Paleolithic diet - Business

<p>History Gastroenterologist Walter L Voegtlin was one of the first to suggest that following a diet similar to that of the Paleolithic era would improve a person s health In 1975 he published a book in which he argued that humans are carnivorous animals and that the ancestral Paleolithic diet was that of a carnivorehiefly fats and protein with only small amounts of carbohydrates His dietary prescriptions were based on his own medical treatments of various digestive problems namely colitis Crohn s disease irritable bowel syndrome and indigestion In 1985 S Boyd Eaton and Melvin Konner both of Emory University published a key paper on Paleolithic nutrition in the New England Journal of Medicine which allowed the dietary concept to gain mainstream medical recognition Three years later S Boyd Eaton Marjorie Shostak and Melvin Konner published a book about this nutritional approach which was based on achieving the same proportions of nutrients fat protein and carbohydrates as wel
l as vitamins and minerals as were present in the diets of late Paleolithic people not on excluding foods that were not available before the development of agriculture As such this nutritional approach included skimmed milk whole grain bread brown rice and potatoes prepared without fat on the premise that such foods have the same nutritional properties as Paleolithic foods In 1989 these authors published a second book on Paleolithic nutrition Since the end of the 1990s a number of medical doctors and nutritionists have advocated a return to a so called Paleolithic preagricultural diet Proponents of this nutritional approach have published books and created websites to promote their dietary prescriptions They have synthesized diets from modern foods that emulate nutritional characteristics of the ancient Paleolithic diet some of which allow specific foods that would have been unavailable to pre agricultural peoples such as certain animal products i e dairy processed oils and
beverages Practices Paleolithic style dish Roast pork with cooked and raw vegetables and fruit Raw Paleolithic style dish A raw tomato sauce with olives celery spinach and walnuts on courgette pasta noodles The Paleolithic diet is a modern dietary regimen that seeks to mimic the diet of preagricultural hunter gatherers one that corresponds to what was available in any of the ecological niches of Paleolithic humans Based upon commonly available modern foods it includes cultivated plants and domesticated animal meat as an alternative to the wild sources of the original preagricultural diet As such it is implicitly at odds with yet intellectually comfortable in the notion that it is nearly impossible to mimic such a diet The ancestral human diet is inferred from historical and ethnographic studies of modern day hunter gatherers as well as archaeological finds and anthropological evidence The Paleolithic diet consists of foods that can be hunted and fished such as meat offal and
seafood and that can be gathered such as eggs insects fruit nuts seeds vegetables mushrooms herbs and spices Some sources advise eating only lean cuts of meat free of food additives preferably wild game meats and grass fed beef since they contain high levels of omega 3 fats compared with grain produced domestic meats Food groups that advocates claim were rarely or never consumed by humans before the Neolithic agricultural revolution are excluded from the diet mainly grains legumes e g beans and peanuts dairy products salt refined sugar and processed oils although some advocates consider the use of oils with low omega 6 omega 3 ratios such as olive oil and canola oil to be healthy and advisable Practitioners are permitted to drink mainly water and some advocates recommend tea as a healthy drink but alcoholic and fermented beverages are restricted from the diet Furthermore eating a wide variety of plant foods is recommended to avoid high intakes of potentially harmful bioacti
ve substances such as goitrogens which are present in certain roots vegetables and seeds Unlike raw food diets all foods may be cooked without restrictions Cooking is widely accepted to have been practiced 250 000 years ago in the Middle Paleolithic and possibly as long ago as 500 000 years ago According to certain proponents of the Paleolithic diet practitioners should derive about 5665 of their food energy from animal foods and 3645 from plant foods They recommend a diet high in protein 1935 energy and relatively low in carbohydrates 2240 energy with a fat intake 2858 energy similar to or higher than that found in Western diets Furthermore some proponents exclude from the diet foods which exhibit high glycemic indices such as potatoes Staffan Lindeberg an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Lund advocates a Paleolithic diet but does not recommend any particular proportions of plants versus meat or macronutrient ratios According to Lindebe
rg calcium supplementation may be considered when the intake of green leafy vegetables and other dietary sources of calcium is limited Rationale and evolutionary assumptions According to S Boyd Eaton we are the heirs of inherited characteristics accrued over millions of years the vast majority of our biochemistry and physiology are tuned to life conditions that existed prior to the advent of agriculture some 10 000 years ago Genetically our bodies are virtually the same as they were at the end of the Paleolithic era some 20 000 years ago Paleolithic nutrition has its roots in evolutionary biology and is a common theme in evolutionary medicine The reasoning underlying this nutritional approach is that natural selection had sufficient time to genetically adapt the metabolism and physiology of Paleolithic humans to the varying dietary conditions of that era But in the 10 000 years since the invention of agriculture and its consequent major change in the human diet natural selec
tion has had too little time to make the optimal genetic adaptations to the new diet Physiological and metabolic maladaptations result from the suboptimal genetic adaptations to the contemporary human diet which in turn contribute to many of the so called diseases of civilization More than 70 of the total daily energy consumed by all people in the United States comes from foods such as dairy products cereals refined sugars refined vegetable oils and alcohol that advocates of the Paleolithic diet assert contributed little or none of the energy in the typical preagricultural hominin diet Proponents of this diet argue that excessive consumption of these novel Neolithic and Industrial era foods is responsible for the current epidemic levels of obesity cardiovascular disease high blood pressure type 2 diabetes osteoporosis and cancer in the US and other contemporary Western populations This is despite evidence that Paleolithic societies were processing cereals for food use at lea
st as early as 23 000 years ago more than 100 000 years ago and perhaps as early as 200 000 years ago Opposing views The evolutionary assumptions underlying the Paleolithic diet have been disputed According to Alexander Strhle Maike Wolters and Andreas Hahn with the Department of Food Science at the University of Hanover the statement that the human genome evolved during the Pleistocene a period from 1 808 000 to 11 550 years ago rests on an inadequate but popular gene centered view of evolution They rely on Russell 2001 to argue that evolution of organisms cannot be reduced to the genetic level with reference to mutation and that there is no one to one relationship between genotype and phenotype They further question the notion that 10 000 years since the dawn of agriculture is a period not nearly sufficient to ensure an adequate adaptation to agrarian diets Referring to Wilson 1994 Strhle et al argue that the number of generations that a species existed in the old environm
ent was irrelevant and that the response to the change of the environment of a species would depend on the hereditability of the traits the intensity of selection and the number of generations that selection acts They state that if the diet of Neolithic agriculturalists had been in discordance with their physiology then this would have created a selection pressure for evolutionary change and modern humans such as Europeans whose ancestors have subsisted on agrarian diets for 400500 generations should be somehow adequately adapted to it In response to this argument Wolfgang Kopp states that we have to take into account that death from atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease CVD occurs later during life as a rule after the reproduction phase Even a high mortality from CVD after the reproduction phase will create little selection pressure Thus it seems that a diet can be functional it keeps us going and dysfunctional it causes health problems at the same time Moreover S Boyd
Eaton and colleagues have indicated that comparative genetic data provide compelling evidence against the contention that long exposure to agricultural and industrial circumstances has distanced us genetically from our Stone Age ancestors Referencing Mahner et al 2001 and Strhle et al 2006 Strhle et al state that whatever is the fact to think that a dietary factor is valuable functional to the organism only when there was enetical adaptation and hence a new dietary factor is dysfunctional per se because there was no evolutionary adaptation to it such a panselectionist misreading of biological evolution seems to be inspired by a naive adaptationistic view of life Katharine Milton a professor of physical anthropology at the University of California has also disputed the evolutionary logic upon which the Paleolithic diet is based She questions the premise that the metabolism of modern humans must be genetically adapted to the dietary conditions of the Paleolithic Relying on se
veral of her previous publications Milton states that there is little evidence to suggest that human nutritional requirements or human digestive physiology were significantly affected by such diets at any point in human evolution Nutritional factors and health effects Fruits and vegetables rich in vitamins potassium and fiber represent an important feature of hunter gatherer diets Fiber rich root vegetables such as beets rutabagas carrots celeriac and turnips maintain nutrient properties low glycemic and insulin responses characteristic of traditional hunter gatherer plant foods Since the end of the Paleolithic period several foods that humans rarely or never consumed during previous stages of their evolution have been introduced as staples in their diet With the advent of agriculture and the beginning of animal domestication roughly 10 000 years ago during the Neolithic Revolution humans started consuming large amounts of dairy products beans cereals alcohol and salt In the
late 18th and early 19th centuries the Industrial revolution led to the large scale development of mechanized food processing techniques and intensive livestock farming methods that enabled the production of refined cereals refined sugars and refined vegetable oils as well as fattier domestic meats which have become major components of Western diets Such food staples have fundamentally altered several key nutritional characteristics of the human diet since the Paleolithic era including glycemic load fatty acid composition macronutrient composition micronutrient density acid base balance sodium potassium ratio and fiber content These dietary compositional changes have been theorized as risk factors in the pathogenesis of many of the so called diseases of civilization and other chronic illnesses that are widely prevalent in Western societies including obesity cardiovascular disease high blood pressure type 2 diabetes osteoporosis autoimmune diseases colorectal cancer myopia a
cne depression and diseases related to vitamin and mineral deficiencies Macronutrient composition Protein and carbohydrates The increased contribution of carbohydrate from grains to the human diet following the agricultural revolution has effectively diluted the protein content of the human diet In modern hunter gatherer diets dietary protein is characteristically elevated 1935 of energy at the expense of carbohydrate 2240 of energy High protein diets may have a cardiovascular protective effect and may represent an effective weight loss strategy for the overweight or obese Furthermore carbohydrate restriction may help prevent obesity and type 2 diabetes as well as atherosclerosis Carbohydrate deprivation to the point of ketosis may however cause adverse health effects The notion that preagricultural hunter gatherers would have typically consumed a diet relatively low in carbohydrate and high in protein has been questioned Critics argue that there is insufficient data to iden
tify the relative proportions of plant and animal foods consumed on average by Paleolithic humans in general and they stress the rich variety of ancient and modern hunter gatherer diets Furthermore preagricultural hunter gatherers may have generally consumed large quantities of carbohydrates in the form of carbohydrate rich tubers plant underground storage organs According to Staffan Lindeberg an advocate of the Paleolithic diet a plant based diet rich in carbohydrates is consistent with the human evolutionary past It has also been argued that relative freedom from degenerative diseases was and still is characteristic of all hunter gatherer societies irrespective of the macronutrient characteristics of their diets According to Marion Nestle a professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University judging from research relating nutritional factors to chronic disease risks and to observations of exceptionally low chronic disease rates among people eat
ing vegetarian Mediterranean and Asian diets it seems clear that plant based diets are most associated with health and longevity Fatty acids Hunter gatherer
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