The Perfect Human Diet
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lauragreenbaum
Posts: 1,017 Member
This documentary came out a few years ago, and I'm sure there has been discussion on it here on MFP in the past. But, has anyone else seen it recently? I just watched it on Hulu and it was very interesting. It examines the human diet from an evolutionary perspective. Basically, meat, fish, green vegetables, berries and nuts are what we ate for 2 million years and what made us evolve into humans that we are today. When wheat, sugar, and milk was introduced, our health became much worse and we developed modern diseases (diabetes, obesity, etc). So in a proverbial nutshell:
Meat, fish, green veggies, nuts, a little fruit- GOOD
carbohydrates, wheat, grains, sugar, salt, milk- BAD
Opinions?
Meat, fish, green veggies, nuts, a little fruit- GOOD
carbohydrates, wheat, grains, sugar, salt, milk- BAD
Opinions?
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Replies
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When humans figured out agriculture is also when they started make great strides in civilization.
Paleo propoganda also ignores the fact that humans invented agriculture because they like grains, rather than inventing grains because they found agriculture.52 -
Personal opinion:
There is no such thing as a perfect human diet that makes you disease bulletproof because diet is not the only factor for diseases flaring up in some and not in others. Saying that grains are bad is ludacris becuase there are literally billions of people who have in the past or today based their diets on grains and lived to see very old and healthy age. There is an island in the Far East (Japan maybe) where most of the residents don't get sick and live over a 100, while they base their meals on rice and very little meat (once or twice a week). And then there is the Mediterranean diet, where I'm from, that uses lots of olive oil and fish and is said to be one of the healthiest.
This "perfect human diet" is examined from an evolutionary perspective. The conclusions are conjecture but you can't really prove or disprove this. Our bodies are adaptable which is why we evolved in the first place, or in other words change and adaptation are the motor of evolution.
Not to mention that such a diet would be absolutely unsustainable on a planet that is a home to 7 billion and not 200 million people (or whatever the number was).15 -
First off, there is no such thing as "the perfect human diet". No two human bodies are identical and no two humans circumstances are identical, so what is an optimal diet for one person may not be an optimal diet for another.
Second, the idea that we were somehow healthier tens of thousands of years ago is flawed at best. We didn't have obesity because food was scarce and humans wwlere very active. That is why you were far more likely to die of starvation than obesity. Now that good is much less scarce and people are much less active, those things are reversed. Additionally, human life spans on average are much longer now than they were then. When people aren't constantly dying from things like the common cold or the weather, they have more time to age and develop diseases such as cancer and diabetes. Not to mention that it's only very recently that we even know what those things are, so it's hard to say what level ancient humans actually suffered from them.
And lastly, while there is no universally perfect diet, there are general health and nutrition guidelines that have been developed based on substantial research into how consumption of certain food items affects health in most people. And the general research has identified that consumption of fruits, beans, and whole grains are overwhelmingly associated with positive health outcomes, while high consumption of red meat is associated with negative health outcomes. While this does not mean these foods = good and red meat = bad, and correlation does not necessarily imply causation, it is weird for a documentary to basically take the exact opposition position of what the established research we have indicates for us.20 -
What was the life span of a human pre-agriculture and what kind of illnesses did they suffer?7
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As a general rule, chasing perfection is asking for trouble.
Find a middle road.
I also prefer national nutritional guidelines over “documentaries”.
As omnivores with weak teeth and big brains we do better cooking our foods.11 -
The problem with the idea of an optimal human diet is that it basically tries to extract human beings from their environment like they are lab experiments in isolation.
But a diet is better or worse for humans, according to research, depending on the level of sunlight, heat and cold, time of year, activity level, genetics, gut bacteria, and so on.
There is no optimal for everyone, all the time, you know? And anthropological evidence backs this up, finding extremely varied diets existing around the world thousands of years ago, from complete vegetarian diets to nearly full carnivore style diets.
Although there also does seem to be research also showing a number of difficulties with how our bodies react to a lot of modern diets, in a variety of ways, so I wouldn’t argue that there aren’t problems, currently.4 -
I wish my diet could consist of perfect humans... however, cannibalism is illegal where I'm from. Still interested to hear your results.35
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Carbohydrates, wheat, grains, sugar, and salt have been part of the human diet for millions of years, including the diets of the healthiest places in the world. A little bit more recently, dairy for those who aren't intolerant. Nothing unhealthy about those food groups. It's less about "what" and more about "how much" and what else you're doing with your lifestyle.
People like easy lists because they're easy, looking at things within context is more nuanced and harder. Pinning issues on specific triggers is the easy way out when in reality, it's the unfavorable balance between how much we eat in general and how much we move in general that contributes the most to the issues mentioned. It's tempting because "it's not me it's carbs" is easier to swallow than "I eat too much for my activity level and don't take care of my health by sleeping well, socializing, and minimizing stress".18 -
There is quite a lot of evidence that the DNA changes that enabled Western humans to digest dairy were heavily selected for. That means that people who could digest dairy had a huge survival advantage over people who couldn’t.
Things that give you a huge survival advantage are not ‘bad for you’.27 -
lauragreenbaum wrote: »This documentary came out a few years ago, and I'm sure there has been discussion on it here on MFP in the past. But, has anyone else seen it recently? I just watched it on Hulu and it was very interesting. It examines the human diet from an evolutionary perspective. Basically, meat, fish, green vegetables, berries and nuts are what we ate for 2 million years and what made us evolve into humans that we are today. When wheat, sugar, and milk was introduced, our health became much worse and we developed modern diseases (diabetes, obesity, etc). So in a proverbial nutshell:
Meat, fish, green veggies, nuts, a little fruit- GOOD
carbohydrates, wheat, grains, sugar, salt, milk- BAD
Opinions?
A lot of things made us evolve into the modern humans we are today. Natural selection and gene mutations kind of sum it up though. Mice eat everything on that list, and they don't make little mousey airplanes to travel around, and they don't have a mouse internet to talk to each other with. Food didn't make is into what we are today.
But more to the point, the people you're talking about died before they got to be 30 years old, for millions of years. A broken leg can literally be a death sentence for a hunter and gatherer. Not a pleasant death either. Dental remains show that ancient paleo people got bad cavities in places with really sugary melons. Some of them got painful abscesses. Dying in childbirth was very common.
Don't tell me ancient people had better health than we do. We can prevent a lot of disease with vaccines. If you care about your health, there is cheap healthy food everywhere and you don't have to kill it yourself. We live more than twice as long, and people who treated themselves well can be active into old age. Oh, our babies don't wander off and get eaten by hyenas either.
I would never trade places with a paleo ancestor, and you're crazy if you would.18 -
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lauragreenbaum wrote: »This documentary came out a few years ago, and I'm sure there has been discussion on it here on MFP in the past. But, has anyone else seen it recently? I just watched it on Hulu and it was very interesting. It examines the human diet from an evolutionary perspective. Basically, meat, fish, green vegetables, berries and nuts are what we ate for 2 million years and what made us evolve into humans that we are today. When wheat, sugar, and milk was introduced, our health became much worse and we developed modern diseases (diabetes, obesity, etc). So in a proverbial nutshell:
Meat, fish, green veggies, nuts, a little fruit- GOOD
carbohydrates, wheat, grains, sugar, salt, milk- BAD
Opinions?
This is bad science. The thing is, humans didn’t evolve 2 million years ago and then stop. Humans are still evolving. Take dairy as an example. It’s true that a human 2 million years ago would have had a bad time with dairy, because humans then could not digest lactose as adults. But between 20k and 8k ago, mutations in the genes which handle lactose appeared. And when they appeared, they spread rapidly throughout the population, which means that there was a strong benefit to the mutation - people with it were more likely to survive and reproduce than people without it. Today, most people with European ancestry can digest lactose.
It doesn’t make sense for this subgroup of modern people who are genetically different from ancient people to restrict their diet based on the limitations of ancient people, which they don’t share.
That’s just a single example, but all people everywhere are genetically different from ancient people in many ways. The study of ancient DNA is brand new, and there are probably countless ways in which genes which have to do with how humans metabolize food have changed.
In addition, as you can see from the milk example, people are different. Just because some people have a gene which allows them to eat dairy doesn’t mean all people can. There’s no one diet which is ideal for all humans, because humans are diverse, with diverse needs.19 -
concordancia wrote: »When humans figured out agriculture is also when they started make great strides in civilization.
Paleo propoganda also ignores the fact that humans invented agriculture because they like grains, rather than inventing grains because they found agriculture.
Suddenly in our history, our ape-like ancestors started eating grasses, grains and the likes. This coincided with a major growth in brain volume. I doubt we'd have gone to eating meat if we'd stayed on those trees and eaten whatever was available there.8 -
concordancia wrote: »When humans figured out agriculture is also when they started make great strides in civilization.
Paleo propoganda also ignores the fact that humans invented agriculture because they like grains, rather than inventing grains because they found agriculture.
Suddenly in our history, our ape-like ancestors started eating grasses, grains and the likes. This coincided with a major growth in brain volume. I doubt we'd have gone to eating meat if we'd stayed on those trees and eaten whatever was available there.
Definitely not. Fruits, vegetables and leaves are a low-energy diet and require a lot of work for very little reward. Gorillas have to spend a very large proportion of their time in gathering, eating and digesting. This is especially the case once you remember that modern fruits have been selectively bred for thousands of years and are completely different from the wild versions available to our ancestors.
Being able to eat higher-value foods such as grains and meats is one of the things that lets us fuel our big brains. They have a surprisingly high energetic cost!15 -
The prevailing consensus today is that we have eaten grains all along. I don't remember the exact number but archaeologists just recently found the oldest evidence of bread baking and it's well over 40,000 years old. There's a reason we have multiple genes for digesting starch and that our saliva actually starts breaking it down in our mouths. Starch and grains have been a large part of our diet throughout our history.15
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Thank you for all of your comments and opinions. Very interesting and I appreciate all the view points. Please note I was not necessarily advocating the findings in this documentary, just asking for opinions. I think it's all fascinating how we became who we are as human beings.14
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Thanks for mentioning this program. I love this type of documentary because they make me think. Going to watch it now.6
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lauragreenbaum wrote: »This documentary came out a few years ago, and I'm sure there has been discussion on it here on MFP in the past. But, has anyone else seen it recently? I just watched it on Hulu and it was very interesting. It examines the human diet from an evolutionary perspective. Basically, meat, fish, green vegetables, berries and nuts are what we ate for 2 million years and what made us evolve into humans that we are today. When wheat, sugar, and milk was introduced, our health became much worse and we developed modern diseases (diabetes, obesity, etc). So in a proverbial nutshell:
Meat, fish, green veggies, nuts, a little fruit- GOOD
carbohydrates, wheat, grains, sugar, salt, milk- BAD
Opinions?
@lauragreenbaum first there is no perfect human diet because we are all different. While your proverbial nutshell is dead on for some it is not for others.
When I started to eat for better health my health and weight improved without thought to them. Yes we each may have the "Way Of Eating" that works best for us. Now finding that way(s) is not something everyone does. I was 63 before I got serious about eating myself out of the mess I ate myself into the prior 40 years.
The answer in my case was not in just one book or movie because the best I can tell there is no one person with the correct way to eat for every human.
In the meantime consider doing more of the things that work for you and less of the things that are not working out so well for you diet wise. Over time I just evolved into eating a way that has been working well for about 5 years.
No one has a canned answer for you but I bet your body knows what is best for you. Note there can be a difference between what the body needs and the minds wants often.
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Maybe give it another try. I agree the production was rather dull in the beginning, but it gets a lot better when he starts talking to scientists around the world.5
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