These days, there is a lot of talk about the Paleo diet and how it follows the eating regimen of Paleolithic man. According to advocates of this diet, the human body hasn’t really evolved since the caveman era, and so humans should eat what cavemen ate back in the day. In order to eat like a caveman, people need to start turning away from things such as carbohydrate and grains, since these are all an invention of the modern era.
There are a lot of things that people need to stay away from when they sign up for the Paleo diet, but just as it’s important to know what to stay away from, it’s equally important to get to know those foods that are acceptable. All this talk about high protein diets and cutting out carbs has left people asking one thing; what exactly were cavemen eating thousands of years ago?
They Ate Fruit
Recently, an exciting discovery was made by Russian scientists who stated that they have actually managed to grow a flower that was frozen about the same time that the Neanderthals walked the earth. The flower is thousands of years old and provides us with a very real picture of our history, frozen and “transported” through time through the medium of the ice. This discovery, according to Brian Palmer of Slate.com has let people to wondering;
Did hominids eat fruits and veggies during the Neanderthal era?
The answer, according to the experts, is yes. When studying the remains of a 40,000 year old Neanderthal, scientists found date stuck to the teeth of the hominid. Scientists also know that many fruits that are around today have been around for thousands of years. A 780,000 year old fig has been found in Northern Israel, for instance, and this is only one example. Grapes appearing to be millions of years old have been found in Tennessee. Some differed in appearance to the varieties found today, but it remains clear that they were around so they must have been included in the diet of Paleolithic man.
They Ate Certain Vegetables
Vegetables such as kale, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower were once, according to the experts, all part of one plant variety that has been bred into many different products for about 10,000 years now. Wild carrots were around back then, but the previous versions of these vegetables weren’t all that appealing. The modern green bean is a completely human invention. One of the reasons why the vegetables and fruits might have evolved differently is because fruits spread by being eaten (since their seeds are usually dispersed in this manner) but vegetables don’t. While Paleolithic man might have been very selective about what he ate in terms of vegetables, this doesn’t mean that he didn’t consume any.
Protein
By studying fossilized bones, scientists were able to determine just how much protein was in the Paleolithic diet and according to them;
Using that offset, many studies estimate that between 60 and 80 percent of the prehistoric human diet came from proteins, with most of that from animal sources.
These days, modern people have protein diets that do not exceed 45%, which makes a huge difference when compared with the hominids. People have to take care about the amount of protein that they consume, because they could be putting themselves at risk for too high levels of nitrogen within the body.
Keep in mind that hominids didn’t just eat more protein; they also ate different parts of the animals that most western individuals, such as the eyes, heart, lungs and just about every other organ in the body. This combined game them a more balanced ratio of protein and fat.
Fish
Fish wasn’t available to all individuals in the Paleolithic era because there just wasn’t any way of making this product last so the only ones that got to eat it were those that lived near the rivers or the ocean. Still, fish is a great source of nutrients, as long as individuals don’t consume it on a very regularly basis (this is due to the amount of mercury and other toxins that could end up building up over time). According to the experts at memo, the fishing industry, while active during the Paleolithic period on a small scale, quickly soared to greater heights just a short time afterwards;
At the end of the Paleolithic superior, fishing (salmon and trout) was more intensive.
This basically means that people must have been experimenting with fishing for a while and by the end of this era, their techniques must have been quite impressive, if by the day’s standards.
Why Change the Diet?
If hominids were perfectly content with their diet, why attempt to change it over time? One of the reasons that scientists have come up with for this change is because exploring different areas of the world meant eating different things. Instead of relying on plant based foods, hominids began exploring grass based foods, particularly as they moved out of the forests and onto open land. As people began settling down, instead of traveling the world as nomads, they had time to explore new options and cultivate crops, which is where, according to advocates of the Paleo diet, the problems started.
Food has always been a valuable resource and so civilizations that could produce more of it tended to be more powerful years ago. Over time, food was collected and reserved by other means, such as through trade or even the rise of slavery. These changes occurred so fast that the human body didn’t have time to keep up with them, and so arose the various diet-related illnesses that run rampant through society in this day and age.
Delving back into history to discover what Paleolithic man survived on is not only interesting, but it helps people understand the differences in their own diets and how they can possibly make improvements with regards to what they eat. If these diets improve the quality of their health and well being, this makes them worthy investments.
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