PaleoTerran Enters Dormancy. Thanks.

Thank you for visiting PaleoTerran over the past couple of years! This is the last post before PaleoTerran enters dormancy. For now, the content will remain online. Hopefully someday, the site will reawaken.

A special thanks to John Michael and Leslie Why Reap for their contributions and encouragement.

For those new to Paleo/Primal health, the Start Here page provides some introductory articles and a few links. Much more is available by browsing or using the Search box or Categories menu.  

As noted in the previous post, 2013 & The Urge to Explore, we are entering a new era of exploration in search of new ideas, new directions, and new horizons. My online effort has shifted to the development of a new professional forum called Chiari Medicine. On occasion, I will post on Paleo/Primal health on the PrimalDocs website. 

This is one of my favorite images. Nestled in southern France, this stream runs below a cliff-side hominid cave occupied 400,000 years ago. Although the occupants were not our direct ancestors, the image takes us back to the Garden. Yes, there were threats. But also clean air, clean water, and a rich, productive environment.  And also, as Mark Sisson would likely say, it was, and remains, a great place to play. While we may not want to return to the Paleolithic, we don't want to loose the Terra we have. 

Human health and the health of our environment are fundamental to our future. Both are under threat. By taking care of ourselves using clues from our Paleolithic ancestors and by taking care of Terra, we become paleoterrans. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were consummate explorers relying on cunning, physical skills and social bonds. In this spirit, let’s push forward to explorer new ideas, new directions, and new horizons.

Take care,

John J. Oró, MD

The Paleolithic Diet, Part II: What is the Evidence?

In The Paleolithic Diet, Part I: A New Look at Our Oldest Diet, I described the background and nature of the modern Paleolithic diet, popularly known as the Paleo diet and medically known as the ancestral human diet. The Paleo diet eliminates grains and dairy and consists of lean meats, fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and berries.

But, is there evidence for this diet? On one level, evidence comes from general medical science as it struggles to answer, why, despite the most advanced medical treatments available, health in the U.S. seems to be declining. A consensus is slowly developing that we are straying ever further from our natural diet and have made rash decisions with minimal or flawed evidence. Journalist Marni Jameson, in the article A reversal on carbs published in Los Angeles Times December 20, 2010, quotes Dr. Frank Hu, Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health:

The country's big low-fat message backfired. The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today.

And, quoting Dr. Walter Willet, Chairman of the Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health:

Fat is not the problem. If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases.

As part of this reassessment of contemporary dietary advice, evidence favoring the ancestral human diet is slowly building. Many persons have adopted this new (yet, very old) nutritional approach out of frustration. Their passionate, self-reported cases, describe how they have overcome obesity, anorexia, diabetes, and other forms of malnutrition. (Some of these cases can be found through PaleoTerran.com. Select Success Stories in the right hand menu.)

Research Studies

One of the earliest research studies on the Paleolithic diet, performed by Kevin O’Dea, was published in Diabetes in June 1984. Ten Australian Aborigines, who as young adults had moved from the Outback to rural areas, and then became overweight and developed type 2 diabetes, were asked to consider returning to the Outback and eating like they had during their childhood.  They agreed and, as described by Dr. Loren Cordain in The Paleo Answer, for 7 weeks lived on “kangaroos, birds, crocodiles, turtles, shellfish, yams, figs, yabbies (freshwater crayfish), freshwater bream, and bush honey.” The results: “the average weight loss in the group was 16.5 pounds; blood cholesterol dropped by 12%, and triglycerides reduced by a whopping 72%. Insulin and glucose metabolism became normal, and their diabetes effectively disappeared.”

In a study published in Cardiovascular Diabetology in July 2009, Jönsson and colleagues investigated whether 13 persons with type 2 diabetes would do better on a diabetes diet or on the Paleolithic diet. Even though the study was small, it was designed in a powerful manner called a randomized cross-over study. The subjects were placed on a Paleolithic diet and a diabetes diet “during two consecutive 3-month periods.” The results were clear: study participants became healthier on the Paleolithic diet. Their weight and Body Mass Index (BMI) were lower and their waist circumference was smaller on the Paleo diet. In addition, they had lower diastolic blood pressures, improved diabetic blood test (HbA1c, blood glucose) and lower triglycerides, along with higher levels HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol).

In August 2009, Dr. Frasetto and colleagues published a study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition on the effects of the Paleolithic diet in 9 inactive volunteers that were not obese. The Paleolithic diet was matched to the same number of calories they had previously consumed. After just ten days on the Paleolithic diet, all had lower blood pressure, improved oral glucose tolerance test, and  “large significant reductions in total cholesterol, low-density lipoproteins (LDL) and triglycerides.” Their health on the Paleo diet markedly improved even though they consumed the same number of calories as they had previously. In addition, as Dr. Cordain noted, “What is most amazing about this experiment is how rapidly so many markers of health improved – and that they occurred in every single patient.”

How does the Paleolithic diet compare to the Mediterranean diet? In a separate study in the November 2010 issue of Nutrition & Metabolism, Jönsson and colleagues compared the satisfaction provided by both diets. (In medical terms, we are “satiated” when the meal satisfies our appetite.) Fourteen persons ate a Paleolithic diet of “lean meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, root vegetables, eggs, and nuts” and 15 were on Mediterranean diet consisting of “whole grains, low-fat dairy products, vegetables, fruit, fish, and oils and margarines.” The results: calorie for calorie, the Paleolithic diet was more satiating. It takes more calories with the Mediterranean diet to satisfy hunger, another win for the Paleolithic diet.

Summary

In summary, the modern Paleolithic diet is an approximation of the ancestral human diet consumed before the advent of agriculture and animal husbandry. It has been our diet for over 90% of our existence and is part of our genetic heritage. The Paleolithic diet is non-inflammatory, an important factor in disease prevention. While the evidence is just developing, the Paleolithic diet is proving to be an important means to reclaiming our original health. The story is just beginning.  

(Article initially published in Living Well magazine)

Read Part 1 here.

The Paleolithic Diet, Part I: A New Look at Our Oldest Diet

According to Duke University and the CDC, 42% of Americans will be obese by 2030. Despite advances in health care, the number of people with diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, and other modern diseases continues to increase. What is going wrong?

Some attribute the increase in obesity, an underlying factor in many of the modern diseases, to a lack of will power, a puzzling argument that fails to explain the increasing body mass over the past three decades. Others blame easy availability of food and lack of exercise: we take in too many calories and don’t burn enough. The simplistic solution proposed: eat less and exercise more. While our sedentary lifestyle contributes to obesity, the real culprit is low-quality fuel. We chose, and are surrounded by, low quality foods. Physical anthropologist Gary J. Sawyer puts it simply:

“We do not know how to eat properly. We feed ourselves, but we fail to give ourselves proper nutrition.”

A new look at our oldest diet

Fortunately, we are beginning to understand the underlying factors triggering modern diseases, among them, chronic inflammation. According to the December 2010 Science journal:

“Over the past decade it has become widely accepted that inflammation is a driving force behind chronic diseases that will kill nearly all of us. Cancer. Diabetes and obesity. Alzheimer’s disease. Artherosceloris. Here, inflammation wears a grim mask, shedding its redeeming features making sick people sicker.”

The typical Western diet is inflammatory; the diet of our Paleolithic ancestors was non-inflammatory. While the agricultural revolution around 10,000 years ago, and animal husbandry a few thousand years later, led to modern civilization, they also began to undermine our health. We became shorter and developed bone mineral disorders and nutritional deficiencies. We became less robust and developed smaller jaws. As summarized in a recent study: “Early Farmers Were Sicker and Shorter Than Their Forager Ancestors.”

What is the Paleo diet?

Interest in the ancestral human diet is growing. For over 180,000 years before agriculture, our diet was simple, yet more varied than the modern diet. Loren Cordain, professor of Health & Exercise Science at Colorado State University and one of the world’s leading experts on Paleolithic nutrition, has analyzed the diets of over 200 hunter-gatherer societies and described the ancestral diet in two recent books: The Paleo Diet and The Paleo Answer.

Our pre-agricultural ancestors “ate no dairy,” which triggers the immune system and causes a similar rise in insulin as white bread. Except in conditions of starvation they did not eat grains. Unlike ruminants, humans can’t ferment grains and only extract significant energy from grains when processed.

The role of grains as a cause of inflammation is coming under greater scrutiny. While gluten allergy and sensitivity are recognized conditions, only recently are we recognizing that gluten can affect the nervous system and in some people cause gluten ataxia, gluten spinal inflammation, and gluten neuropathy.

The non-inflammatory Paleolithic diet consists of varying amounts of lean meats, fish, seafood, vegetables, fruits, tubers, nuts and berries and significantly reduces, or eliminates, grains and dairy.

Vegetables are “rich in a long list of nutrients,” and, per calorie, non-starchy vegetables have seven times the fiber of whole grain cereals. The typical modern diet contains “a measly 8 grams” of fiber “compared to 47 grams on the Paleo Diet.”

Fruits are “almost as nutrient dense as vegetables.” Dr. Cordain believes you “have to consume huge amounts to get much fructose.”

Fish and shellfish are rich in fatty acids crucial to nervous system function. It is probably not a coincidence the first signs of human consciousness 70,000 years ago were produced by ancestors living next to the sea and thriving on a diet rich in fish and seafood.

Meats have twice the “thermic effect” of fat or carbohydrate (they increase metabolic rate) and have the highest “satiating value” (satisfy hunger). Meats increase good HDL cholesterol, are the best source of iron, B12, and zinc, and are rich in the building blocks of enzymes and brain neurotransmitters.

The right fats are essential to human health. Unfortunately, the typical diet tilts heavily to saturated fats. Cordain’s laboratory found “that despite their high meat content, modern-day Paleo diets actually contain lower quantities of saturated fats than are found in the typical U.S. diet. Two-thirds of all of the saturated fats that Americans consume come from processed foods and dairy products.”

(Article initially published in Living Well magazine)

Part 2 will review the developing medical evidence favoring the Paleolithic diet.

Anthropologist Herman Pontzer on Paleolithic energetics

In a recent post, I commented on the multi-institutional research study, published in the July 25 of Plos ONE, that challenges conventional wisdom on the role of an active lifestyle in preventing obesity. Anthropologist and the lead author Herman Pontzer discuss the study in The New York Times article Debunking the Hunter-Gatherer Workout:

The World Health Organization, in discussing the root causes of obesity, has cited a “decrease in physical activity due to the increasingly sedentary nature of many forms of work, changing modes of transportation and increasing urbanization.”

This is a nice theory. But is it true? To find out, my colleagues and I recently measured daily energy expenditure among the Hadza people of Tanzania, one of the few remaining populations of traditional hunter-gatherers. Would the Hadza, whose basic way of life is so similar to that of our distant ancestors, expend more energy than we do?

The short answer: no. The study, while adding some subtle complexity to the role of physical activity, strongly points to the nutritionaly deficient Western diet as the primary cause of the obesity epidemic:

All of this means that if we want to end obesity, we need to focus on our diet and reduce the number of calories we eat, particularly the sugars our primate brains have evolved to love. We’re getting fat because we eat too much, not because we’re sedentary. 

I would add: we eat too much of the wrong things. It is much harder to overeat when the diet consists of lean meats, fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts and berries, and contains, minimal, if any, grains, refined sugars, or dairy. While physical activity is important to great health, its major role is improving cardiovascular, neurological, and musculoskeletal health rather than reducing weight.

Physical activity is very important for maintaining physical and mental health, but we aren’t going to Jazzercise our way out of the obesity epidemic. 

Related Posts

• Do hunter-gatherers really burn more calories per day?

Do hunter-gatherers really burn more calories per day?

Daily activity of the Hadza. Image: Andreas LedererI often see persons in the office with neurological complaints such as headaches, dizziness, difficulty with memory and thinking, or alterations in mood that also have a BMI (Body Mass Index) in the obese category. A common reason offered for not being able loose weight is their inability to exercise.

Conventional wisdom holds that hunter-gathers maintain a normal weight through a combination of the Paleolithic diet and an active lifestyle that burns more calories. According to a new multi-institutional study, Hunter-Gatherer Energetics and Human Obesity published in the July 25 of Plos ONE, this conventional wisdom seems to be incorrect. As described by Science Codex:

The research team behind the study, led by Herman Pontzer of Hunter College in New York City, along with David Raichlen of the University of Arizona and Brian M. Wood of Stanford measured daily energy expenditure (calories per day) among the Hadza, a population of traditional hunter-gatherers living in the open savannah of northern Tanzania. Despite spending their days trekking long distances to forage for wild plants and game, the Hadza burned no more calories each day than adults in the U.S. and Europe. The team ran several analyses accounting for the effects of body weight, body fat percentage, age, and gender. In all analyses, daily energy expenditure among the Hadza hunter-gatherers was indistinguishable from that of Westerners. The study was the first to measure energy expenditure in hunter-gatherers directly; previous studies had relied entirely on estimates.

However, this does not mean you shouldn’t exercise:

The authors emphasize that physical exercise is nonetheless important for maintaining good health. In fact, the Hadza spend a greater percentage of their daily energy budget on physical activity than Westerners do, which may contribute to the health and vitality evident among older Hadza. Still, the similarity in daily energy expenditure between Hadza hunter-gatherers and Westerners suggests that we have more to learn about human physiology and health, particularly in non-Western settings.

Bottom line: The type of food consumed matters tremendously! The key factor in loosing weight is what you select at the grocery store or restaurant! Low-grade chronic inflammation resulting from the modern diet and the impact of modern foods on the brain's regulation of eating behavior are the prime suspects in the obesity epidemic. Returning to the ancestral human diet is the most powerful tool for reclaiming a normal weight.

Related Links

• An "Insight of the Decade": Chronic inflammation kills
• Inflammation impairs frontal lobe brain function 
• Paleolithic Nutrition: Chronic Inflammation
• Getting fatter on the typical Western diet
• New hypothesis: Acellular carbohydrates promote obesity
• “Fascinating insight”: Inflamed cells circulating in bloodstream
• Paleolithic Nutrition: Diabetes and the Modern Diet
• Success Stories 

SUNDAY PALEO / March 4, 2012

ANTHROPOLOGY

Here’s some interesting archeological news: hunter-gathers built groups of “long-term dwellings” in the Middle East 10,000 years before farming.  Science News reports that “mobile hunter-gatherers” living 20,000 years ago “hunkered down for months at a time in spots that featured rivers, lakes and plentiful game.”  

Discoveries in and around hut remnants at a Stone Age site called Kharaneh IV include hearths, animal bones and caches of pierced seashells and other apparently ritual items.

Furthermore, archaeologist Lisa Maher:

“… expects evidence of additional four- to five-person huts will turn up at the site, which is about the size of four U.S. football fields.”

Since the first grinding stones did not appear until around 15,000 years ago, grains were not the reason these Paleolithic ancestors were able derive enough food from the nearby land to allowed them to stay put. I suspect, in addition to the plentiful game suggested by the researchers, improved hunting and fishing technology allowed these larger groupings to develop.

Chesapeak Bay. Image: NASAWhile the dwellings described above were being built in the Middle East (give or take a few thousand years), other Paleolithic ancestors may have been making their way to North America. Not from Siberia, but from Iberia!  Acccording to anthropologist Dennis Stanford, they settled in what is now Virginia. A hunting blade found near mastodon bones is among the evidence being uncovered. Brian Vastag, of The Washington Post National, writes:

A mastodon relic found near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay turned out to be 22,000 years old, suggesting that the blade was just as ancient. Whoever fashioned that blade was not supposed to be here.

According to our current understanding, the first Paleo Americans arrived from Asia by crossing Beringia to reach Alaska. However, some archeologists and anthropologist suspect that:

… mysterious Stone Age European people known as the Solutreans paddled along an ice cap jutting into the North Atlantic. They lived like Inuits, harvesting seals and seabirds. 

FITNESS

There is little argument that our Paleolithic ancestors were fitter than we are. Just imagine searching for food almost daily, maintaining a fire, porting water, and repairing your shelter. Actually, using modern hunter-gatheres as a guide, our Paleolithic ancestors did all this and still had more leisure time than we do. It was their lifestyle that kept them fit: natural exercise and rest, though certainly not on a fixed schedule.

Lance C. Dalleck, Ph.D., a specialist in cardiac rehabilitation at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, calls it their “‘activity pattern’” way of life”. In A Paleolihic Program for the 21st Century, he recommends replicating their “activity pattern” as a means of avoiding disease:

Some have suggested that replicating the activity patterns of indigenous humans—to the extent that this is possible and practically achievable in today’s society—could be an effective way to reduce the incidence of these diseases. This article examines this premise and offers practical recommendations for exercise frequency, intensity, duration and mode for realigning our daily physical activities with the classic levels expected within our unchanged Paleolithic genome.

Dalleck breaks down the hunter-gatherer’s fitness “activity pattern” into four aspects: Daily Physical Activity, Primitive Resistance Training, Interval Training, and Comprehensive Periodization. He also list modern activities that can be used to meet these goals.

If you are pursuing natural fitness in the natural world, consider the work of the leading Paleolithic movement specialist, Erwan Le Corre of MovNat. Le Corre breaks down “evolutionary fitness” into three physical activities: locomotive skills, manipulative skills, and combative skills. In The Evolutionary Foundation of Naturalness, Le Corre describes his approach and also provides a great graphic on the activities used to develop these skills.

While Le Corre’s approach is usually performed in the natural environment, Mark Sisson's plan may be done with limited equipment at a nearby park or at home. The program focuses on 5 movements:

Humans have been squatting, horizontal pressing, vertical pressing, climbing, and using their torsos to resist pushing and pulling forces for millions of years.

(We, Homo sapiens spapiens, are about 200,000 years old.)

These authors are not keen on what happens in a gym. However, I find that one can perform many of these physical activities, or their rough equivalents, in a regular gym. In the winter, while some brave frigid weather to exercise outdoors, I take to the gym, wear FiveFingers, and do a combination of “natural” and traditional exercises. 

OK. You’ve done your fitness activities and are developing an “activity pattern” lifestyle. Now, it’s time to cook. An Internet search will lead you to many of the Paleo cookbooks now available, or, you can try the Paleo recipes below.

PALEO RECIPES

• Cumin Spiced Slow Cooked Pork
• chicken thighs with balsamic sautéed fennel and oranges
• Paleo Crab Cakes, A Lunch or Picnic Seafood Patty

Paleolithic Nutrition: Diet and Modern Disease

By John Michael & Dr. John

In the United States and most Western countries, diet-related chronic diseases represent the single largest cause of morbidity and mortality. These diseases are epidemic in contemporary Westernized populations and typically afflict 50–65% of the adult population, yet they are rare or nonexistent in hunter-gatherers and other less Westernized people. Although both scientists and lay people alike may frequently identify a single dietary element as the cause of chronic disease (e.g., saturated fat causes heart disease and salt causes high blood pressure), evidence gleaned over the past 3 decades now indicates that virtually all so-called diseases of civilization have multifactorial dietary elements that underlie their etiology, along with other environmental agents and genetic susceptibility.

Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century
Dr. Loren Cordain

From the Neolithic, through the age of discovery and the industrial revolution, up to the present day, human invention and innovation have introduced numerous foods into our daily diets, including vegetable oils, salts and refined sugars, and the multifarious forms that processed grains can take. Along with the introduction of these foods, people in Western Civilization have begun to suffer from many diseases that have a low prevalence among hunter-gatherer and even traditionally agrarian societies. According to Dr. Loren Cordain in his paper, Origins and Evolution of the Western Diet: Health Implications for the 21st Century, “The evolutionary collision of our ancient genome with the nutritional qualities of recently introduced foods may underlie many of the chronic diseases of Western civilization. 

Cordain bases this statement upon the idea of evolutionary discordance, which occurs when an environment changes in such a way that its inhabitants are no longer properly adapted for survival within it. Because the majority of human evolutionary history was spent within a hunter-gatherer context in which fruits, vegetables, meats, nuts and seeds, along with some tubers, were the dominant food sources, our bodies are adapted to consume this diet. The modern Western diet contains refined sugars, processed grains, and vegetable oils, among other novel foods, that were not available to our ancestors, and so our bodies perform sub-optimally when it comes to their digestion. And not only are our bodies poorly adapted for the consumption of these modern foods; in many cases, their consumption is causing us harm.

This damage takes the form of illnesses like type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dementia, cancer, osteoporosis, and autoimmune disease, to name a but few. Scientists working in Burkina Faso, Africa, believe that overall health may be tied to the bacteria people have living in their gut, basing this belief on their observation that traditionally agrarian Africans have healthier gut bacteria due to their diets and lifestyle, which implies that our own guts, which are more susceptible to allergies, autoimmune disorders, and inflammatory bowel disease than those of the Africans in this study, are in such a sorry state because of what we eat and how we live. After stating that our Western diet is “killing us,” the Coronary Health Improvement Project (CHIP) presents this somber collection of statistics.

Because of thickened, narrowed and hardened arteries, 4,000 Americans succumb to heart disease and have heart attacks every day.  Every third adult has high blood pressure, and thousands are crippled from strokes. Because of disordered metabolisms from unbalanced lifestyles, obesity is epidemic, and a new diabetic is diagnosed every 50 seconds.

And, according to Cordain, “Cancer is the second leading cause of death (25% of all deaths) in the United States, and an estimated one-third of all cancer deaths are due to nutritional factors, including obesity.”

To understand the gravity of this situation, one need only look to the executive summary of the WHO’s Global Status Report on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) 2010, in which unhealthy diet was included among the four risk factors that contribute to the majority of NCD deaths worldwide. The UN report goes on to state, “People in developing countries are increasingly eating foods with higher levels of total energy and are being targeted by marketing for tobacco, alcohol and junk food, while availability of these products increases,” which is to say that this dietary problem is spreading globally. The epidemic of diet-based poor health has an economic impact as well, which the report addresses with this sobering statement, “Each year, an estimated 100 million people are pushed into poverty because they have to pay directly for health services.” The report concludes by suggesting that governments enact legislation and propaganda campaigns to inform and protect their citizens from the dangers of an unhealthy diet, and that they do so now. However, the slow swell of education by knowledgeable health care providers and online primal & Paleo educators should result in a more powerful and lasting dynamic for change.  

Paleolithic Nutrition: Diet in the Neolithic

By John Michael & Dr. John

Early farming archeological site, Picos de Europa, Spain. Copyright 2011, CyberMed, LLC..In the Upper Paleolithic period, which ranged from 50,000 to 10,000 years ago, our human ancestors roamed the Earth in hunter-gatherer bands that probably only rarely exceeded sizes of 150. During this time, our forbearers ate only food that could be hunted or gathered, and which required minimal, if any, processing. The industries required for the process and preparation of food did not exist then; it is only at the beginning of the Neolithic, when our ancestor’s roaming tribes began to form settled communities, that we find the appearance of agriculture and complex industry, which together led to the creation of processed foods.

While we probably settled down long before widespread farming began, it wasn’t until the agricultural revolution that large settlements started to appear. With farming, more food could be obtained from fewer acres; while a hunter-gatherer might have to roam over large spaces to find enough to eat, a farmer could remain on his plot of land, and was often able to feed more than just himself. The surplus of food created by agriculture then led to the emergence of civilization: because some people were able to dedicate themselves to pursuits other than finding something to eat, specialization occurred, and the various offices of modern society, among them the priesthood, the soldiery, the politicians, and the merchants, began to appear.

But, while the free time created by agriculture led to the invention of new technologies, like the wheel and written language, the Neolithic also saw the inception of food science, or, the fine art of turning the unpalatable palatable. Grains were the major crop of early agriculture, and evidence of their processing for human consumption, in the form of grinding stones, goes back as far as 15,000 years ago.

So, while the ratio of number of calories to the amount of effort expended to obtain those calories increased in the Neolithic, their nutrient quality diminished considerably, and this change in diet caused health problems for our ancestors. Among Neolithic Europeans, height, which is a reliable indicator of health, dropped as much as five inches for men, and three inches for women. Diseases like osteoporosis and rickets appeared. Animal husbandry further exacerbated the poor health of our ancestors, as diseases began to jump between animals and their caretakers. Among these originally animal-illnesses were tuberculosis, smallpox, and measles, scourges that have only recently been brought under control. 

We continue to move farther from our original diet. The consequences are only now beginning to be understood.

The Standard or Average American Diet

Post by Dr. John

John Durant over at Hunter-Gatherer raises concern about the use of the term "Standard American Diet". He writes: "I hate when people use the phrase the "Standard American Diet", or SAD, to exemplify what's wrong with our food system.  It's so contemptuous."

Instead, he proposes the use of "industrial diets" or "industrial foods." I agree we should not use the moniker with contempt. However, even our modern-Paleolithic vegetables and fruits usually don't come from our own backyard but are produced and delivered by the food industry.  The term "Average American Diet" would be more accurate and would avoid the use of the SAD acronym. Regardless of the terminology, the key issue is knowing, on average, where dietary calories come from so we can determine where the nutritional challenges lie and whether we are making progress. 

According to Civil Eats and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, these are the average daily calories per capita consumed in the U.S. in 1970 and 2008. The proportion of vegetables and fruits remains pitifully small. Grains have ballooned by almost 200 calories, added fat by about 230 calories, and added sugar by over 50 calories. The challenge for the Paleo community is increasing.

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Paleolithic & hunter-gatherer sleep

Poor sleep is a major barrier to good health. Before we consider ways to improve our sleep, we need to look back to the Paleolithic and to hunter-gatherer societies. Paleo-anatomists studying fossilized skeletons of Australopithecus and Homo habilis note they were well adapted to climbing. Although they probably spent much of daytime on the ground, they likely slept in trees. Sleeping on the ground probably began with the control of fire, which, in addition to improving nutrition, provided safety.

The first hominid to control fire may have been late Homo habilis, or Homo ergaster. Cooking provided a higher quality and more digestible diet, which led to a smaller gut and a larger brain (the expensive tissue hypothesis). Both day and night could be spent on the ground and hominid anatomy slowly became more human-like. The resulting hominid, Homo erectus, was tall and well adapted for migration over land. Their vestibular anatomy also indicates a primarily ground-based existence.

Richard Wrangham, Professor of Anthropology at Harvard, in his book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, writes:

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