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> And the scientific justification for paleo is just false. Ancient humans did not eat that much meat. What about native Inuit populations whose diets were nea

by nether 12y ago

> And the scientific justification for paleo is just false. Ancient humans did not eat that much meat. What about native Inuit populations whose diets were nearly 100% meat?

tjradcliffe 12y ago
They demonstrate the truth that humans evolved as opportunistic hunter-gatherer-scavengers who can survive comfortably on a huge range of diets, so anyone selling any particular narrowly defined diet--like "Paleo"--as in any way particularly "natural" to humans is in a state of evolution-denial that would make the average Creationist proud.
dalke 12y ago
What about them? The Inuit are at one extreme. Quoting http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-paleo-diet-half-baked-how-hunter-gatherer-really-eat/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-paleo-diet-hal... : > Which hunter–gatherer tribe are we supposed to mimic, exactly? How do we reconcile the Inuit diet—mostly the flesh of sea mammals—with the more varied plant and land animal diet of the Hadza or !Kung? Chucking the many different hunter–gather diets into a blender to come up with some kind of quintessential smoothie is a little ridiculous. Quoting one of the many counter-arguments from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet : > recent understanding of the human genome has shown that modern humans typically have many copies of the AMY1 gene for starch digestion—suggesting widespread evolutionary adaptation to starch consumption by humans
hristov 12y ago
Yes, there are native inuit whose diets are nearly 100% meat. But we do not all have their genes. Genetically, they are just a branch of humanity. The average person has very little likelihood to have native inuit genes, thus there is no reason to believe their body is adapted to a diet of 100% meat. We did all come from more temperate climates and in such places, plant food is much more easily available than meat. Also, in most temparate places hunting for wild animals with stone age tools and without horses is very difficult and it is very unlikely that the prehistoric humans could get much meat at all. There are stone age tribes in Africa and Brazil, and they usually eat very little meat, because it is very hard to obtain.
- dalke 12y ago
  There's no need to believe or disbelieve. Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Karsen Anderson showed back around 1930 that it wasn't a special adaptation of the Inuit people. They and their fellow explorers of European descent were healthy on a diet of fish and meat. Stefansson spent 9 years of 11 years of Arctic exploration living on a meat diet. As that possibility was widely disbelieved, the two of them spent a year on that diet in New York, with observers. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson#Low-carbohydrate_diet_of_meat_and_fish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson#Low-carbo... and the medical publication at http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf . Others since then have done the same. Here's someone who's been on a meat diet for 5 years. http://www.vice.com/read/this-guy-has-eaten-nothing-but-raw-meat-for-five-years http://www.vice.com/read/this-guy-has-eaten-nothing-but-raw-... .

by nether 12y ago

> And the scientific justification for paleo is just false. Ancient humans did not eat that much meat. What about native Inuit populations whose diets were nearly 100% meat?

tjradcliffe 12y ago

They demonstrate the truth that humans evolved as opportunistic hunter-gatherer-scavengers who can survive comfortably on a huge range of diets, so anyone selling any particular narrowly defined diet--like "Paleo"--as in any way particularly "natural" to humans is in a state of evolution-denial that would make the average Creationist proud.

dalke 12y ago

What about them? The Inuit are at one extreme. Quoting http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-paleo-diet-half-baked-how-hunter-gatherer-really-eat/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-paleo-diet-hal... : > Which hunter–gatherer tribe are we supposed to mimic, exactly? How do we reconcile the Inuit diet—mostly the flesh of sea mammals—with the more varied plant and land animal diet of the Hadza or !Kung? Chucking the many different hunter–gather diets into a blender to come up with some kind of quintessential smoothie is a little ridiculous. Quoting one of the many counter-arguments from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet : > recent understanding of the human genome has shown that modern humans typically have many copies of the AMY1 gene for starch digestion—suggesting widespread evolutionary adaptation to starch consumption by humans

hristov 12y ago

Yes, there are native inuit whose diets are nearly 100% meat. But we do not all have their genes. Genetically, they are just a branch of humanity. The average person has very little likelihood to have native inuit genes, thus there is no reason to believe their body is adapted to a diet of 100% meat. We did all come from more temperate climates and in such places, plant food is much more easily available than meat. Also, in most temparate places hunting for wild animals with stone age tools and without horses is very difficult and it is very unlikely that the prehistoric humans could get much meat at all. There are stone age tribes in Africa and Brazil, and they usually eat very little meat, because it is very hard to obtain.

dalke 12y ago
There's no need to believe or disbelieve. Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Karsen Anderson showed back around 1930 that it wasn't a special adaptation of the Inuit people. They and their fellow explorers of European descent were healthy on a diet of fish and meat. Stefansson spent 9 years of 11 years of Arctic exploration living on a meat diet. As that possibility was widely disbelieved, the two of them spent a year on that diet in New York, with observers. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson#Low-carbohydrate_diet_of_meat_and_fish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhjalmur_Stefansson#Low-carbo... and the medical publication at http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf . Others since then have done the same. Here's someone who's been on a meat diet for 5 years. http://www.vice.com/read/this-guy-has-eaten-nothing-but-raw-meat-for-five-years http://www.vice.com/read/this-guy-has-eaten-nothing-but-raw-... .