Paleolithic diet

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As consumed by contemporary^[1] humans, a Paleolithic diet consists of items of foods selected from the types or groups of foods consumed by ancestral humans who lived during the Paleolithic age, or Old (paleo) Stone (lithic) age, predominantly in Sub-Sahara Africa, beginning approximately 2 million years ago (2 mya)^[2] and ending with the introduction of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago (10 kya).^{[3] [4]} The term applies also to the diet consumed by those Paleolithic human ancestors.

Interest in the Paleolithic diet by nutritional scientists stems from the argument that humans adapted their biology (physiology and metabolism) through evolutionary processes operating for millions of years before adopting a dramatically different diet following the recent inventions of agriculture and husbandry, and the industrial and fast-food revolutions, creating a mismatch between evolved biology and diet, a mismatch deleterious to health.^[3]

Thus, Evolutionary biologists, S. Boyd Eaton and Loren Cordain argue:^[5]

[The above premises] lay the foundation for two propositions. First, we now eat substantially smaller amounts of the foods for which evolution has attuned our biochemistry and physiology. This is because we consume less energy overall, in line with our reduced physical exertion, and because we have developed and/or adopted a variety of new energy sources, foods which were not available (or at least little utilized) by human ancestors and which displace original, fundamental foods from our daily intake pattern…Second, the 'new' foods, which make up over half of what we now eat, include cereal grains, dairy products, prepared/processed foods, alcohol, separated fats, commercial meat, free salt, refined flours, and sweeteners. These collectively alter the mix of dietary constituents in ways detrimental to human health. That is, in addition to their passive effect of displacing much of the food which comprised nearly all Paleolithic human nutrition, the 'new' foods have an actively adverse influence resulting from constituents which have been shown to be harmful.^[5]

This article will elaborate on those themes.

The paleolithic paradigm[edit]

References and notes[edit]