantage if you want to tear animals and shred their meat.
There are adjustments for milk consumption, but not for meat consumption
Nevertheless, some human populations have genetic mutations that favor the consumption of animal products – although we are not talking about meat here, we are talking about milk.
However, we are not equipped for predominant meat consumption – especially not if the meat comes from fattened domesticated cattle from factory farming.
Meat that would have been eaten by a Paleolithic man would almost certainly have been much leaner, the portions would certainly have been smaller, and overall people just didn’t eat as much meat.
Of course, bone marrow and offal played a role in ancient nutrition that cannot be neglected. There is a lot of evidence that animal bone marrow was used, which can be seen in the characteristic way in which animal bones were processed which made bone marrow extraction possible in the first place.
So, just so we’re clear, yes, of course, humans did eat meat, especially in the arctic areas and in areas where plant-based foods were simply not available for long periods of time. In fact, in all of these areas, a lot of meat was eaten.
But people who have lived in more temperate climates or in the tropics have derived an overwhelming majority of their diet from plant sources. But where does the “meat myth” come from?
Where did the meat myth come from?
Two aspects, in particular, should be mentioned in this context.
First, bones simply have a better shelf life than plants over the millennia.
This means archaeologists have far more bones to study than plant food residues, which could lead to the hasty conclusion: more bones, more meat food.
Second: Certain analytical methods (biochemical studies) are used which are not really reliable, such as e.g. B. the so-called nitrogen isotope analysis, which works as follows:
Surely you know the saying: “You are what you eat”.
The higher an individual is in the food chain, the higher the proportion of the heavy nitrogen isotope in his bones and teeth. The food chain is structured in such a way that plants are at the bottom, plant eaters are above them, and carnivores are above them.
So, until now, it was believed that one could easily find out the nutrition of a living being with the help of nitrogen isotope analysis.
Scientific measurement methods are not reliable
Unfortunately, the big problem is that not all ecosystems obey the same rules, which means that this model cannot be applied to all ecosystems without further ado.
For example, there are strong regional differences, and if a researcher does not fully understand the realities of a particular region, it is easy to come to the wrong conclusions.
Let’s take East Africa: If we measure people and animals from East Africa using this method, we quickly notice a few oddities. A human has higher values there than a lion. Lions only eat meat. And yet man stands above the lion? How can that be?
Well, quite simply: the food you eat is by no means the only factor that plays into these isotope values. The climate (e.g. aridity) of the region can also play an important role in this context. Or how easy access to water can be made.
In tropical areas, it is not much different. In the ancient Maya, for example, we also find interesting anomalies. Here the values are comparable with the jaguars living in the same area. However, we do know that the Maya had a diet that was extremely dependent on corn. So how can we explain the values here?
We haven’t found a hard-and-fast answer, but the nature of Maya agriculture and the agricultural products on which they lived could also play a part.
Much earlier – in the Pleistocene, a geological era that began about 2.6 million years ago and lasted 2.5 million years – there were already reindeer. They are pure herbivores. However, in this age wolves also come to the same nitrogen isotope values as reindeer.
In the case of the mammoths, on the other hand, you could find very different values, both values at the plant level, the herbivore level, and even values that would speak for pure carnivores.
If we now take a closer look at the people of this time, at Stone Age people and Neanderthals, it is noticeable that they occupy the same space in the measurement table as their contemporary wolves and hyenas. And the conclusion is already drawn: Humans were carnivores.
But why should the measured values here reliably indicate a meat diet? Especially since wolves have the same stats as reindeer? And because of their values, mammoths are partly classified as pure carnivores.
Myth: There were neither grains nor legumes in the Stone Age
Let’s move on to the second myth, which says that people in the Stone Age didn’t eat whole grains or legumes.
We have finds, more specifically stone tools, that are at least 30,000 years old, 20,000 years before the invention of agriculture.
Even at that time, people were using stone tools that look like modern-day mortars and were used to grind seeds and grain.
Some time ago we developed techniques that allow us to analyze tartar (fossilized plaque). We can extract this plaque from human skull finds and use our technique to identify microfossils in it, both of plant and non-vegetal origin. So we can see from the tartar which foods the tartar owner preferred to eat.
While this branch of research is still in its infancy, even with the limited scientific evidence available to us, we can state unequivocally that in the tartar of In those days, people were able to detect sufficiently high amounts of plant residues to rule out, firstly, that they had preferred to live off meat and, secondly, to confirm that they had long been eating grains (especially barley) and legumes in addition to plant tubers.
Myth: Paleo foods are foods that Stone Age man ate
This myth holds that the foods recommended for today’s Paleo diet are the same foods that our Paleolithic ancestors ate.
Of course, that’s not true either.
Every single food consumed today is a cultivated, i.e. domesticated, agricultural product. Wild forms have long since ceased to exist.
Example banana
Let’s take the banana as an example.
Bananas are actually the ultimate agricultural product. Left to their own devices in the wild, bananas cannot reproduce, which is because we bred away their ability to form seeds.
Therefore, every single banana you have ever eaten is a genetic clone of every other banana – grown from cuttings. So bananas are clearly a farm food and not suitable for an authentic Paleo diet, although many books say they are very good for it.
If you were to eat a wild, original banana today, it would contain so many seeds and seeds that I’m pretty sure the majority of you wouldn’t want to call the piece of fruit “edible”.
Example salad
Another example is lettuce. Salad sounds like a really good example of Paleo eating. It’s not true. Lettuce is anything but paleo food.
We have radically adapted the ingredients of lettuce to our needs. The ancestor of today’s salad is the wild lettuce. Ever tried?
It tastes extremely bitter, its leaves are very hard. So we changed it breeding so that the leaves are softer and bigger. We have bred out the stomach-irritating latex content and the bitter taste at the same time. And then we also made sure that the stalks and leafy trunks disappeared – this made this salad more tender and tasty for us.
Example olive oil
Sometimes olive oil is also mentioned as a food that would be very suitable for the Paleo diet. Because it is a fruit oil and not a seed oil. It is obtained from the flesh of the olive, i.e. not from a pit, so some Paleo supporters believe that it must have been possible to produce oil from the olive even in the Stone Age.
But we know with certainty that under no circumstances did Stone Age man build any devices with which the oil could have been pressed from the olive.
Olive oil is also a food that has its origins in peasant society.
For example blueberries and avocados
I found the following suggestion for a paleo breakfast on one of the many paleo diet websites online: blueberries, avocados, and eggs.
Most likely, however, it was not possible for any Stone Age man to get hold of these three foods at the same time. Because where avocados grow, there are generally no blueberries and vice versa – not to mention the size of the individual foods.
For example, cultivated blueberries are twice the size of wild blueberries. And a wild avocado might have a few millimeters of flesh. The egg, on the other hand, is a topic all of its own:
Example chicken egg
Chickens are fairly prolific egg producers. They lay an egg almost every day. Eggs are therefore a predictable product, they are large and there are plenty of them – at least in today’s supermarkets. But in the Stone Age, it was different.
If you want to make your next Paleo breakfast with eggs, try collecting eggs out in the “wilderness.” If you’re unlucky, it’s autumn, winter, or hot summer – and you won’t find a single one.
Because birds usually only breed in spring – and for this purpose they lay a few eggs (3 – 10 depending on the bird species) and never one or even two a day for years. This is how wild chickens behaved before they were caught by humans.
And even in spring, it shouldn’t be easy to track down bird nests. Because birds don’t want anyone to eat their children, they hide their nests very well. If you find what you are looking for, then they are probably fertilized mini eggs that have already hatched – bon appétit!
Example broccoli
There was no such thing as broccoli in the Stone Age. Of course, no cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, let alone kohlrabi. Wild cabbage did exist, but if you google “wild cabbage” and look at images, you’ll find that this plant bears little resemblance to our vegetable cabbages – yet it is the archetype from which all of our modern-day cabbages were bred.
Wild cabbage tastes extremely tart, and you’d have to gather a lot to have 400 grams – as much as an average broccoli head at the supermarket weighs.
Example carrot
The situation is similar to the wild carrot. Their root is tiny and thin. It also doesn’t taste nearly as sweet and mild as our carrot today. On the contrary: it tastes bitter and actually not tasty at all.
So here, too, we bred out the bitter and astringent substances. And we made the carrot bigger and more sugary.
Now let’s look at the REAL Stone Age diet.
The real Stone Age diet
First of all, it should be pointed out, and it cannot be repeated often enough, that there is not ONE Stone Age diet, but many different ones. People ate what they actually found in the region they gradually settled. However, local consumption is known to be very variable.
Now let’s take a closer look at one of those many Stone Age diets: we go back 7,000 years to a place called Oaxaca in present-day Mexico. What was eaten there at the time has nothing to do with the foods that are now referred to as the Paleo diet.
A lot of locally available fruit was eaten, including many legumes, agaves, various nuts and beans, some varieties of squash, and wild rabbits. During the year, however, around April, there was little to eat in this area. Therefore, people moved on to other – more fertile – regions, where there was possibly completely different food.
The composition of the actual Paleo diet thus depended on the region, the climate zone, and the time of year.
People in arctic areas have consumed fundamentally different things than people in the tropics. People who lived in areas where few plants grew tended to eat more meat. And people in greener areas tended to be more vegetarian.
Plants grow at different times, herds of animals migrate from point A to point B, and even fish have specific times when they may or may not be found in the river, lake, or ocean. So there was never every food all year round, which is commonplace today.
Accordingly, Stone Age consumers had to adapt to what was on offer or just take their feet in hand and tap into new resources. Our ancestors therefore often traveled very long distances. At the same time, food rations were usually very small at that time.
The plant-based food of the time was full of secondary plant substances, which are extremely healthy and which, thanks to breeding measures, are unfortunately much rarer in cultivated vegetables. The plant-based diet was also often hard, woody, and fibrous, i.e. very high in fiber – which we don’t like at all these days. Everything has to be tender, melt-in-your-mouth, fiber-free, and, above all, quick to eat.
If meat was eaten, then not only the muscle meat but also the innards and the bone marrow – things that are rarely eaten these days. In addition, there was only game meat, because nobody locked up animals and gave them non-specific food made from genetically modified soy.
Is stone age nutrition possible today?
For us today it is almost impossible to eat like this. Seven billion people on this planet cannot feed themselves like hunters and gatherers. We’re just too many for that.
Can we at least draw lessons from the actual Stone Age diet that are useful for our lives today? The answer is very clear: Yes, we can. I would like to confine myself to three important lessons.
There is no ONE right way to eat
There is no universal correct diet. Diversity is key. Depending on where you live, you can eat a wide variety of things. However, it is important to eat a varied diet. Unfortunately, the diet that Western society now typifies is more than just a step in the opposite direction.
We should eat fresh, local, and seasonal
We have evolved in such a way that we only eat fresh food when it is growing and maturing outside in nature. Because even then they have the highest nutritional value that they can achieve.
Today everything is available at any time. And if not, we eat stored and artificially preserved. Of course, this is also important in order not to let the harvest go to waste when agricultural yields are high and to feed everyone.
But preservatives only work because they prevent bacterial growth in food. We just forget that our gastrointestinal tract is also full of bacteria.
This is our intestinal flora, i.e. mostly good bacteria that do many useful things. They help with digestion, control the immune system, serve the function of our mucous membranes, etc.
However, if we regularly eat foods that are full of preservatives, then of course this also contributes to damage to our intestinal flora and thus to our health.
We should eat whole foods
Evolution ensured that we always ate food in its whole form – until we began breeding out bitter substances from salads, stripping grains of their outer layers, isolating sugar from beets and sugar canes, drinking juice without pulp, and consuming fruits and vegetable peel.
So today we suffer from a wide range of deficiencies: lack of fiber, lack of minerals, lack of vitamins, lack of antioxidants, lack of bitter substances, and at the same time excess sugar as a result of high sugar consumption.
The lack of fiber alone has serious consequences: Although fiber is indigestible, we cannot do without it:
They regulate the speed of food as it travels through the digestive tract. They change the metabolism, slow down the absorption of sugar, adjust the blood sugar level, provide food for the beneficial bacteria in the intestinal flora, and in this way prevent many of today’s common lifestyle diseases such as diabetes mellitus and obesity.
But while in the Stone Age the individual organized his own diet, today the food industry takes over this – unfortunately to our health disadvantage, not always, but often. Depending on where we shop, we ourselves have lost influence and control over our food. We eat what is available to buy.
A wonderful way to see how out of balance everything is how many more calories we can eat with smaller and smaller food rations. But this fact kills our ability to recognize when we are full.
How Much Sugar Cane Would You Have to Eat in the Stone Age?
In closing, I have a question for you. It is:
Imagine you have a standard 1-liter bottle of lemonade. Now please imagine that you are a Stone Age man and you want to consume the same amount of sugar as the one in the soda. How much sugar cane would you have to look for, harvest, and eat – preferably in meters – to arrive at the amount of sugar in your lemonade bottle?
(Whether you would have gotten sugar cane at all in the Stone Age and whether the sugar cane of that time would have been as thick and rich in sugar as it is today is of course another story…).
They would have to eat more than three meters of sugar cane. That’s quite a lot of cane, ladies, and gentlemen.
Physically, there’s no way a Stone Age man could have eaten anywhere near that much sugarcane in a matter of minutes, even if he’d wanted to. Today you can down three meters of sugar cane in 20 minutes.
So anthropology and evolutionary medicine can teach us a lot about ourselves. Using the latest techniques, we can open up new perspectives on the past. And in this way, we can learn from our ancestors which foods are good for us and how we must eat them to stay healthy.
However, we have to say goodbye to being able to feed ourselves in the same way as was the case in the Stone Age, since the corresponding foods are no longer available today. There is no such thing as a Paleo diet.
In addition, the actual Stone Age diet in most regions of the world did not consist of vast amounts of meat, as is often claimed today. The actual Stone Age diet also included grains and legumes – something that is commonly disputed today.
Thank you.
