A newly published study in the Quarterly Review of Biology debunks the common belief that the Paleo Diet is based on the ancient ways of feeding of our ancestors during the Paleolithic era.
The review paper touches the beginning of the Paleolithic period, 2.6 million to roughly 10,000 years ago. The study scrutinizes anatomical, paleo-environmental and chemical evidence, as well as the feeding behavior of living animals.
The study was conducted via the collaboration of Dr. Kent Sayers, a postdoctoral researcher at the Language Research Center of Georgia State, and Dr. C. Owen Lovejoy, a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Kent State University.
The researchers wrote five factors that should be considered if one is planning to emulate the diet of our ancestors.
1. The diet of early humans are much broader.
"I think that you would certainly have lots of variation way beyond what those recommendations are," Sayers said. "When you're trying to reconstruct the diet of human ancestors, you want to look at a number of things, including the habitats they lived in, the potential foods that were available, how valuable those various food items would have been in relation to their energy content and how long it takes to handle a food item," Sayers added.
2. Our ancestors eat what is available in their environment.
The variables in ancient diet may differ from place to place. Humans who live in the snowy mountains may have an almost exclusive meat diet, while our ancestors who took refuge in the temperate lowlands may have had more plant-based resources.
3. The same food doesn't mean being the same at all.
"The foods that we're eating today, even in the case of fruits and vegetables, have been selected for desirable properties and would differ from what our ancestors were eating," said Sayers.
4. Early humans have a lower lifespan, so it's difficult to say if their diet is healthier.
"Individuals throughout the vast majority of the Stone Age were not living that long. Life expectancies are so high today, at least in many regions of the globe," says the study.
5. They (our ancestors) eat to survive.
"Throughout the vast majority of our evolutionary history, balancing the diet was not a big issue," Sayers explained. "They were simply acquiring enough calories to survive and reproduce," Sayers concluded.
