The Paleolithic Diet and Its Modern Implications

Chet Day ^ | Unknown | An Interview with Loren Cordain

[Pharmboy]

Adapted from:

The Paleolithic Diet and Its Modern Implications

An Interview with Loren Cordain, PhD

by Robert Crayhon, MS
Reprinted by permission from Life Services

Can hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution be wrong? What are we really "designed" to eat? Are high carbohydrate "Food Pyramid" diet standards a health disaster? What do paleolithic fossil records and ethnographic studies of 180 hunter/gatherer groups around the world suggest as the ideal human diet? Find out in nationally acclaimed author and nutritionist Robert Crayhon's interview with paleolithic diet expert, Professor Loren Cordain, Ph.D.

Robert Crayhon, M.S. is a clinician, researcher and educator who was called "one of the top ten nutritionists in the country" by Self magazine (August 1993). An associate editor of Total Health magazine, he is the author of best-seller Robert Crayhon's Nutrition Made Simple and the just published The Carnitine Miracle (M. Evans and Company).

Dr. Loren Cordain is a professor of exercise physiology at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, Colorado, and is a reknowned expert in the area of Paleolithic nutrition.

Robert Crayhon: I'm very happy to welcome Dr. Loren Cordain. He is a professor of exercise physiology at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, Colorado, and an expert in the area of Paleolithic nutrition. Dr. Cordain, welcome.

Loren Cordain: My pleasure to be here.

Robert Crayhon: There has been in the past 40 years or so much interest in the area of low fat diets, and it seems that the media and USDA with its food guide pyramid is now convinced that a healthy diet is one that is predominantly carbohydrate, low in fat and protein. There is also little regard for the quality of the fat or protein. But are we really just in some great agricultural experiment? Has the last 10,000 years of agriculture really been the bulk of what the human nutritional experience has been? And is this grain-based, high carbohydrate diet truly ideal for humans?

Loren Cordain: There is increasing evidence to indicate that the type of diet recommended in the USDA's food pyramid is discordant with the type of diet humans evolved with over eons of evolutionary experience. Additionally, it is increasingly being recognized that the "food Pyramid" may have a number of serious nutritional omissions. For instance, it does not specify which types of fats should be consumed. The western diet is overburdened not only by saturated fats, but there is an imbalance in the type of polyunsaturated fats we eat. We consume too many Omega-6 fats and not enough Omega-3 fats. The Omega-6/Omega-3 ratio in western diets averages about 12:1, whereas data from our recent publication (Eaton SB, Eaton SB 3rd, Sinclair AJ, Cordain L, Mann NJ Dietary intake of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids during the Paleolithic Period. World Rev Nutr Diet 1998; 12-23) suggests that for most of humanity's existence, prior to agriculture, the Omega-6/Omega-3 ratio would have ranged from 1:1 to 3:1. High dietary Omega-6/Omega-3 ratios are associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease, some types of cancer, and tend to exacerbate many inflammatory disease responses.

Further, the USDA food pyramid places breads, cereals, rice and pasta at its base and recommends that we consume 6-11 servings of these items daily. Nutritionists at the Harvard School of Public Health (Willett WC. The dietary pyramid: does the foundation need repair? Am J Clin Nutr. 1998;68: 218-219) have recently publicly criticized this recommendation because it fails to distinguish between refined and complex carbohydrates and their relative glycemic responses. Dr. Willett further pointed out that there was little empirical evidence to support the dominant nutritional message that diets high in complex carbohydrate promote good health.

Both the fossil record and ethnological studies of hunter-gatherers (the closest surrogates we have to stone age humans) indicate that humans rarely if ever ate cereal grains nor did they eat diets high in carbohydrates. Because cereal grains are virtually indigestible by the human gastrointestinal tract without milling (grinding) and cooking, the appearance of grinding stones in the fossil record generally heralds the inclusion of grains in the diet. The first appearance of milling stones was in the Middle East roughly 10-15,000 years ago. These early milling stones were likely used to grind wild wheat which grew naturally in certain areas of the Middle East. Wheat was first domesticated in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago and slowly spread to Europe by about 5,000 years ago. Rice was domesticated approximately 7,000 years ago in SE Asia, India and China, and maize (corn) was domesticated in Mexico and Central America roughly 7,000 years ago.

Consequently, diets high in carbohydrate derived from cereal grains were not part of the human evolutionary experience until only quite recent times. Because the human genome has changed relatively little in the past 40,000 years since the appearance of behaviorally modern humans, our nutritional requirements remain almost identical to those requirements which were originally selected for stone age humans living before the advent of agriculture.

Robert Crayhon: What happened to our health when we switched from a hunter-gatherer diet to a grain-based one?

Loren Cordain: The fossil record indicates that early farmers, compared to their hunter-gatherer predecessors had a characteristic reduction in stature, an increase in infant mortality, a reduction in life span, an increased incidence of infectious diseases, an increase in iron deficiency anemia, an increased incidence of osteomalacia, porotic hyperostosis and other bone mineral disorders and an increase in the number of dental caries and enamel defects. Early agriculture did not bring about increases in health, but rather the opposite. It has only been in the past 100 years or so with the advent of high tech, mechanized farming and animal husbandry that the trend has changed.

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[SamAdams76]

I agree with your way of thinking. The life expectancy of humans has increased enormously since switching to a carbohydrate-based diet. Granted, some of that increase can be attributed to better medical care and hygiene. But as you point out, the Asians, who eat mostly rice have very long lifespans. As do Italians who eat lots of breads, wines and pastas.

I like a good steak every now and then but I would rather have fish and rice, or a soup with lots of vegetables, rice or pasta thrown in. And of course, lots of carbohydrate-laden beer!

[Pistias]

Eat fruits and vegetables whenever you crave...stay away from anything processed and/or that contains sugar (except fruits)...drink a crapload of water...engage in hand-to-hand combat at least three times a day, preferably to first blood but to the death if necessary...eat meat a lot (fresher the better, preferably some you've killed yourself to insure quality)...and last but not least, two words: TANTRIC YOGA. Oh, yeah, and send me $49.95 for the advice.

[Pharmboy]

More than half of the deaths in the neolithic and paleolithic period were due to violence. That's why the AVERAGE life expectancy was bad. Carbohydrates in large proportions were an impossibility for non-agricultural man to concume: that's a fact not a supposition.

My compromise with my hunter-gatherer genes? (not that you asked, but here goes anyway)

No carbos during the week--including beer, pizza, bagels, pasta, potatoes, etc--but whatever I want on the weekends. It works. (I do have whiskey during the week, though).

Cheers,

[Redcloak]

Let's add a kink to that grain development timeline: It's quite likely that grain was first cultivated for brewing beer, not baking bread. Finding evidence of humans growing grain does not guarantee that they were actually eating the grain!

[Pharmboy]

As has been pointed out on this thread, the grinding of grain for flour came after the domestication, so the evidence indeed points to fermented spirits. You're a man who will not take yes for an answer!!

[KC_for_Freedom]

I have read this and it seems to fit. One other aspect, the bible, with its rules for living in close quarters with the other farmers and brewers seems to fit as well. While a tribe could move on, there was little reason for a set of rules involving coveting of one's neighbor's wife or servant, or still.

Of course to have a still and the grain to ferment meant living a life without much travel. My ancestors in the pacific northwest were reported to be the only tribe in the new world who were able to sustain life in a single area without periodic migrations. So they could have fermented grapes and berries. (I guess thats where I get an affection for the products of the grape and grain). But I'm always struggling with my body's desire to store food for the upcoming possible famine.

[Pharmboy]

But I'm always struggling with my body's desire to store food for the upcoming possible famine.

LOL!! Don't we all!!

[Redcloak]

I'll drink to that.

[rightofrush]

Interestingly, "bosom" also both has singular and plural usage.

Euphemism usage is now an art form. Toilet has its origins as the term "toilette" as m'lady's little chore of making up her face.

[T'wit]

> Euphemism usage is now an art form.

True, true. I don't think there's anything recent about it -- look at the Victorians! They had euphemisms for every slightest indelicacy in life. Seems to me we were foolish to strip away those illusions. Better to keep our gaze high than to wallow in the mud.

[rightofrush]

They had euphemisms for every slightest indelicacy in life.

It some Victorian lady that was embarrassed by by the different parts of fowl and started the use of "dark" and "light" meat to distinguish those parts.

BTW, plain speach has the gift of unambiguity.

[Toahine]

Paleolithic people did not all die before 30. The AVERAGE lifespan was about 30, but the main factor in bringing it down that low was high childhood mortality. Obviously there was no modern-day medical care in the Paleolithic, so a fairly high percentage of people didn't make it to adulthood due to injury or illness. If you survived the usual childhood mishaps and diseases, you had an excellent chance of living to a ripe old age, almost certainly in better health than many folks of comparable age today.
Honestly, this misconception about life expectancy is so widespread it is hard for me to believe so many people don't understand the mathematics of averages. An AVERAGE life span of 30 does not in any way indicate that 30 is the maximum age attainable, or that 30 is "old", or even that most people died at the age of 30. AVERAGES, people!!!!
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[SunkenCiv]

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The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat by Loren Cordain	The Evolution Diet: What and How We Were Designed to Eat by Joseph Stephen Breese Morse	Health Secrets of the Stone Age, Second Edition by Philip J. Goscienski	The Origin Diet: How Eating Like Our Stone Age Ancestors Will Maximize Your Health by Elizabeth Somer	Metabolic Man: Ten Thousand Years from Eden (The Long Search for a Personal Nutrition From our Forest Origins to the Supermarkets of Today) by Charles Heizer Wharton	Neanderthin: Eat Like a Caveman to Achieve a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body by Ray Audette

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[SunkenCiv]

An old topic from Pharmboy which may be of interest.

[grey_whiskers]

Thanks, it fits right in.

(Sigh.) No matter what I think of or write, some other Freeper has already beat me to it...

Cheers!

[SunkenCiv]

I found it by accident, or rather, due to Googling for something else... kinda like when I was a kid, looking up something in the encyclopedia, getting distracted by something else, then not being able to remember what I was looking up.

[Aarchaeus]

You'll do just anything to get a photo of breasts into Free Republic, won't you?

Well, I'm not complaining about it.

[T'wit]

[KeepUSfree]

My main problem with these arguments is that - just because we survived and were healthy under these conditions - it does not mean that it was "ideal".

For example, I raise ALOT of cacti. And, most come from deserts with minimal nutrients and h2o - this is their natural environment and they do well. However, given more nutrients and more h3o - they do even better (up to a point). The trouble with "more water and nutrients" is that, under those conditions, the cacti thrive - but other plants thrive even more, overtaking the cactus and dominating the biome

The logic of the article precludes interspecies competition".

NOW, I'm doing to eat my fruit loops!

[Pharmboy]

Yes indeed...what exactly IS "ideal"? For a free-living population, in the Darwinian sense, ideal means supporting maximum reproduction: this does not necessarily mean extended life. So, we can alter environments to make individuals hardier (and your cacti are a good example), but will they live longer?

Certainly for hundreds of thousands of years as hunter-gatherers we ate SIGNIFICANTLY less carbs (both simple AND complex) than we do now, and it makes sense to get closer to the diet that our genes and proteins were set for. Our ancestors did not die of cardiovascular disease like we do. That is diet and lack of exercise.

And you certainly can eat your Froot Loops, just moderate.