Posted on 03/07/2002 6:16:05 PM PST by 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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Eat raw meat.
Raw meat (from a trusted source) is probably a good idea. But remember, control of fire goes back quite a while, so grilling is practically genetic..
There was also a book on prehistoric diets by Lionel Tiger (circa 1987).
The Caveman DietStep back for a moment. We evolved as hunters and gatherers. Agraduate student in my Rutgers department, Matt Sponheimer, published an article in Nature in l999 showing from the micro-analysis of wear on fossil teeth that our ancestors were eating meat over 2.5 million years ago. We mainly ate meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, and nuts. We have to assume our physiology evolved in association with this diet. The balanced diet for our species was what we could acquire then, not what the government and doctors tell us to eat now... Within medicine and anthropology there has been a controversy brewing for years about the possible unhealthiness of the diet made possible -- and even necessary given our crowded planet -- by agriculture. The most popular expression of sharp wariness about particular agricultural products was the 1972 book, "Diet Revolution," in which Robert Akins argued that eating carbohydrates, especially grains -- which are cheap -- made people hungry so they ate more and burgeoned.
by Lionel Tiger
July 9, 2002
Actually eating like a caveman did not mean eating only meat/fish/foul. It also included eating all kinds of vegetable matter, nuts, roots, and fruits.
Many modern ills are caused be eating a high carb diet that encourages the growth of candida albicans or thrush. This yeast infection can cause many kinds of symptoms. In fact if you have a health problem, especially one that is vague or hard to diagnose, try the "caveman diet". Basically, when you select food to eat, ask yourself, was someone, somewhere able to eat this 10,000 years ago. If the answer is yes then it is part of a "caveperson diet".
If you are infected with yeast, and try this diet, your yeast will "demand" that you eat sweets and carbohydrate, saying "feed me, feed me". You have to be strong for a few days and say "no $^(_*&& yeast is going to dictate my life." As the yeast starts to die of starvation it will poison your body and you may feel ill for a few days. The more yeast in your system, the worse you may feel. Be patient, give the "Caveman/Atkins Diet" a week, and you should start to feel a lot better and your symptoms improve.
I was once called to the home of a fellow in the last stages of AIDS, suffering from severe yeast infection. I looked in his refrigerator to find something to cook for him. Of 23 foods, only one was not a yeast treat. The only not yeast feeder he had was chicken.
If you want to try the Atkins Diet, easy to find on Google, be sure you start with the rigorous "Induction Phase". Your body will burn Fats, Carbohydrates/Sugars, or Protein for energy. By eliminating almost all Carb/Sugar, and eating adequate protein, and some fat, the body will burn the surplus fat in your body first. You can eat lots of green salad, celery, cucumbers, etc. Some cheese, sour cream, ricotta. 1 or 2 eggs, 2 slices of bacon, and modest quantities of related foods. This diet really works, and you don't feel all that hungry on it. Also take good vitamin/mineral supplements while dieting.
Asians do eat a lot of rice, but also a lot of low carb vegetables, and seaweed, which is high in trace minerals. The caveman was not killed by his diet, but by severe living conditions like winter, drought, etc.
And who said the caveman's diet was all meat and fish? Loren Cordain's book, based on anthropological data is the best on the subject. The yeast stuff is hooey, IMO.
Why do you say the yeast stuff is hooey? I'm leaving town until this weekend, but have some other stories that might interest you related to yeast/fungus problems which I will relate on my return.
Need scientific data and not anecdotal stories. Without the application of scientific methodology to test the claims, it becomes faith-based or emotional in origin. No good.
Always been a pet peeve of mine...
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