The "cave man idea" is a fact; this has been studied in hunter-gatherer populations from around the world.

Sure it is and I'll bet I read about it before you, back in 1985 or so. I'm just saying some populations have successfully transitioned (thousands of years) to a diet of more whole grains than your caveman. Japanese being a good example. Many American Indians are fine examples of people who should cut way down on starches. Plains Indians were nomadic, ate a meat heavy diet. But the Hopis farmed and ate corn/beans/squash/vegetable and animal food as a supplement.

Read this for real insight to diet and health in tribal and near tribal populations. Was written about 1920 before these populations succumbed to civilized man's foods and is a classic. This is the paperback.... I hope it has all the photos of the hard cover. At 520 pages it probably does.
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
by Weston A. Price

The transition centuries ago was tough. And there might be something to the idea that depriving the masses of meat (animals foods) makes them more docile, obedient to kings and dictators. Here is the hunter gather/Dr. Atkins argument

http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:9ciC2e_WkC8C:www.oz.net/
~csrh/paleolithic_diet_and_it.htm+mexico+corn+hunter+bones+arthritis+hunter+gatherer&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

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 carbohydrate. 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 on14 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.

Robert Crayhon: Did we move from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle by choice, or were we forced into the shift due to animal extinction?

Loren Cordain: If we examine the fossil record it suggests that a number of environmental pressures may have forced humans to adopt agriculture, including increases in human population densities and the depletion of easily hunted game. The extinction of large mammals all over Northern Europe, Asia, and North America coincide with the adoption of agriculture. It is quite likely that pre-agricultural man had sufficient knowledge of his environment to know the life cycle of plants, to be able to sow seeds and grow plants. However, ecologically, it was not necessary, nor energetically efficient to do so when human population numbers were low and game was plentiful. Although agriculture is a vast science and can encompass numerous disciplines, early agriculture essentially involved the domestication, growing and harvesting of cereal grains.

Robert Crayhon: Is there enough evidence to suggest that a diet that includes a large amount of grains is a step down nutritionally, and one that is far from optimal for humans? And how much of the prehistoric diet was animal, and how much was vegetable?

Loren Cordain: The fossil evidence as well as the ethnographic evidence from groups of hunter-gatherers studied in historical times suggests that the diet of pre-agricultural humans was derived primarily from animal based foods. It is difficult to quantitatively determine from the fossil record the proportion of plant to animal food that was included in the diet of prehistoric humans. However, we do know that hunting of game was an important part of all pre-agricultural societies. Most prehistoric humans followed large game herds, and manufactured tools and weapons which were used to regularly kill and butcher these animals. Ethnographic studies of living hunter-gatherer societies represent the best surrogate we have for estimating quantitatively the plant to animal subsistence ratios of stone-age humans. We have recently compiled ethnographic data from 181 worldwide societies of hunter gatherers showing that the mean plant to animal subsistence ratio in terms of energy was 35% plant and 65% animal. Thus, the fossil and ethnographic data suggests that humans evolved on a diet that was primarily animal based and consequently low to moderate in carbohydrate, high in protein and low to moderate in fat. This is in contrast to the low fat, high carbohydrate, plant based diet which is most universally recommended by modern day nutritionists. Clearly, humans can adapt to many types of diets involving multiple macronutrient combinations with varying amounts of fat, protein and carbohydrate. However, our genetic constitutions, including our nutritional requirements were established in the remote past over eons of evolutionary experience. Human health and well being can be optimized when we use the evolutionary paradigm as the starting point for present day nutrition. Obviously, humans have had little evolutionary experience with the modern high carbohydrate, high fat, cereal based diet which is omnipresent in western, industrialized countries, and there is considerable evidence to suggest that these types of diets have the potential for creating health problems in some, but not all people.

Robert Craybon: How much cereal grain is too much?

Loren Cordain: That varies by the person. Some people can handle more cereal grains than others. For a celiac patient a single teaspoonful of gluten containing grains is too much. Generally, health begins to noticeably be disrupted when cereal grains provide 70% or more of the daily caloric intake. The human dietary staple for more than 2 million years was lean game meat supplemented by fresh fruits and vegetables. Including lean meats (seafood, fish, game meat - if you can get it, lean cuts of poultry & domestic meat) more fruits, vegetables at the expense of cereal grains is a good starting point for improving nutrition.

Robert Craybon: How does someone know if they can tolerate cereal grains? How do they know which ones suit them best?

Loren Cordain: I suspect that for most people, a simple subjective test can be conducted in which they reduce the amount of cereal grains in their diet and replace the grains with more fresh fruits, vegetables and lean meats and seafood. I do know that all human beings don't do very well when the total caloric intake of cereal grains approaches 70%. The high phytate content of whole grain cereals can impair mineral metabolism i.e. iron, calcium, and other anti-nutrients have the potential to interact with the gastrointestinal tract and perhaps the immune system as well. The high lectin content of whole grain cereals can bind enterocytes in the small intestine and cause villous atrophy in addition to changing tight junction characteristics thereby allowing intestinal antigens (both dietary and pathogenic) access to the peripheral circulation.

Robert Crayhon: Those who recommend very high grain diets have no scientific basis?

Loren Cordain: Whole grain cereals are devoid of vitamin C, and beta carotene (except for yellow maize). They have poorly absorbable vitamin B-6, and the phytate levels in grains impairs the absorption of most of the divalent minerals. Additionally, they contain low levels of essential fats and have quite high omega 6/omega 3 fatty acid ratios. Excessive consumption of cereal grains are associated with a wide variety of health problems. In animal models, rickets are routinely induced by feeding them high levels of cereal grains. Hypogonadal dwarfism is found more often in populations consuming high (~50% of total energy) from unleavened whole grain breads (i.e. in Iran where they consume an unleavened bread called tanok).

The Darwin of nutrition

"Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" by Weston A. Price, DDS, 1939, 50th anniversary edition 1989, Keats, ISBN 0-87983-502-8

Weston A. Price discovered what health is made of, and proved it. In the early 1930s Price and his wife ("Mrs Price") travelled more than 100,000 miles to study the diets and health of isolated primitive peoples in Africa, South America, Australia, Polynesia, Europe and northern Canada, at a time when such communities still existed.

Price undertook amazing journeys into the wilds to seek out people "who were living in accordance with the tradition of their race and as little affected as might be possible by the influence of the white man".

Weston A. Price

Wherever he found them -- regardless of race, diet and climate -- they were a "picture of superb health": they had superb physiques, perfect teeth, no arthritis, no tuberculosis, no degenerative diseases, and they were cheerful, happy, hardy folk.

That changed radically when he compared them to other, less isolated groups of the same peoples, charting a catastrophic health decline the closer they got to the "trade foods" produced by industrial society (processed foods grown by synthetic farming methods), in the shape of the "white man's store".

He found it takes only one generation of eating industrialized food to destroy health and immunity.

Price was a good scientist and a thorough investigator and collected an enormous amount of data with thousands of supporting photographs -- his case simply doesn't leave any room for argument. We are all victims. But he leaves us with the promise of regeneration. Thwarted health can be recaptured.

Price's book makes fascinating reading -- it's a great travelogue, full of interest and charm, and essential to understanding the nature of food and health. Price is truly "the Charles Darwin of nutrition".

Preparing the potato beds in Loetschendal Valley high in the Swiss Alps, spring 1987 -- in 1931 Weston Price found a secluded community here of healthy mountaineers who had no doctor and no dentist, and never needed them. (Keith Addison)

Steve Solomon has written an extended review of "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" (like many, reading it changed his life), including a good selection of photographs from the book, online at the Soil and Health Library -- the full text of the book is also online:
http://www.soilandhealth.org/

For further information see Sally Fallon's excellent and informative website at the Weston A. Price Foundation:
http://www.westonaprice.org/

Two reviews by Sally Fallon -- "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration", with photographs and tables:
http://www.westonaprice.org/nutrition_greats/price.html
Weston A. Price and his work:
http://www.westonaprice.org/book_reviews/nutrition_physical.html

Order "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" from amazon.com, or from the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation:
http://www.price-pottenger.org/

Article on butter by Weston A. Price, "Are the Activators Revealing The Nature of Life in Health and Disease Including Dental Disease?", Cleveland, Ohio 1932:
http://www.westonaprice.org/archive/archive_weston.html

"Acid-Base Balance of Diets Which Produce Immunity to Dental Caries Among the South Sea Islanders and Other Primite Races" by Weston A. Price:
http://www.price-pottenger.org/Articles/Acid_base_bal.htm

Price's "Letter to his Nieces and Nephews":
http://www.price-pottenger.org/Articles/PriceLetter.htm

"The Skinny on Fats" from "Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats", by Sally Fallon with Mary G. Enig, PhD., 2nd Edition, 1999, New Trends Publishing, Inc., online at the Weston A. Price Foundation:
http://www.westonaprice.org/know_your_fats/skinny.html

"It sounds like you might have been reading 'Nourishing Traditions,' by Sally Fallon, which has been mentioned on this list several times I think. I finally got it from the library a few weeks ago and was dumbfounded at what I read. Being a nutritionist by training, my thinking about fat and cholesterol was turned upside down! It's a good thing I'm retired, or I'd be in trouble with my boss for not touting the company line!" -- From a letter to the Organic Gardening Discussion List, 8 April 2001.

"The Case for Butter" by Trauger Groh:
http://www.price-pottenger.org/Articles/Case_for_butter.html

See also:

The Medical Testament published by the 31 doctors of the Cheshire Panel Committee in England on March 22 1939, full text online at the Journey to Forever Small Farms Library.

The Saccharine Disease: Conditions caused by the Taking of Refined Carbohydrates, such as Sugar and White Flour by T. L. Cleave, John Wright, 1974, full text online at the Journey to Forever Small Farms Library.

"Nutrition and National Health" by Sir Robert McCarrison, Faber and Faber, 1953, full text online at the Soil and Health Library:
http://www.soilandhealth.org/

"The Wheel of Health: A Study of a Very Healthy People" by G.T. Wrench, Daniel, 1938, reprinted 1960, 1990, full text online at the Journey to Forever Small Farms Library.