Makes sense. What was the average life expectancy 10,000 years ago, when everyone ate a Paleo diet?
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-true-human-diet/
[I am not a dietician and cannot speak with authority about the nutritional costs and benefits of Paleolithic diets, but I can comment on their evolutionary underpinnings. From the standpoint of paleoecology, the Paleolithic diet is a myth. Food choice is as much about what is available to be eaten as it is about what a species evolved to eat. And just as fruits ripen, leaves flush and flowers bloom predictably at different times of the year, foods available to our ancestors varied over deep time as the world changed around them from warm and wet to cool and dry and back again. Those changes are what drove our evolution.
Even if we could reconstruct the precise nutrient composition of foods eaten by a particular hominin species in the past (and we can’t), the information would be meaningless for planning a menu based on our ancestral diet. Because our world was ever changing, so, too, was the diet of our ancestors. Focusing on a single point in our evolution would be futile. We’re a work in progress. Hominins were spread over space, too, and those living in the forest by the river surely had a different diet from their cousins on the lakeshore or the open savanna.
What was the ancestral human diet? The question itself makes no sense. Consider some of the recent hunter-gatherers who have inspired Paleolithic diet enthusiasts. The Tikigagmiut of the north Alaskan coast lived almost entirely on the protein and fat of marine mammals and fish, whereas the Gwi San in Botswana’s Central Kalahari took something like 70 percent of their calories from carbohydrate-rich, sugary melons and starchy roots. Traditional human foragers managed to earn a living from the larger community of life that surrounded them in a remarkable variety of habitats, from near-polar latitudes to the tropics. Few other mammalian species can make that claim, and there is little doubt that dietary versatility has been key to the success we’ve had.
Many paleoanthropologists today believe that increasing climate fluctuation through the Pleistocene sculpted our ancestors—whether their bodies or their wit, or both—for the dietary flexibility that has become a hallmark of humanity. The basic idea is that our ever changing world winnowed out the pickier eaters among us. Nature has made us a versatile species, which is why we can find something to satiate us on nearly all its myriad biospheric buffet tables. It’s also why we have been able to change the game, transition from forager to farmer, and really begin to consume our planet.]
10,000 years ago, the meat hunted you back.
Heck, even 200 years ago.
Living in an immediate post ice age environment in small hunter gatherer groups and an infant mortality rate higher than 50% had some effect on "left expectancy" too.
There are vegetarian exercise freaks who drop dead from heart attacks. And relatives on my father's side in Kentucky lived into their nineties on a lifestyle of hard work and a diet that featured savory baked corn bread slathered in butter, buttermilk biscuits seasoned with salt cured country ham and red eye gravy, fresh chicken double breaded in flour and fried in lard, turnip greens cooked in bacon fat, green beans the same, fresh and home canned tomatoes, and corn, corn, and more corn.
Frankly, I think genetics plays a far more powerful role in how long a person lives than it's given credit for. And as long as someone eats in moderation when hungry and remains active their chances are as good as nature will allow. But bottom line, nobody gets out of here alive so you may as well do your best to enjoy the time you're given. And that includes eating what you crave when you crave it. If that balloons you into morbid obesity then adjustment may be required.
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Adam’s children ate meat.
They all lived 800-900 years.
10,000 years ago the universe was not here, nor was time; it hadn’t been invented yet.
Actually, and yes there are articles and studies, they are realizing they may not know the age of skeletal remains because they only have modern markers to use as a judge. A healthy mostly meat-eating human might not show the same signs of aging at the same age as the modern carb/sugar consuming human.
I always laughed to myself when people bragged about the Caveman diet, or Paleo diet...
they were CAVEMEN!.....
and similarly people talk about how well our great grandparents ate....
in the early 1900's the average life span was about 46yrs old...
It skewed short because of high infant mortality, up until about a hundred years ago. I have a copy of a great aunt’s genealogy record. Dates back to our earliest ancestors here in the US. Men have been living to their mid80s, women until their mid90s since the 17th century.
What’s different is the number of kids who survive childhood. As recently as my gr a parents generation, half the kids didn’t make it to adultnood. Throw in safe that cut you g men down in their prime, that stunts life expectancy figures too, unless statistically adjusted for.