We evolved and thrived as a species engrossed in a particular cultural system known as immediate-return foraging (gathering-hunting). To this day and throughout the 200,000 year human history, there is a significant amount of cultural similarity among all immediate-return foragers. (Note: "Immediate-return" or "Simple" gatherer-hunters eat their food within days of collecting it, while "Delayed-return" or "Complex" foraging societies process and store food for longer periods, changing the cultural dynamic significantly. It is likely the delayed-return societies came to exist sometime around the adoption of agriculture and it's accompanying technological advancements in food storage.)
This blog is about the many aspects of the gatherer-hunter lifestyle that upheld human happiness, health, pleasure and abundance while protecting against stress and violence. One of those lifestyle factors is the diet* of prehistoric peoples.
It's a well-accepted fact among anthropologists today that human health rapidly declined as agriculture replaced foraging. The measurements available to us 10,000 years later paint a dismal picture: our stature dramatically decreased (and we still haven't recovered our pre-agricultural heights), a measure of overall health called the Pelvic Inlet Depth Index fell precipitously (and again, we're still well below our earliest measurements) and median life span dropped. Infectious diseases increased as we began living in close proximity to each other and domesticated animals. And likelihood of famine and starvation increased, as well.
Ignoring the two latter concerns (although they are still important concerns for human health & agriculture today), the former provide plenty of evidence that the diet of gatherer-hunters better supported human physical well-being than any since. And, given we know a lot about what prehistoric people ate, we have a pretty good idea what you or I could eat to reap those health benefits for ourselves. (Add in a good deal of walking and take away our chronic anxiety and you have the gatherer-hunter triumvirate of excellent physical health).
The hunter-gatherer diet looked like this: we ate lots of fruit (during summer/fall) and wild vegetables (greens, fungi) but got most of our calories from the protein and fat from animals, and to a lesser extent, nuts. For accuracy's sake, let me say that women provided a majority of the foragers' protein daily through small game like rodents, often, insects, and the nuts referenced above. When the men were successful on a large game hunt, we probably ate only meat for a couple of days (and every part, too: flesh, organs, marrow). We also ate a small amount of wild, unprocessed grains, likely in porridge. And compared to everything that's come after it, our diet offered spectacular variety, preventing nutrient deficiency.
Agriculture was born when we began to domesticate grains, and all agricultural cultures around the world zero in on one high carbohydrate food (wheat, rice, corn, potato, etc) as the staple of their diet (enter: monodiet). It's important to remember that during the period of drastic reduction in health associated with the adoption of agriculture, humans were eating entirely "whole grains" (refining came later) and there was no increase in sugar consumption (or high fructose corn syrup!). Those are bad guys, don't get me wrong. But a diet founded on complex carbohydrates, one without a lick of white bread or soda, is tied to the dramatic decrease in human health described above.
There is so much more to say, a lot about the ethics of eating a high meat diet in our highly populated world, but this post is already overlong, so I'll save it for another day.
*I'm using the term diet here to denote the entirety of foods eaten by a population, not in any way intending any calorie-minimizing implications. As a MS, RD who works with clients with eating disorders, I am a huge activist against all those 'diets' in our culture that fit into the latter category. Those 'diets' Just Don't Work!
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