Paleolithic diet?

**Camus** · Posted On: 10/02/2005 3:36pm

Follow a few of the links...

It gets sooo much crazier than that.

Kooks these days, haha :jihad: :5help:

**ryanand** · Posted On: 10/02/2005 4:22pm

Originally Posted by Cullion

Yeah, but there's no reason to assume that was because of their diet.

i wouldn't say NO reason... the things you put into a body are going to have a HUGE effect on how healthy it is... i'm sure you feel different after a salad than you feel after a filet mignon.

maybe they've got something here though... if this works, lets take the engines out of our cars and just run along the road, powering them with our feet. and we'll hire different dinosaurs to do daily tasks around the house...

teh d3adly pt3r3dactyl will be my TV antenna.

**Camus** · Posted On: 10/02/2005 4:31pm

Ummm

I think the basic premise of such a diet is the fact that biological evolution is much slower than technological (in this case, culinary) evolution.

That said, I've heard before that the advent of fire and cooking was instrumental to our evolution and perhaps the 'all raw, everything raw' crazies are just fooling themselves, I don't know.

**Cullion** · Posted On: 10/02/2005 5:40pm

Originally Posted by ryanand

i wouldn't say NO reason... the things you put into a body are going to have a HUGE effect on how healthy it is... i'm sure you feel different after a salad than you feel after a filet mignon.

I agree with your point that just because something is 'older' or 'more natural' doesn't make it better.

But IIRC there's more to the paleo diet than just 'older must be better'. As far as we can tell from their skeletons, paleolithic humans were larger, more muscular and had a lower incidence of auto-immune diseases (like certain kinds of arthritis) than their grain-eating farming descendants were just a few thousand years later.

I've never tried living on a paleo diet, but the standard version of it I've heard doesn't sound unhealthy (fresh meat, fish, nuts, fruit and veggies good, dairy, grain and processed/synthetic foods bad), it's probably just expensive to put into practice.

**oldman_withers** · Posted On: 10/03/2005 4:31pm

Originally Posted by Cullion

Yeah, but there's no reason to assume that was because of their diet.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that maybe they could get away with that diet because they didn't live nearly as long as us, so proper nutrition was not as well needed. They were not educated, and would not have known anything about the effects of proteins, carbs, etc... Also, most of them probably did not train, they lived their lives as they could and ate what they could. :ohyeah:

**Cullion** · Posted On: 10/03/2005 5:06pm

Originally Posted by oldman_withers

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that maybe they could get away with that diet because they didn't live nearly as long as us, so proper nutrition was not as well needed.

Oh, I get you. They could well have died from other things too early for negative effects of their diet could surface.

They were not educated, and would not have known anything about the effects of proteins, carbs, etc...
Also, most of them probably did not train, they lived their lives as they could and ate what they could. :ohyeah:

Well, the idea is that 'what they could get' is what the human body is better adapted for, because it's what they lived on for far longer in evolutionary terms than humans have been living on the products of agriculture.

What's the evidence to suggest it might be better for us today ? well it depends what you mean by 'better for you'. IIRC, the paleo diet does seem to be better for muscular-skeletal development, and lowers the incidence of auto-immune diseases (according to the bones excavated).

Is it better for longevity ? I'm not aware of any evidence that paleolithic hunters lived longer than neolithic farmers (I wouldn't expect them to, there lifestyle was riskier and their food supply less stable and reliable).
As you point out, it may well be worse.

What is it about the paleo diet that you feel would be unhealthy ?

**lawdog** · Posted On: 10/03/2005 6:03pm

Actually, neanderthal man was riddled with arthritis. Much worse than modern man.

**oldman_withers** · Posted On: 10/03/2005 6:03pm

Originally Posted by Cullion

the paleo diet does seem to be better for muscular-skeletal development, and lowers the incidence of auto-immune diseases (according to the bones excavated).

Maybe the diseases didn't surface because at the time the weakest links would have died off a lot sooner according to survival of the fittest. Or maybe they just never found diseased bones. Who knows?

Originally Posted by Cullion

What is it about the paleo diet that you feel would be unhealthy ?

In short, an imbalance of the protien/carb ratio. However, at the time it may not have mattered, as most tribes of humans would have undergone severe food shortages at times and large bounties at other times. Since they were often starving, any food is good food. That, however, does not suggest that it was the most healthy way of living. It's akin to how traditional martial arts have a lot of **** in them that is ineffective, but it's been kept because it's, well, tradition. It may not be right or effective, but they keep it. But that's just my 2 cent peice.

**Apostol** · Posted On: 10/03/2005 7:11pm

Originally Posted by oldman_withers

Cavemen also had a much shorter lifespan than modern man by about half.

One of the reasons cavemen died when they were in their 30s was because their teeth were so rotten and destroyed that they could not eat efficiently.

"Lacking dental care meant teeth would be missing. So with few comforts, the lack of advanced medical care, it wasn’t a good time for the elderly and deadly for the weak. It was a time when the survival of the fittest also applied to humans but a process modern man should be thankful. "

Source: http://matrixbookstore.biz/cavemen.htm

The same exact thing happens with Elephants, but since they only use two teeth at a time, the remaining teeth move down to replace the ones that have been destroyed. This is why they can live to be 80+ years old.

**baofuhaibo** · Posted On: 10/03/2005 7:41pm

This diet is just based on the premise of: "To be a man, you have to eat like a man" Someone just took it too far and mistook the word "man" for "caveman". Personally, I usually eat while crying, and try to stuff as much pizza and ice cream in my mouth as I can between sobs. But that's just me.