Paleolithic diet

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This article is about a modern-day diet. For information on the dietary practices
of Paleolithic humans, see Paleolithic § Diet and nutrition.
Filets of fish on a bed of shredded vegetables cooking in a frying pan, partially
covered by sliced tomatoes.
Foodstuffs compatible with 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 processed food and typically includes vegetables, fruits, nuts,
roots, and meat and excludes dairy products, grains, sugar, legumes, processed
oils, salt, alcohol, and coffee.[2] Historians can trace the ideas behind the diet
to "primitive" diets advocated in 19th century. In the 1970s Walter L. Voegtlin
popularized a meat-centric "Stone Age" diet; in the 21st century the best-selling
books of Loren Cordain popularized the Paleo diet.[3] As of 2019 the paleo-diet
industry was worth approximately US$500 million.

In the 21st century, the sequencing of the human genome and DNA analysis of the
remains of early humans have found evidence that humans evolved rapidly in response
to changing diet. This evidence undermines a core premise of the paleolithic diet -
that human digestion has remained essentially unchanged over time.[4]
Anthropological science has found that human diets in paleolithic times were more
varied and less meat-centric than had previously been assumed.

Advocates promote the paleolithic diet as a way of improving health.[5] There is

some evidence that following it may lead to improvements in body composition and
metabolism compared with the typical Western diet[6] or compared with diets
recommended by some European nutritional guidelines.[7] On the other hand,
following the diet can lead to nutritional deficiencies such as an inadequate
calcium intake, and side effects can include weakness, diarrhea, and headaches.[8]

Contents
1 History and terminology
2 Foodstuffs
2.1 Ancestral diet
3 Health effects
4 Genetics
5 Environmental impact
6 Popularity
7 See also
8 Citations
9 References
10 Further reading
11 External links
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".[9] Arnold DeVries advocated an early
version of the Paleolithic diet in his 1952 book, Primitive Man and His Food.[10]
In 1958, Richard Mackarness authored Eat Fat and Grow Slim, which proposed a low-
carbohydrate "Stone Age" diet.[11]

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.[12]

In 1985 Stanley Boyd Eaton and Melvin Konner published a controversial article in
the New England Journal of Medicine proposing that modern humans were biologically
very similar their primitive ancestors and so "genetically programmed" to consume
pre-agricultural foods. Eaton and Konner proposed a "discordance hypothesis" by
which the mismatch between modern diet and human biology gave rise to lifestyle
diseases, such as obesity and diabetes.[13]

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.[14]

These 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.[15]

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;[16] in 2013 and 2014 the
Paleolithic diet was Google's most searched weight-loss method.[17]

The paleolithic or paleo diet is also sometimes referred to as the caveman or

stone-age diet.[18]

Foodstuffs
Joint of roast beef on a wooden board, cooked rare and carved.
Roast beef. Some recent paleo diet variants emphasize the consumption of
unprocessed animal products.
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 Marjorie Shostak, and
it described a diet which is 65% plant-based. This is not typical of more recently
devised paleo diets; Loren Cordain's – probably the most popular – instead
emphasizes animal products and an avoidance of processed food.[19] Diet advocates
concede the modern paleolithic diet cannot be a faithful recreation of what
paleolithic people ate, and instead aim to "translate" that into a modern context,
avoiding such likely historical practices as cannibalism.[20]

Foodstuffs that have been described as permissible include:

"vegetables, fruits, nuts, roots, meat, and organ meats";[21]

"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)";[22] and
"avoids processed foods, and emphasizes eating vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds,
eggs, and lean meats".[23]
The diet forbids the consumption of all dairy products. This is because milking did
not exist until animals were domesticated after the Paleolithic era.[24]

Ancestral diet
Adoption of 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."[25] Ideas about Paleolithic
diet and nutrition are at best hypothetical.[26]

The data for Cordain's book only came from six contemporary hunter-gatherer groups,
mainly living in marginal habitats. One of the studies was on the !Kung, whose diet
was recorded for a single month, and one was on the Inuit.[27] Due to these
limitations, the book has been criticized as painting an incomplete picture of the
diets of Paleolithic humans.[28] It has been noted that the rationale for the diet
does not adequately account for the fact that, due to the pressures of artificial
selection, most modern domesticated plants and animals differ drastically from
their Paleolithic ancestors; likewise, their nutritional profiles are very
different from their ancient counterparts. For example, wild almonds produce
potentially fatal levels of cyanide, but this trait has been bred out of
domesticated varieties using artificial selection. Many vegetables, such as
broccoli, did not exist in the Paleolithic period; broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower,
and kale are modern cultivars of the ancient species Brassica oleracea.[29]

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 Gwi people of southern Africa to
99% for the Alaskan Nunamiut. Descendants of populations with different diets have
different genetic adaptations to those diets, such as the ability to digest sugars
from starchy foods. Modern hunter-gatherers tend to exercise considerably more than
modern office workers, protecting them from heart disease and diabetes, though
highly processed modern foods also contribute to diabetes when those populations
move into cities.[30]

A 2018 review of the diet of hunter-gatherer populations found that the dietary
provisions of the palelothic diet had been based on questionable research, and were
"difficult to reconcile with more detailed ethnographic and nutritional studies of
hunter-gatherer diet".[31]

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.[32]

Health effects
The paleolithic diet is controversial in part because of the exaggerated health
claims made for it by its supporters.[33] In general, research into the diet has
been of poor quality.[34]

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.[35] Diets
with a paleolithic nutrition pattern have some similarities to traditional ethnic
diets such as the Mediterranean diet that have been found to be healthier than the
Western diet.[36] Following the paleolithic diet, however, can lead to nutritional
deficiencies such as those of vitamin D and calcium, which in turn could lead to
compromised bone health;[37] it can also lead to an increased risk of ingesting
toxins from high fish consumption.[38]

There is some evidence the diet helps achieve weight loss, possibly because of the
increased satiety from the foods typically eaten.[39] One trial of obese
postmenopausal women found improvements in weight and fat loss after six months,
but the benefits had ceased by 24 months; side effects among participants included
"weakness, diarrhea, and headaches". As with any other diet regime, the paleolithic
diet leads to weight loss because of overall decreased caloric intake, rather than
a special feature of the diet itself.[40]

There is no good evidence that following a paleolithic diet lessens the risk of
cardiovascular disease or metabolic syndrome.[41] As of 2014 there was no evidence
the paleolithic diet is effective in treating inflammatory bowel disease.[42]

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.[43]

Genetics

Melvin Konner, co-author of a 1985 paper setting out a hypothetical basis for the
paleolithic diet.
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.[44] Loren Cordain has described the paleo
diet as "the one and only diet that ideally fits our genetic makeup".[45]

The argument is that modern humans have not been able to adapt to the new
circumstances.[46] According to Cordain, before the agricultural revolution,
hunter-gatherer diets rarely included grains, and obtaining milk from wild animals
would have been "nearly impossible".[47] 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.[48]

According to the model from the evolutionary discordance hypothesis, "many chronic
diseases and degenerative conditions evident in modern Western populations have
arisen because of a mismatch between Stone Age genes and modern lifestyles."[49]
Advocates of the modern paleo diet have formed their dietary recommendations based
on this hypothesis. They argue that modern humans should follow a diet that is
nutritionally closer to that of their Paleolithic ancestors.

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.[50] Studies of a variety of populations around the world show
that humans can live healthily with a wide variety of diets and that humans have
evolved to be flexible eaters.[51] Lactose tolerance is an example of how some
humans have adapted to the introduction of dairy into their diet. While the
introduction of grains, dairy, and legumes during the Neolithic revolution may have
had some adverse effects on modern humans, if humans had not been nutritionally
adaptable, these technological developments would have been dropped.[52]

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.[53] 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".[54]

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.[55]
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".[56]

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.[57]

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.[58]

Elizabeth Kolbert has written the paleolithic's emphasis on meat consumption is a

"disaster" on account of meat's comparatively high energy production costs.[59]

Popularity
A lifestyle and ideology have developed around the diet.[60] "Paleolithic" products
include clothing, smartphone apps, and cookware. Many paleolithic cookery books
have been bestsellers.[61]

As of 2019 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.[62]

Like many other diets, the paleolithic diet is promoted by some by an appeal to
nature and a narrative of conspiracy theories about how nutritional research, which
does not support the supposed benefits of the paleolithic diet, is controlled by a
malign food industry.[63] Paleolithic diet advocate John Durant has blamed
suppression of the truth about diet in the United States on "the vegetarian lobby".
[64]

Politically, the paleolithic diet has found favour with the alt-right as a point of
opposition to what is seen as more left-wing veganism.[65]

See also
List of historical cuisines
List of diets
Low carbohydrate diet
Modern primitive
Nutritional genomics
Paleoconservatism
Paleo Foundation
Peganism
Raw foodism
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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.
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 & Riachlen 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.
Gander 2017.