Paleolithic diet
The Paleolithic diet, Paleo diet, caveman diet, or Stone Age diet is a modern fad diet consisting of foods thought by its proponents to mirror those eaten by humans during the Paleolithic era.[1]
The diet avoids
In the 21st century, the sequencing of the
Advocates promote the paleolithic diet as a way of improving
History and terminology
Adrienne Rose Johnson writes that the idea that the primitive diet was superior to current dietary habits dates back to the 1890s with such writers as Emmet Densmore and John Harvey Kellogg. Densmore proclaimed that "bread is the staff of death", while Kellogg supported a diet of starchy and grain-based foods in accord with "the ways and likings of our primitive ancestors".[10] Arnold DeVries advocated an early version of the Paleolithic diet in his 1952 book, Primitive Man and His Food.[11] In 1958, Richard Mackarness authored Eat Fat and Grow Slim, which proposed a low-carbohydrate "Stone Age" diet.[12]
In his 1975 book The Stone Age Diet, gastroenterologist Walter L. Voegtlin advocated a meat-based diet, with low proportions of vegetables and starchy foods, based on his declaration that humans were "exclusively flesh-eaters" until 10,000 years ago.[13]
In 1985
The diet started to become popular in the 21st century, where it attracted a largely internet-based following using web sites, forums and social media.[15]
This diet's ideas were further popularized by Loren Cordain, a health scientist with a Ph.D. in physical education, who trademarked the words "The Paleo Diet" and who wrote a 2002 book of that title.[16]
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;[17] in 2013 and 2014 the Paleolithic diet was Google's most searched weight-loss method.[18]
The paleolithic or paleo diet is also sometimes referred to as the caveman or stone-age diet.[19]
Foodstuffs
The basis of the diet is a re-imagining of what Paleolithic people ate, and different proponents recommend different diet compositions. Eaton and Konner, for example, wrote a 1988 book The Paleolithic Prescription with
Foodstuffs that have been described as permissible include:
- "vegetables, fruits, nuts, roots, meat, and organ meats";[22]
- "vegetables (including root vegetables), fruit (including fruit oils, e.g., olive oil, coconut oil, and palm oil), nuts, fish, meat, and eggs, and it excluded dairy, grain-based foods, legumes, extra sugar, and nutritional products of industry (including refined fats and refined carbohydrates)";[23] and
- "avoids processed foods, and emphasizes eating vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds, eggs, and lean meats".[24]
The diet forbids the consumption of all dairy products. This is because milking did not exist until animals were domesticated after the Paleolithic era.[25]
Ancestral diet
Adopting 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 that 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."[26] Ideas about Paleolithic diet and nutrition are at best hypothetical.[27]
The data for Cordain's book came from six contemporary hunter-gatherer groups, mainly living in marginal habitats. One of the studies was on the
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
A 2018 review of the diet of hunter-gatherer populations found that the dietary provisions of the paleolithic diet had been based on questionable research, and were "difficult to reconcile with more detailed ethnographic and nutritional studies of hunter-gatherer diet".[32]
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 amylase.[33]
Health effects
The paleolithic diet is controversial in part because of the exaggerated health claims made for it by its supporters.[34] In general, methodological quality of research into the diet has been poor to moderate.[35]
The aspects of the paleolithic diet that result in eating fewer processed foods and less sugar and salt are consistent with mainstream advice about diet.
There is some evidence the diet helps achieve
There is no good evidence that following a paleolithic diet lessens the risk of cardiovascular disease or metabolic syndrome.[42] There is no evidence the paleolithic diet is effective in treating inflammatory bowel disease.[43]
The paleolithic diet similar to the Atkins diet encourages the consumption of large amounts of red meat, especially meats high in saturated fat. This has a negative effect on health in the long run as medical studies have shown that it can lead to increased incidence of cardiovascular disease.[44]
Proposed rationale and reception
The stated rationale for the paleolithic diet is that human genes of modern times are unchanged from those of 10,000 years ago, and that the diet of that time is therefore the best fit with humans today.[45] Loren Cordain has described the paleo diet as "the one and only diet that ideally fits our genetic makeup".[46]
The argument is that modern humans have not been able to adapt to the new circumstances.[47] According to Cordain, before the agricultural revolution, hunter-gatherer diets rarely included grains, and obtaining milk from wild animals would have been "nearly impossible".[48] Advocates of the diet argue that the increase in diseases of affluence after the dawn of agriculture was caused by these changes in diet, but others have countered that 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.[49]
According to the model from the evolutionary discordance hypothesis, "many
The evolutionary discordance is incomplete, since it is based mainly on the genetic understanding of the human diet and a unique model of human ancestral diets, without taking into account the flexibility and variability of the human dietary behaviors over time.
Since the publication of Eaton and Konner's paper in 1985, analysis of the DNA of primitive human remains has provided evidence that evolving humans were continually adapting to new diets, thus challenging the hypothesis underlying the paleothic diet.[54] Evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk writes that the idea that our genetic makeup today matches that of our ancestors is misconceived, and that in debate Cordain was "taken aback" when told that 10,000 years was "plenty of time" for an evolutionary change in human digestive abilities to have taken place. On this basis Zuk dismisses Cordain's claim that the paleo diet is "the one and only diet that fits our genetic makeup".[55]
Paleoanthropologist Peter Ungar has written that the paleo diet is a "myth", on account both of its invocation of a single suitable diet when in reality humans have always been a "work in progress", and because diet has always been varied because humans were spread widely over the planet.[56]
Anthropological geneticist Anne C. Stone has said that humans have adapted in the last 10,000 years in response to radical changes in diet. In 2016, she was quoted as saying "It drives me crazy when Paleo-diet people say that we've stopped evolving—we haven't".[57]
Melvin Konner has said the challenge to the hypothesis is not greatly significant since the real challenges to human non-adaptation have occurred with the rise of ever-more refined foodstuffs in the last 300 years.[58]
Environmental impact
A 2019 analysis of diets in the United States ranked consumption of a paleolithic diet as more environmentally harmful than consumption of an omnivorous diet, though not so harmful as a ketogenic diet.[59]
Elizabeth Kolbert has written the paleolithic diet's emphasis on meat consumption is a "disaster" on account of meat's comparatively high energy production costs.[60]
Popularity
A lifestyle and ideology have developed around the diet.
As of 2019[update] the market for products with the word "Paleo" in their name was worth approximately $US500 million, with strong growth prospects despite pushback from the scientific community. Some products were taking advantage of the trend by touting themselves as "paleo-approved" despite having no apparent link to the movement's tenets.[63]
Like many
See also
- List of historical cuisines
- List of diets
- Low-carbohydrate diet
- Modern primitive
- Nutritional genomics
- Paleoconservatism
- Paleo Foundation
- Peganism
- Pleistocene human diet
- Raw foodism
Citations
- ^ de Menezes et al. 2019: "The Paleolithic diet has been gaining ground in the field of fad diets. It is based on food patterns of human Paleolithic ancestors, about 2.6 million to 10,000 years ago, a period that precedes the advent of industrial agriculture and is different from today's modern society".
- ^ British Dietetic Association 2014 - "The Paleo diet (also known as the Paleolithic Diet, the Caveman diet and the Stone Age Diet) is a diet where only foods presumed to be available to Neanderthals in the prehistoric era are consumed and all other foods, such as dairy products, grains, sugar, legumes, 'processed' oils, salt, and others like alcohol or coffee are excluded."
- ^ Ask EN 2010; Johnson 2015; Fitzgerald 2014.
- ^ Decker 2019.
- ^ Whoriskey 2016; Zuk 2013, p. 133: "No one [...] can legitimately claim to have found the only 'natural' diet for humans. We simply ate too many different foods in the past, and have adapted to new ones".
- ^ NHS 2008.
- ^ Katz & Meller 2014.
- ^ Manheimer et al. 2015.
- ^ For calcium deficicency see Tarantino, Citro & Finelli 2015; for other risks see Obert et al. 2017.
- ^ Johnson 2015.
- ^ Newton 2019, p. 102.
- ^ Hill 1996; Smith 2015, p. 117: "Mackarness, who founded the first British National Health Service clinical ecology clinic in Basingstoke, pioneered the so-called Stone Age Diet, in the belief that humans had not evolved to consume foods, including wheat and milk, developed since Paleolithic times (in fact, today's weight-reduction version of Mackarness's Stone Age diet is called the 'Paleo diet')."
- ^ Zuk 2013, pp. 111–112.
- ^ Johnson 2015.
- ^ Chang & Nowell 2016.
- ^ Ask EN 2010. For Cordain's qualifications see Chang & Nowell 2016. For trademarking see Lowe 2014.
- ^ Cunningham 2012.
- ^ Chang & Nowell 2016.
- ^ Shariatmadari 2014.
- ^ Chang & Nowell 2016.
- ^ Kolbert 2014.
- ^ Tarantino, Citro & Finelli 2015.
- ^ Manheimer et al. 2015.
- ^ Katz & Meller 2014.
- ^ Longe 2008, p. 180: "No dairy products are allowed while on this diet. This means no milk, cheese, butter, or anything else that comes from milking animals. This is because milking did not occur until animals were domesticated, sometime after the Paleolithic age. Eggs are allowed however, because Paleolithic man would probably have found eggs in bird's nests during foraging and hunting."
- ^ Nestle 2000.
- ^ Milton 2002.
- ^ Ungar & Teaford 2002; Lee 1969; Eaton, Shostak & Konner 1988.
- ^ Ungar & Teaford 2002.
- ^ Jabr 2013.
- ^ Gibbons 2014.
- ^ Pontzer, Wood & Raichlen 2018.
- ^ Zimmer 2015; Hardy et al. 2015.
- ^ Pitt 2016; Kolbert 2014 : "[...] proponents of the paleo diet make all sorts of claims for its efficacy. Some contend that it cures autoimmune diseases, others that it reverses diabetes."
- ^ Pitt 2016; Obert et al. 2017.
- ^ British Dietetic Association 2014.
- ^ Tarantino, Citro & Finelli 2015; Katz & Meller 2014.
- ^ British Dietetic Association 2014; Pitt 2016.
- ^ Tarantino, Citro & Finelli 2015.
- ^ de Menezes et al. 2019.
- ^ Obert et al. 2017.
- ^ Ghaedi et al. 2019; Manheimer et al. 2015.
- ^ Hou, Lee & Lewis 2014: "Even less evidence exists for the efficacy of the SCD, FODMAP, or Paleo diets. Furthermore, the practicality of maintaining these interventions over long periods of time is doubtful."
- ^ Longe 2008, p. 182.
- ^ Obert et al. 2017.
- ^ Gibbons 2014.
- ^ Carrera-Bastos et al. 2011.
- ^ Cordain et al. 2005
- ^ Ungar, Grine & Teaford 2006.
- ^ Elton 2008, p. 9.
- ^ Turner & Thompson 2013.
- ^ Leonard 2002.
- ^ Jabr 2013.
- ^ Whoriskey 2016.
- ^ Zuk 2013, p. 114.
- ^ Ungar 2017.
- ^ Whoriskey 2016.
- ^ Whoriskey 2016.
- ^ O'Malley et al. 2019.
- ^ Kolbert 2014.
- ^ Goldstein 2010; Wilson 2015.
- ^ Chang & Nowell 2016.
- ^ Decker 2019.
- ^ NHS 2008; Kolbert 2014; Hall 2014: "Fad diets and 'miracle' diet supplements promise to help us lose weight effortlessly. Different diet gurus offer a bewildering array of diets that promise to keep us healthy and make us live longer: vegan, Paleo, Mediterranean, low fat, low carb, raw food, gluten-free [...] the list goes on."
- ^ Kolbert 2014.
References
- "The modern take on the Paleo diet: is it grounded in science?". Ask EN. Environmental Nutrition (7). January 2010.
- "Top 5 Worst Celebrity Diets to Avoid in 2015". British Dietetic Association. 8 December 2014. Archived from the original on 25 October 2020.
- Carrera-Bastos P, Fontes-Villalba M, O'Keefe J, Lindeberg S, Cordain L (2011). "The western diet and lifestyle and diseases of civilization". Research Reports in Clinical Cardiology: 15. .
- Chang ML, Nowell A (September 2016). "How to make stone soup: Is the "Paleo diet" a missed opportunity for anthropologists?". Evol. Anthropol. 25 (5): 228–31. S2CID 12918685.
- Cordain, Loren; Eaton, S. Boyd; Sebastian, Anthony; Mann, Neil; Lindeberg, Staffan; Watkins, Bruce A.; O’Keefe, James H.; Brand-Miller, Janette (2005). "Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century". The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 81 (2): 341–54. PMID 15699220.
- Cunningham E (2012). "Are diets from paleolithic times relevant today?". PMID 22818735.
- Decker KJ (2019). "Paleo Diet: Is the paleo diet here to stay, or a short-lived trend?". Nutritional Outlook. 22 (4).
- de Menezes EV, Sampaio HA, Carioca AA, Parente NA, Brito FO, Moreira TM, de Souza AC, Arruda SP (July 2019). "Influence of Paleolithic diet on anthropometric markers in chronic diseases: systematic review and meta-analysis". Nutr J (Systematic review). 18 (1): 41. PMID 31337389.
- Eaton SB, Shostak M, Konner M (1988). The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet and Exercise and a Design for Living. ISBN 978-0060916350.
- Elton S (2008). "Environments, Adaptation, and Evolutionary Medicine: Should We be Eating a Stone Age Diet?". In Elton S, O'Higgins P (eds.). Medicine and Evolution: Current Applications, Future Prospects. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. ISBN 978-1-4200-5134-6.
- Fitzgerald M (2014). Diet Cults: The Surprising Fallacy at the Core of Nutrition Fads and a Guide to Healthy Eating for the Rest of Us. Pegasus Books. ISBN 978-1-60598-595-4.
- Ghaedi E, Mohammadi M, Mohammadi H, Ramezani-Jolfaie N, Malekzadeh J, Hosseinzadeh M, Salehi-Abargouei A (July 2019). "Effects of a Paleolithic Diet on Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials". Adv Nutr. 10 (4): 634–46. PMID 31041449.
- Gibbons A (September 2014). "The Evolution of Diet". National Geographic Magazine.
- Goldstein J (8 January 2010). "The New Age Cavemen and the City". The New York Times.
- Skeptic. Vol. 19, no. 4. p. 10.
- Hardy K, Brand-Miller J, Brown KD, Thomas MG, Copeland L (September 2015). "The Importance of Dietary Carbohydrate in Human Evolution". Q Rev Biol. 90 (3): 251–68. S2CID 28309169.
- Hill R (1996). "Obituary: Dr Richard Mackarness". The Independent.
- Hou JK, Lee D, Lewis J (October 2014). "Diet and inflammatory bowel disease: review of patient-targeted recommendations". PMID 24107394.
Even less evidence exists for the efficacy of the SCD, FODMAP, or Paleo diets. Furthermore, the practicality of maintaining these interventions over long periods of time is doubtful.
- Jabr F (3 June 2013). "How to Really Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer: Why the Paleo Diet Is Half-Baked". Scientific American.
- Johnson AR (2015). "The Paleo Diet and the American Weight Loss Utopia, 1975–2014". Utopian Studies. 26 (1). Penn State University Press: 101–124. S2CID 144735157.
- Katz DL, Meller S (2014). "Can we say what diet is best for health?". PMID 24641555.
- Kolbert E (20 July 2014). "Stone Soup – How the Paleolithic life style got trendy". The New Yorker.
- Lee R (1969). "Kung Bushmen Subsistence: An Input-Output Analysis". Contributions to Anthropology: Ecological Essays. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada (230): 73–94.
- Leonard WR (1 December 2002). "Food for Thought: Dietary change was a driving force in human evolution". PMID 12469653. Retrieved 20 January 2016.
- Longe JL (2008). The Gale Encyclopedia of Diets: A Guide to Health and Nutrition. The Gale Group. ISBN 978-1-4144-2991-5.
- Lowe K (20 July 2014). "A dissenting view on the Paleo Diet". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
- Manheimer EW, van Zuuren EJ, Fedorowicz Z, Pijl H (October 2015). "Paleolithic nutrition for metabolic syndrome: systematic review and meta-analysis". Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 102 (4): 922–32. PMID 26269362.
- Milton K (2002). "Hunter-gatherer diets: wild foods signal relief from diseases of affluence" (PDF). In Ungar, Peter S., Teaford, Mark F. (eds.). Human Diet: Its Origins and Evolution. ISBN 978-0-89789-736-5.
- .
- Newton DE (2019). Vegetarianism and Veganism: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-4408-6763-7.
- "Caveman fad diet". Choices. NHS. 9 May 2008. Archived from the originalon 25 July 2017.
- Obert J, Pearlman M, Obert L, Chapin S (2017). "Popular Weight Loss Strategies: a Review of Four Weight Loss Techniques". Current Gastroenterology Reports (Review). 19 (12): 61. S2CID 45802390.
- O'Malley K, Willits-Smith A, Aranda R, Heller M, Rose D (2019). "Vegan vs Paleo: Carbon Footprints and Diet Quality of 5 Popular Eating Patterns as Reported by US Consumers". Current Developments in Nutrition. 1 (Supplement 1): nzz047.P03–007–19. PMC 6574879.
- Pitt CE (2016). "Cutting through the Paleo hype: The evidence for the Palaeolithic diet". Aust Fam Physician. 45 (1): 35–38. PMID 27051985.
- Pontzer H, Wood BM, Raichlen DA (1 December 2018). "Hunter-gatherers as models in public health" (PDF). S2CID 54489120.
- Shariatmadari D (22 October 2014). "What language tells us about the roots of the stone age diet". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 March 2015.
- Smith M (2015). Another Person's Poison: A History of Food Allergy. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-16484-9.
- Tarantino G, Citro V, Finelli C (September 2015). "Hype or Reality: Should Patients with Metabolic Syndrome-related NAFLD be on the Hunter-Gatherer (Paleo) Diet to Decrease Morbidity?". J Gastrointestin Liver Dis (Review). 24 (3): 359–68. PMID 26405708.
- Turner, BL; Thompson, AL (2013). "Beyond the Paleolithic prescription: incorporating diversity and flexibility in the study of human diet evolution". PMID 23865796.
- Ungar PS, Grine FE, Teaford MF (2006). "Diet in Early Homo: A Review of the Evidence and a New Model of Adaptive Versatility". ISSN 0084-6570.
- Ungar PS, Teaford MF (1 January 2002). Human Diet: Its Origin and Evolution. ISBN 978-0-89789-736-5.
- Ungar PS (17 April 2017). "The 'True' Human Diet". Scientific American.
- Whoriskey P (7 March 2016). "Paleo-diet debates evolve into something bigger". The Washington Post.
- Wilson J (16 March 2015). "Paleo isn't a fad diet, it's an ideology that selectively denies the modern world". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 February 2016.
- Zimmer C (13 August 2015). "For Evolving Brains, a 'Paleo' Diet Full of Carbs". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 August 2015.
- ISBN 978-0-393-08137-4.
Further reading
- Bijlefeld M, Zoumbaris SK (2014). "Paleo Diet". Encyclopedia of Diet Fads: Understanding Science and Society (2nd ed.). ISBN 978-1-61069-760-6.
- 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 1 February 2015.
- Henry AG, Brooks AS, Piperno DR (April 2014). "Plant foods and the dietary ecology of Neanderthals and early modern humans". J. Hum. Evol. 69: 44–54. PMID 24612646.
- Konner M, Eaton S (2010). "Paleolithic Nutrition: Twenty-Five Years Later". PMID 21139123.
- Osborne DL, Hames R (2014). "A life history perspective on skin cancer and the evolution of skin pigmentation". S2CID 13175245.
- Ramsden C, Faurot K, Carrera-Bastos P, Cordain L, De Lorgeril M, Sperling L (2009). "Dietary Fat Quality and Coronary Heart Disease Prevention: A Unified Theory Based on Evolutionary, Historical, Global, and Modern Perspectives". Current Treatment Options in Cardiovascular Medicine. 11 (4): 289–301. S2CID 1058038.
External links
- Human Timeline (Interactive) – Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History (August 2016).