Archaeologists Officially Declare Collective Sigh Over “Paleo Diet”
FRANKFURT- In a rare display of professional consensus, an international consortium of anthropologists, archaeologists, and molecular biologists have formally released an exasperated sigh over the popularity of the so-called “Paleo Diet” during a two-day conference dedicated to the topic.
The Paleo Diet is a nutritional framework based on the assumption that the human species has not yet adapted to the dietary changes engendered by the development of agriculture over the past ten thousand years. Proponents of the diet emphasize in particular the negative effects of eating large quantities of grain and its numerous by-products, which can lead to hypertension, obesity, and various other health problems. Instead, the Paleo Diet posits that a reliance on lean meats, fresh fruits, and vegetables while minimizing processed food is the key to health and longevity.
The nutritional benefits of the diet are not what the grievance is about, said Dr. Britta Hoyes, who organized the event. She agreed that a high-carbohydrate diet can have a detrimental effect on long-term health, as many studies have demonstrated. Instead, the group’s protest is a reaction to the biological and historical pediments of the diet, in particular the contention that pre-agricultural societies were only adapted to eat those foods existing before the Neolithic Revolution.
Hoyes, a paleoethnobotanist who specializes in reconstructing prehistoric subsistence, stated that only thing unifying the myriad diets that she’s studied has been their diversity. “You simply do not see specific, trans-regional trends in human subsistence in the archaeological record. People can live off everything from whale blubber to seeds and grasses. You want to know what the ideal human diet consists of? Everything. Humans can and will eat everything, and we are remarkably successful not in spite of this fact, but because of it. Our adaptability is the hallmark of the human species. We’re not called omnivores for nothing.”
As for the idea that agricultural products are somehow maladaptive to the human species, researchers at a seminar entitled “It’s When You Mate, Not What You Ate,” pointed out that evolutionary fitness is measured by reproductive success, not by the health or longevity of an individual.
Richard Wenkel, a biostatician who chaired the panel, explained: “As long as the diet of an individual keeps them alive long enough to successfully mate, then that diet has conferred an evolutionary advantage. By that metric, the agricultural revolution has proven to be the most effective dietary system in the history of our species. We are the most prolific higher-order vertebrate on the planet.” It is a point that he feels is overlooked by Paleo Diet enthusiasts.
“Look at that British girl who lived off of chicken nuggets for almost eighteen years, ” Wenkel continued. “The fact that her body was able to utilize the meager nutritional value of those things and get her to reproductive age is an incredible feat. It shows exactly how effective our versatility has been in human development. In a strict evolutionary framework, all your body needs to do is keep you alive until you breed. After that, you’re just living on borrowed time.”
Wenkel stressed that personal health is too often confused and conflated with evolutionary fitness, a fact that has become more pronounced with the popularity of the Paleo Diet. Roddy Collins, a colleague of Wenkel’s, drove the point home: “It’s like, even my barber is suddenly an expert in evolutionary physiology. A seventeen-year-old kid at my gym give me a ten minute lecture on how my Clif Bar was poison because humans can’t metabolize soy. I’ve been studying human evolution for thirty years.”
One of the strongest critiques of the Paleo Diet was presented by Karl Fenst, a bioarchaeologist with the Ardipithecus Institute, in a keynote address entitled “Papayas Ain’t Paleo, and Neither Are You.” Rather than focus on relative merits of one diet over another, Dr. Fenst instead attacked the premise that agricultural products are somehow “‘unnatural,” with wheat being specifically singled out. What people seem to ignore, he said, was that the fresh fruits and vegetables forming the basis of the Paleo Diet were created by the same agricultural process that produced cereal grains.
“Nearly every food item you currently eat today has been modified from its ancestral form, typically in a drastic way, ” he began. “The notion that we have not yet adapted to eat wheat, yet we have had sufficient time to adapt to kale or lentils is ridiculous. In fact, for most practitioners of the Paleo Diet, who are typically westerners, the majority of the food they consume has been available to their gene pool for less than five centuries. Tomatoes, peppers, squash, potatoes, avocados, pecans, cashews, and blueberries are all New World crops, and have only been on the dinner table of African and Eurasian populations for probably 10 generations of their evolutionary history. Europeans have been eating grain for the last 10,000 years; we’ve been eating sweet potatoes for less than 500. Yet the human body has seemingly adapted perfectly well to yams, let alone pineapple and sunflower seeds.”
In a Q-and-A session afterwards, Dr. Fenst provided some clarification into what he felt was at the heart of the issue: “The real problem is that people are cherry-picking data to sell this diet, and that it seriously misrepresents the historical and evolutionary development of our species.”
Back in the lobby, Dr. Hoyes was busily collecting signatures for an even stronger gesture than the sigh to be held at the conference next year. “Were thinking of something big,” she explained, “like a statue of a Cro-Magnon eating a baguette.” The room burst into applause at his news.
When asked what she would tell people who wished to pursue a true paleolithic diet, Dr. Hoyes laughed harshly before replying. ”You really want to be paleo? Then don’t buy anything from a store. Gather and kill what you need to eat. Wild grasses and tubers, acorns, gophers, crickets- They all provide a lot of nutrition. You’ll spend a lot of energy gathering the stuff, of course, and you’re going to be hungry, but that’ll help you maintain that lean physique you’re after. And hunting down the neighbor’s cats for dinner because you’ve already eaten your way through the local squirrel population will probably give you all the exercise you’ll ever need.”
Summing up what many considered to be the main point of the entire conference, she told reporters:
“Look, the diet itself is sound; it’s the philosophy that’s bullshit. Eat what you want. Just leave the damn cavemen out of it.”
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Thank you for this article ! Awesome …
What’s awesome about it, James? You know there are going to be a bunch of idiots that’ll throw the baby out with the bathwater because of bullshit hair-splitting over the name of this diet. You may even be one of them!
Its not bullshit hairsplitting anything. I work in a Sports Science institue studying this stuff. If the premise itself is bullshit (i.e. that we are not adapted to eating grains etc.) then everything that follows is flawed.
Also, they state that the diet is fine for you. Its just that why its good for you is incorrect.
Also Cranky Wanker, you are aptly named.
All these people at Harvard disagree: http://ancestryfoundation.org/
So what if they do? Truth isn’t determined by majority voting.
That’s funny. I seem to remember being told that man made global warming is a lock because of the “consensus.”
Exactly Jas, it’s funny how “there’s no such thing as consensus in science”, oh, except where man made global warming is concerned – too much money to be made there by keeping the “consensus” going.
Obviously there’s no money to be made from this diet, that’s why there’s no consensus.
This is a Law Society commenting on food science – I’m going to suggest that that isn’t the best source for facts for a rebuttal.
The symposium is being HELD at Harvard LAW School and was invited by the Harvard LAW Food Society.
“… various individuals who proudly live an ancestral lifestyle …”
No they don’t. I guarantee it.
Oddly, just last week I wrote a blog entry titled “Are Wheat and Dairy Dangerous?”
Our conclusion was very similar to yours. The basic tone/summary:
“Allow us to offer the following analogy: it’s possible to be attacked and killed by a Chihuahua, but this possibility requires a number of very rare circumstances. Wheat and other glutinous grains pose a similarly specialized threat. If you have Celiac disease or a similar autoimmune disorder, grains are truly dangerous. For those of us who prefer to drink our carbs, they are simply too calorically dense. Swapping these simple carbs for the more complex carbs in fresh fruits and vegetable allows us to eat more food while taking in fewer calories. . . . ”
It goes on from there. You can check out the whole thing at http://www.drinkyourcarbs.com/index.php/news/comments/are_wheat_and_dairy_dangerous
As scientific archaeologists we make every attempt to remain objective and professional in our research and debates. Personally, I would be embarrassed by the closing statement in this essay, as it conveys neither of these qualities.
In my opinion, this essay illustrates a fundamental, and all-too-common, misunderstanding of the tenets of Natural Selection. To simply eat chicken nuggets until you reproduce does not constitute reproductive fitness, nor does it confer an evolutionary advantage to the individual consuming them. Reproduction involves the transformation of food (calories) into sexually mature offspring. Therefore, reproductive success requires not only fertility, but also significant parental investment to ensure the survival of offspring to a reproductive age.
Additionally, and contrary to statements in this essay, there is a reproductive advantage to those individuals whose health and longevity allow them to live beyond their reproductive years. This advantage is commonly referred to as grandchildren. The ability to contribute to the successful survival of grandchildren to a reproductive age confers more reproductive success on all members of a linage.
A conference with the sole purpose of bashing the Paleo Diet seems more like one that is riding the diet’s coattails. What’s next… symposia dedicated to disproving Geico’s “so easy a caveman can do it” campaign?
What KD said.
Did you not read the very last line in this article, fool? This is a satirical article, totally fiction. You are definitely a stoop.
Perhaps, but unless the target of the parody is a dismal misunderstanding of evolution, the article would be improved by not airing the same mistake repeatedly.
FYI it was not necessary to live long enough to bring up our own offspring, in a time where you lived in a “harem” of young females who looked after the babies for you.
Are you out of your mind? A harem of young females? Let’s take the ancient pre-Christian Celts for example. They had words for up to 7 generations of men, (imagine an anologue of great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, but not for women. Why? Because there was no birth control, so young women had babies until it killed them and the children were raised by a generation or two, if if they were lucky, of women, and clusters of many generations of fathers, grandfathers, uncles, etc. We don’t know the breeding or child-rearing methods of our ancient near-primate ancestors for sure. Modern humans around the globe present every kind of breeding and offspring-rearing method, from harems of women or harems of men to mated pairs to mostly mated pairs with some adultery to rape and disappearance of the male to some portion verging off into homosexuality or other genders/sexualities, etc. We are as close to Bonobos genetically and we are to chimpanzees – they diverged from each other fewer than one million years ago, and their common ancestor from us about 7 million years ago, as near as we can guess based on genetics, archaeology, etc. Their breeding and child-rearing behaviors are so different from each other that you can assume little if nothing about the mating and child-rearing habits of our common ancestors based on our closest living relatives. Having determined that, how we choose to mate and rear children in the present is entirely up to us. We must decided for ourselves what the most effective methods will be and how we shall enforce that. What colors that analysis will be our experiences in this arena, our scientific knowledge, religion, and other spiritual and moral beliefs. Personally, I find it emotionally more fulfilling to be in a committed relationship with a single person than the other other options. I believe it is safer in terms of avoiding exposure to STDs and the wrath or discomfort of partners due to infidelity or “sharing.” It also seems to me to increase to the likelihood of your offspring succesfully making it to adulthood, prepared to themselves successfully have offspring. It also fits with my spiritual beliefs, although spiritually I don’t believe we should force this form of pairing on people, simply that it should be a strongly encouraged option.
Ya we can survive on nuggets and wheat – but can we THRIVE? I agree that we can only attempt to eat a paleo diet, as the time that has past has left us virtually unable to mimic the foods and environment of the era. I feel we should instead do our best to mimic the principles by which they thrived under:
-eat a variety of fresh nutrient dense foods namely wild animals, fish and plants
-feast until satiety
-limit simple carbohydrates especially that which is fructose rich
-moderate bouts of intense full body exercise
It’s not possible to thrive without eating wild animals and fish, or doing those other things on that list? I guess I can’t be thriving then. Funny, I hadn’t noticed my quality of life or health withering away and spiralling into decline. Faddish silliness.
They didn’t thrive under it. They *starved.*
That’s why you lose weight on a paleo diet; because you can’t get enough calories eating that way! Today you do well on such a diet because the availability of these foods is so high that you can get by on quantity even if they aren’t calorie rich, but you wouldn’t last a MONTH if you were kicked back to those times.
Just because you are eating a diet similar to earlier humans doesn’t mean you will thrive. Like the article says, evolution is based on reproductive success, not on physical health. To the extent that physical help aids in reproduction, the two are linked (the parental investment and grandparents benefit mentioned earlier, being attractive enough to reproduce with another fit specimen, etc). But the important part is reproductive success–if, for some reason, being fat and unhealthy and short-lived lead to reproductive success, then evolution would turn on a dime and favor those traits instead.
Evolution does not care whether or not we thrive. It does not work towards perfection. It only works towards “good enough.”
Also, just because we evolved under certain conditions doesn’t mean that those conditions are necessarily the best possible ones for us. We did what we could with what we had. In many ways we evolved to survive DESPITE the Paleo diet, not BECAUSE of it.
Now, there are many aspects of modern life that work against our evolutionary nature–super high-calorie diets, constant loud noises, tribal nationalism coupled with a breakdown in close family and friends, etc. And I think there is a lot to be gained by looking to our past and trying to design our present a bit more intelligently. But it is a mistake to think that Paleolithic times were some sort of idyllic Garden of Eden, and to expect that diet to somehow be magically healthy.
You all realize this may as well be an article from The Onion, right?
Only the Onion would have done it a lot better…
Considering this article is a total work of fiction, I can actually appreciate that the fictional experts are sighing over the historical inaccuracies of diets movements like these but what I do not appreciate is the complete dismissal of basic science as it applies to the modifications that various foodstuffs have undergone in recent history. That inaccuracy causes as many problems as the issues these fictitious experts are decrying.
Wheat currently being grown for use in our food chain is being grown for the highest possible amount of wheat protein per kernel of wheat. This has been happening for at least the past 5 decades – wheat is tested each year and only the higher protein (gluten) producing wheat varieties stay within the food chain and get planted the next season because higher prices are paid for higher protein (gluten) producing crops. The wheat we eat today has a MUCH higher amount of gluten than the wheat that our parents grew up eating and blows the wheat that our grandparents and great-grandparents ate right off the charts. The number of people testing positive for gluten sensitivity or intolerance increases every year and this type of sensitivity or intolerance is NOT the same as Celiac’s Disease although it produces similar problems as well as other issues altogether.
My point being, it’s a reasonable argument (fictitious or not) to make that the paleo movement is based on historical inaccuracies, but it’s not a reasonable argument to discount the effect that our changing food supply is having on people. Those changes are scientific fact, not fiction.
What of the argument that all our other food sources are significantly modified from their “natural” versions as well? Why do you single out wheat when tomatoes, apples, pretty much everything we eat including meat is from plants/animals that have been modified significantly?
I think people are missing the point – Kurt Cobain is still alive due to the paleo diet and Tupac is still ghost writing songs for Yanni. I don’t see the humor or need for argument here – The author is clearly well versed in musical metaphor.
I thought a main point of the ‘caveman’ diet was avoiding things that require cooking; ie, things that are poisonous if eaten raw, such as beans and Irish’ potatoes. I didn’t see that addressed in the article.
Instead of arguing about whether or not the “Paleo Diet” is actually “Paleo” how about we look at the evidence that an awesome way to eat is developing. Whether its Paleo or not I don’t care, I am now after 8 months on the diet in top health, lost weight, growing muscles, have energy, and I am now in the top 1% of my age and gender group for bmi. Grains? I’m not looking back and don’t miss them. I’m no longer going down hill but uphill. for what it matters I have a masters in Anthropology.
This rocks!!
I guess eating only chicken nuggets isn’t healthy
http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/01/27/child-abuse-17-year-old-drops-after-eating-only-chicken-nuggets-age-2
I love the cheerful paleo people and I love eating meat and vegetables instead of processed foods. I do know though that where I grew up, the First Nation people ate bullrushes and muskrats.
Aww… I was so sad when I got to the disclaimer at the end. Maybe bump it up to the beginning for gullible saps like me?
In any case, excellent story.
I graduated from Syracuse community college (with honors) with an associates in modern health and wellness with a concentration in accelerated dietary weight loss programs. I’m also an assistant manager at local McDonalds. So I think Im somewhat of a subject matter expert specifically in regards to the topics covered in this article.
I have two children, from two different women. My ability to bear a child from two independent “samples” is a clear indicator as to my potency as it pertains to the passing on of my genetic material.
Having worked at McDonalds for the majority of my young adult life, I have personally consumed chicken mcnuggets, Big Macs, and even parfaites regularly. McDonalds has been a staple of my diet and didn’t at all hinder my ability bear offspring. I should add I play softball once a week and spend AT LEAST 20min a day on the elliptical.
Basing one’s diet on anthropological tennants is like basing your exercise regime on primate behavior. Lord knows I’m no primate! I’m a person!
That’s just my two cents.
While we can survive to an age to reproduce on many different things, I’m not interested merely in surviving to reproduce. If I have, say, a pet cat, I wouldn’t feed it on just the bare minimum to get it to reproductive age, I’d ask myself what kind of animal it is, what’s it do best on, and I’d feed it that. The good cat foods don’t have the fillers, for example.
I think perhaps the caveman thing is overplayed, but I think what the Paleo idea is trying to get at is, “Probably how best to feed ourselves can be known by trying to understand what kind of animal we’ve been, what has been the essence of what’s available wherever we managed to survive, for most of our history.”
So, how can we make as close an approximation to what got us through the ice age , and still get to use the store and hold our cubicle jobs? We have to make these guesses, and this seems like a reasonable ballpark approach. Weston A. Price did an excellent job of cataloging very different dietaries and finding their common traits: animal involvement always, and when plants could be had, from good mineral-rich soil. There were some grains, in some cultures, but those were mineral-rich, and their benefits exposed through the fat soluble vitamins in the animal products.
What is the framework the scientists in the article can use to guide people toward what makes sense for feeling great? What kind of animal are we? “Omnivore” won’t get us to “healthiest omnivore.” Paleo is a guess at what kind of animal we are in an effort to answer this. Most of us are not imagining that cavemen ate strawberries the size of a child’s fist, believe me.
I hope the study was more fair than the article. I’m sure some hungry ‘cavemen’ ate whatever they could find, even if it made them sick. Reproducing then dying is not our ideal of fitness. Where’s a study that looks at what healthy cavemen who had a wide choice of food, ate before they had fire? Or is that getting too obvious?
You guys did read the fine print on the bottom where it says this article is a work of fiction. Mr Paul D Zimmer obliviously has a bone to pick with the paleo group and their philosophy, so he made up an event filled with anthropologists, archaeologists, and molecular biologists so that he may ramble on about his point of view.
Lol! Thank you for the disclaimer because I was starting to get really annoyed by the “logic”. By reading some of these comments, it seems some people DO subscribe to that thought… shame.
I didn’t read through all the comments and someone may have already said this but; as Weston Price demonstrated it is not about the type of food but the quality of it and the degree to which it is processed.
Yams are an old world food. Also there is another old world food called the bilberry which is identical to the blueberry.
You had many more mistakes but it would take too long to correct them all.
In response to Ann’s cogent comment, “You all realize this may as well be an article from The Onion, right?”… well, actually, it seems unlikely, since the Onion has an editorial staff that enfores standards of spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
If being published is the literary equivalent of surviving to reproduce, then, apparently there’s no evolutionary advantage for a “writer” to know how to handle your and you’re, or its and it’s.
The sad part is: as this is not a print medium, any errors can be corrected at any time, before, during, or after publication. Yet here they remain.
This was a joke post? With all of the dummies out there it gets hard to tell. I thought this was someone saying that even though we made this up, we’re still right. You’d be surprised how often I’m told something along those lines.
LOL! Was the disclaimer there all along? My first thoughts were that the article was slanted, or the conference was funded by some white flour company.
For one thing, the logic equates similar vegetables unknown on different continents, which can be eaten raw — with grains that need fire.
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Europeans have been eating grains for 10,000 years, and they also brought many diseases to the New World, that killed off much of the native people.
Just Shut-up and eat your veggies…. Geeez
The human diet anywhere in the world has consisted of anything people could get down their throat. Human behavior, ingrained in every newborn, consists of putting anything at hand into the mouth. If it tastes bad spit it out. Otherwise attempt to swallow. If its too big to swallow, chew it then attempt to swallow. If it can’t be chewed and swallowed, spit it out. If it can, swallow and wait for reaction. If its rejected by the stomach, make a note to avoid in the future.
If it stays put, repeat until supply runs out or stomach bursts.
If dysentary ensues, make a sacrifice to the gods.
” Europeans have been eating grains for 10,000 years [....]”
So how long is 10,000 years, in evolutionary terms?
“You want to know what the ideal human diet consists of? Everything. Humans can and will eat everything, and we are remarkably successful not in spite of this fact, but because of it. Our adaptability is the hallmark of the human species. We’re not called omnivores for nothing.”
Awesome! This means I can eat Twinkies again!! Britta, you are amazing. I knew that whole paleo meme of eating real food was nonsense. Now I can quote an expert to back it up, while I chug down a coke and a couple of proton pump inhibitors!
Does anyone else get the feeling that it is all too common for archeologists to confuse “what’s good for the species” and “what’s good for the specimen”?
(Paraphrasing here)”…evolutionary success is measured by the ability to reach reproductive age”. Well, I’m 32, well past reproductive age, and I’m not ready to cash in my chips quite yet. By this logic, Americans should delight in the fact that 1 in 3 born after the year 200 will develop Type 2 diabetes in their lifetime. Afterall, they should live to reproduce! Let’s just encourage teen sex and McDonald’s consumption to ensure the survival of the species.
I am a paleo eater who has lost over 40 lbs, reduced my BMI by 1/2, lowered my resting heart rate, and generally feel wonderful. All of this by eating whole foods, (local produce, pastured meats and eggs) and eliminating all grains, legumes, and what I call “science experiments” (i.e. seed oils, soy and corn derivatives, preservatives, etc). I have not changed my exercise regimen of weekly competitive sports (about 2 1/2 hrs, weekly) my routine for years before and after Paleo, in any way. I am a minimally-educated, blue collar tradesman earning a middle-class income. I am in no way affluent, nor do I have lots of free time to attend conferences.
To classify my diet as a fad is simply ridiculous. Paleo dieters eat food. Actual food as produced by nature. The “fad” is eating highly modified grain products in the name of reducing the evil (vital) FAT. It is valid to argue that modern man does not eat a true Paleolitic diet – of course that is impossible given the time that has passed and 10,000 years of agriculture. But of course we should do our best to eat the most natural food available which is what ancestral health is really all about.
I could be wrong. Maybe the most optimal diet is chemically treated vegetable oils, gluten-laden grains, corn-fed beef, all washed down with hefty portions of high-fructose corn syrup. Judging by the astronomical rise in disease and health care in the U.S., it doesn’t seem to be working. Go ahead and eat that, but I won’t.
Ed: I sense a kindred spirit. You and Paul would have some laughs together. Thanks to both of you for the best kind of LOLs, the ones where the brain is fully engaged.
No matter what people say, I continue to eat Paleo. The perfect diet is what you have tried and it worked for you. And Paleo is what works for me.
My son-in-law and daughter are having good success with this paleo stuff, by that I mean looking very fit and getting good physicals and blood work results. My guess is that cutting out all the processed junk is the reason, but who knows. This did seem to be a very good informational article. I’m always surprised at all the bickering some people want to do, calling each other names, ego-posturing and such… Seems like we could do without this, no?
Your way of telling the whole thing in this post is in fact nice, every one be able to simply understand it, Thanks a lot.|
lol this is a spoof article….bahahahaha… good for some pageviews though
LOL she goes on that it is bullshit then at the end does NOT say eat lots of processed crap and wheat…she discribes exactly what the caveman diet is all about fresh meat veggies and fruit…from grass hoppers or cows…still the cave man diet…
She stresses throughout fresh variety of foods. So does the caveman diet unless you talk to an extremest. Grass seeds would be fine for the caveman diet….agriculturally produced mass quantities of as grass seed that are chemically processed and full of other chemical additives and preservatives are not….
She is welcome to eat whole wheat bread and coffee and get fat and sick…I will stick to what is WORKING for me…50 lbs down and feeling better every day..
I’ve been juicing for about a month and a half. I’ve never felt better. I’ve mated and have a kid, so I’m on borrowed time. Eff it.
I totally agree with this article. There has been much ado about the paleo diet as being THE WAY to eat healthy. Sure, eating foods having a higher protein content while limiting carbs (particularly processed carbs) is healthy but there is nothing magical about the paleo diet. Indeed, the human body is incredibly resilient and can adapt to any food eaten in order to survive. This, after all, is what evolution is all about–survival of the fittest.
This implies it’s safe to eat anything. Unfortunately it’s far from the truth.
The flood of sugar/fructose in processed food is very unhealthy and weighing a very heavy toll on people and the health care system.