Eat like a chimpanzee

A real paleo dieter would want to get in touch with his inner chimp

A look at our cousin the chimps diet to get an idea of how our early ancestor faired and how their digestive organs evolved.


•Chimpanzees are omnivores, meaning they eat both plants and animals. Chimpanzees also ingest foods to combat diseases.

•More than 50% of the food eaten by wild chimpanzees is fruit. Almost all of this fruit is made up of a variety of figs. In addition to figs, chimps may eat Musanga fruits (from the African corkwood tree), Drypetes fruit, custard apples (fruit from the Annonaceae family of plants) and berries from a wide variety of trees and shrubs that surround them in their African jungle home.

•Other plants eaten by chimpanzees include seeds, flowers, leaves, and nuts. The most common type of nut eaten by chimpanzees is the oil-palm nut. Chimps also eat kola nuts and panda nuts, whose shells are so tough that chimps use hard stones to crack them open.
•Meat and animal products, like honey and eggs, make up less than 5% of a chimp's diet. Animals eaten by chimps include termites, colobus monkeys, beetle grubs, birds, bush babies . . . and, sometimes, other chimpanzees.

•Foods eaten to combat diseases include: soil (which contains anti-malaria minerals) elm bark (which fights bacterial infections),

cordia flower stems (which reduces the risk of tuberculosis), and unripe figs (which have de-worming properties).

•Foods that are NOT eaten by wild chimpanzees? Anything that comes in a polystyrene cup.