Paleo Diet, Eh? It Is Not What You Think it Means. Take it From An Anthropologist.
Heard of the somewhat new Paleo-Diet? Maybe you even tried it for a couple weeks back in 2013? It almost hurts to capitalize the word, as if it is a real thing, a proper noun. It may be a diet, but not all of it is truly old, or paleo.
The nutritional benefits of the diet are not the problem; it promotes whole foods, natural meat, vegetables, fruits, and advises avoiding carbs, grains, sugar and processed foods. This diet is actually a pretty good way to stay healthy and avoid heart attack, obesity, possible intestinal inflammation, high blood pressure, and even cancer.
However, the amount of meat advocates the diet suggests eating is not a way to lose weight or avoid heart attack now in our modern, sedentary culture, and the emphasis on solely eating foods that would fall into the pre-agricultural revolution would actually include some grains that advocates push out, while excluding some fruits that they claim are pre-agricultural.
The main issue with this diet is that this incorrect history is assumed within the name.
What’s in a name, you ask?
Our history, our evolution, social and biological. Paleo advocates claim that “cavemen,” or, bear with me, early modern humans, did not eat grains or processed foods and that they only ate what they could gather and hunt, which includes meat (some Paleo-Dieters eat raw meat), nuts, fish, veggies, berries, roots, etc., so therefore, we should still follow this plan.
However, homo sapiens, homo erectus (early homo species that lived before homo sapiens) and earlier homo species actually ate grains. They were omnivores, just like we are today, and very much so. Being omnivorous allowed homo sapiens to survive when one particular type of food was scarce. They probably did not have a loaf of French bread with their whole wheat linguine pasta, but if they came across wild grains which were a viable food source, such as the ancestor of corn, they were not ignored. If non-primate animals were seen eating something, chances are early non-human primates and early modern humans ate it too.
Meat is a big food item for Paleo-Diet advocates. When we needed a lot of energy to track and hunt game back in the good ole’ paleo days, we needed a lasting, powerful energy source that was easily digestible (I once heard a scientist say it was easier to turn a cow into a human than a leaf into a human). Shedding hair or fur allowed us to chase game long distances, by the way, by allowing us to sweat. Sweating allowed our bodies to stay cool and run for longer distances…but I digress.
Our discovery and implementation of the cooking of meat and food allowed us to absorb more protein and energy, which allowed our brain sizes to eventually increase, and therefore evolve into modern homo sapiens. Meat got us to where we are, but now most of us do not chase down mammoths or large game anymore, unless you call searching for cheap deals on bulk chicken at Sam’s Club a hunt. This point is used by many vegetarians and/or advocates of a modern diet less focused on meat.
Fruits and vegetables are other diet staples for the Paleo-Diet. However, many fruits and vegetables we have today are products of the agricultural revolution, just like grains, and would not have been available to early modern humans.
Also, keep in mind, many fruits and vegetables available to one group of early modern humans were not available to another, and of course, there were no trucks or shipping containers to move potatoes, corn, pineapple, papaya, tomatoes, squash, beans, and sweet potatoes from what we now call the “New World” to the “Old World.”
Of course, we could argue about possible avian transport overseas and the maximum airspeed velocity of laden swallows (it depends on if they are African or European), but that would be a silly little question. So, if one was to decide to follow the true Paleo-Diet, it must be decided what area of the globe one’s food list is coming from.
So you are a Paleo-Dieter? The real question is, Paleo what? Paleo Indian? Paleo South American? Paleo Northern European?
Globalization was definitely not a topic early modern humans understood. Corn is a perfect example of a food source eaten originally by only one half of the world. As mentioned earlier, the ancestor of corn, teosinte, is a wild grain. The peoples of what is now Mexico and Central America had been gathering and eating this grain prior to 6700 B.C, but by then it had been hybridized to create an early form of corn.
By 3,000 or so years later, corn had been improved to serious agriculture, and teosinte gathering in the wild would have been dramatically reduced. In the Popol Vuh, or as what some have called the Mayan Bible, the first people were created from corn. It is indeed an ancient and holy grain and has been an important food staple for thousands of years.
In the end, if you decide to become a follower of the Paleo-Diet, great! It has many modern nutritional benefits, minus the heavy reliance on meat.
Just do anthropologists a favor: don’t call it paleo. That is historically incorrect.
