Science Experts find cavemen ate mostly vegan, debunking paleo diet

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Experts find cavemen ate mostly vegan, debunking paleo diet​

A new study has debunked the general meal plan behind the Paleo diet, with findings suggesting that some Stone Age people ate a mostly vegan diet.

According to the Harvard School of Public Health, the Paleo diet was adapted to mimic the nutritional plan adopted until 2000 BC.

“The Paleo diet, also referred to as the caveman or Stone-Age diet, includes lean meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds,” the University explains. “Proponents of the diet emphasise choosing low-glycemic fruits and vegetables.”

Most of the diet is centered around protein intake, promoting the consumption of grass-fed beef for its omega-3 content. In general, the idea is to consume the foods that were available during the Paleolithic period for health benefits since “our genetics and anatomy have changed very little” from that time, per the HSPH.

Now, a study published by the Nature Ecology & Evolution Journal researched and analysed the chemical signatures of the Paleolithic group, the Iberomaurusians, specifically within bones and teeth. Their findings suggest the general idea of meat being the primary source of protein during this time isn’t valid.

Stable isotope analysis was used, focusing on the nitrogen and zinc isotopes in teeth enamel and collagen to look at the meat consumption associated with the Iberomaurusians, as well as carbon isotopes to discover whether meat or fish was the primary source of protein.

“Our analysis showed that these hunter-gatherer groups, they included an important amount of plant matter, wild plants to their diet, which changed our understanding of the diet of pre-agricultural populations,” Zineb Moubtahij, the lead author for the study stated.

Additionally, researchers saw an abundance of cavities in the buried remains in the Taforalt caves, the places where Iberomaurusians would lay the dead to rest. According to the study, these cavities suggested the consumption of “fermentable starchy plants” like beets, corn, rye, and cassava.

Klervia Jaouen, a co-author of the study, noted that the “high proportion of plants in the diet of a pre-agricultural population” was “unusual”. However, their findings weren’t indicative of the protein intake for all individuals in the Stone Age.

Still, Jaouen pointed out that this was the first finding by isotope techniques that saw a “significant plant-based component in a Palaeolithic diet”.

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

Optimal diet is probably about 50:50 , maybe a bit higher, 65:35? good quality meat/dairy and a variety of plants, mushrooms, nuts, shellfish etc. we are omnivores.

I know I’ve read somewhere that the pre Neolithic Brits ate dozens and dozens of wild plants -about a hundred or so iirc. I’ll try and find the estimate. In season for sure, things would have varied a lot over the year, but they did have variety.
Ok here’s not ancient Brits but a similar number to what I remember seeing, around the hundred or so:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...om_foraging_to_farming_to_food_technology#pf2

As I’ve got older and become one of those women who likes to garden a lot and forage in the woods, I e read quite a bit about what’s edible and what isn’t and it’s astonishing how much stuff you can go and make dinner out of if you forage. Even plants that were common to use just a few hundred years ago and aren’t now like good King Henry. Time team often used to have re enactors on who would whip up a plausible and delicious looking dinner from things they caught fishing plus herbs and tubers they found by the sites. I reckon a few dozen plant varieties is doable these days if youve got a garden.

We require animal protein in our diets, I’m being pedantic or whatever, but we aren’t obligate carnivores. We’re in the realm of facultative carnivores just leaving omnivore.

I feel the omnivore label is misleading as most humans worldwide turn to animal protein whenever they can. The last 70 years of dietary science has assumed their is no difference in races and make assumptions holding that true.

 

[Party Hat Wurmple]

And people wonder why I want academic institutions to shut down and go up in flames.

 

[Gentlebastard]

"Hunter-gatherers armed with pointy sticks ate what they could hunt and forage, which includes a lot of vegetables and nuts, and less meat than some would expect". Wow, who could have seen that coming?

I am glad money is being spent on this kind of cutting-edge research, and not on hardcore STEM development. Who the hell would want to actually help humanity grow, instead of some idiot in a humanities department and its toadies?

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

what bugs me most about this article is the idea that because it's called "paleo" therefor if you can show a caveman didn't eat it (also cavemen probably didn't live in caves but whatever) then suddenly there's no point to it because it's named after cavemen so you have to prove Thog did it or else it can't work

 

[SentinentCloud]

the caveman antecessors of the people responsible for this article most certantly ate cock

 

[Otterly]

feel the omnivore label is misleading as most humans worldwide turn to animal protein whenever they can.

Yeah i think you’re right on that. Omnivore implies you can get by on anything, what I mean is we need a bit of both generally for optimum health. So yes facultative carnivore would be more accurate. You can survive on fatty (not lean) meat for a long time, but not on veg alone.
Plants seem to provide us with some important molecules we can’t get elsewhere, and meat with stuff we can’t get elsewhere either.

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

Yeah i think you’re right on that. Omnivore implies you can get by on anything, what I mean is we need a bit of both generally for optimum health. So yes facultative carnivore would be more accurate. You can survive on fatty (not lean) meat for a long time, but not on veg alone.
Plants seem to provide us with some important molecules we can’t get elsewhere, and meat with stuff we can’t get elsewhere either.

I think you can survive on a meat only diet without issue. You just need organ meat. The issue of scurvy is only when you rely on dried meat. Eskimos effectively are obligate carnivores, they basically have fruits and vegetables seasonally sometimes. Look up Alaskan Ice Cream if you get a chance.

A mixed diet is the best though, but a consistent supply of animal protein really helps children and young adults grow properly. It’s why anti-milk niggers get the bullet and vegans get their supplements taken away so they get acute early onset dementia.

 

[Sneed S. McSneedensen]

I don't give a fuck what these eggheads say, I'm still ordering Domino's and BBQ ribs and eating both in the same day.

 

[CIS White Droid]

Makes you wonder why there's always evidence of mollusk shell piles near stone age coastal settlements. Must've been using them as fertilizer for their organic gardens.

 

[Ser Prize]

Haven’t most studies on humans show that the optimal diet is heavily carnivorous? We aren’t omnivores as much as opportunistic carnivores.

@Watcher
I remember seeing a theory that posited that human ancestors were only really able to afford their gradually larger brains by eating progressively more and more meat, which was more calorie efficient than rummaging for seeds. This became a self fulfilling cycle as actively hunting requires more brain power than scavenging, and so as they ate more meat they got smarter, and thus ate more meat.

It made sense to me. In so many ways humans are slanted towards predation. We won't turn down fruit, seeds or nuts, but the jackpot was some big game. You see that with most other simians.

 

[lautaro]

Optimal diet is probably about 50:50 , maybe a bit higher, 65:35? good quality meat/dairy and a variety of plants, mushrooms, nuts, shellfish etc. we are omnivores.

I know I’ve read somewhere that the pre Neolithic Brits ate dozens and dozens of wild plants -about a hundred or so iirc. I’ll try and find the estimate. In season for sure, things would have varied a lot over the year, but they did have variety.
Ok here’s not ancient Brits but a similar number to what I remember seeing, around the hundred or so:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...om_foraging_to_farming_to_food_technology#pf2

As I’ve got older and become one of those women who likes to garden a lot and forage in the woods, I e read quite a bit about what’s edible and what isn’t and it’s astonishing how much stuff you can go and make dinner out of if you forage. Even plants that were common to use just a few hundred years ago and aren’t now like good King Henry. Time team often used to have re enactors on who would whip up a plausible and delicious looking dinner from things they caught fishing plus herbs and tubers they found by the sites. I reckon a few dozen plant varieties is doable these days if youve got a garden.

Optimal for what? I don't see the benefit of adding meat to, say, a ovo-lacto-vegetarian diet, with maybe some bivalves. It seems to raise the risk of colorrectal cancer and doesn't provide anything that the rest doesn't already have. I added bivalves for omega 3, but I think that most people have good ALA to DHA conversion and it would be enough eating a bunch of walnuts (which is the main source for sardinians, another long-lived people... Not sure why, because it's an island), and sunflower seeds, althought expensive.

Okinawans, despise some issues tracking their real age, are pretty long-lived with a diet which I think, was about 98% plants, of which the biggest part was a low-glycemic sweet-potato, high in magnesium, and 20% or so soy foods. Meats and dairy were 1% or so each.
It was 80% carbohydrates, but despise of this it is relatively low-calory, which goes in line with all the studies in which animals live much longer by calorie restriction. It seems to be nutrient dense but also not highly caloric. Cutting calories by 60% starves rats but at 50% they live 70% longer.

I think you can survive on a meat only diet without issue. You just need organ meat. The issue of scurvy is only when you rely on dried meat. Eskimos effectively are obligate carnivores, they basically have fruits and vegetables seasonally sometimes. Look up Alaskan Ice Cream if you get a chance.

A mixed diet is the best though, but a consistent supply of animal protein really helps children and young adults grow properly. It’s why anti-milk niggers get the bullet and vegans get their supplements taken away so they get acute early onset dementia.

You sort of admitted that the only problem with a well-planned vegan diet is B12... Which a well-planned diet should include, as it's recommended in every guideline. There is like 50% of vegans who don't take, because of some stupid personal technophobic idiosincracy. I spent too much time arguing with them and they still keep with the dumb idea of avoiding B12. Any study done on vegans whould take in account that some are not following the recommended supplementation and diferentiate them from the group who's doing it correctly, to measure any outcome fairly.


B12 is not even a 'pill' or a synthetic vitamin. It's made growing the same bacteria which produce them in the soil and then packing them in a pill. It's not different from bread, wine, kimchi or any other fermed food or drink, so it's not really synthetic or like a medicine (not that it matters).

So you could unnecessarily kill animals or take the pill, which is also very cheap, and the only argument against it is an arbitrary technophobia, or some ego thing of "feeling sick" for taking a vitamin? Pretty dumb reasons, to be honest. It's also impossible to overdose and there's no side effects at massive doses.

But for those tecnophobes who don't want to take a pill, there's bivalves. Some vegans won't eat them, but the whole point is to not cause harm to sentient animals, and bivalves don't have brains. It's basically fish, with omega 3, iron and B12, but without brains. It doesn't cause harm to land animals as vegetables do either, so win win.

Regarding protein, there's no such thing as "animal protein", unless you're talking very loosely and mean "a food which is high in protein". Protein, literal proteins, are made of essential and non-essential aminoacids. All essential are found on cereals and legumes, and some like soy have all of them together (which one of them having not very high levels, though), but combined regularly it's enough to get all of them. The body has an aminoacid pool which last around a week. Worst case, I think that one was on high amounts on eggs, so adding a few should solve that particular aminoacid shortage.

Protein in general, looking at raw quantity, vegans eat more than enough, above 30 g. (more than recommended levels) on average, without even trying. Protein deficiency in itself isn't observed except in starvation cases.
People in general have a much greater ingest of protein than in the past, when recommended levels have been dropping since 100 g., and they may be lower than the actual recommended. They also ingest big amounts of iron, which may be too high as well and may be carcinogenic.

 

[Otterly]

It seems to raise the risk of colorrectal cancer

No it doesn’t. Processed red meats do but that’s probably the preservatives rather than the meat. Find me a paper that genuinely looks long term at people solely eating high quality red meat (no antibiotics or growth hormones) vs those eating mcslop. It doesn’t exist. Every paper I’ve seen uses ‘red meat’ as a term but it uses it as a proxy for ‘hideously processed crap packed with goodness knows what.’

Protein in general, looking at raw quantity, vegans eat more than enough, above 30 g. (more than recommended levels) on average, without even trying. Protein deficiency in itself isn't observed except in starvation cases.

It’s not about just protein. You also need choline, stuff like that. Yes you can live off veg and bivalves, humans are very adaptable creatures, and localised diets were adapted to pretty well. Within limits - no human population ever has been vegan. Some have have almost exclusively meat.
Veganism is a death cult.
No wool? What, even from sheep happily kept as almost pets on a Croft? That’s insane. Honey can be harvested without hurting bees. Eggs can be taken from happy pet backyard chicks. We eat meat, and animals, and we have an obligate need for some of the things they provide

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

>say animal protein as a catch-all to say animal meat
>fucking vegan doesn’t understand and goes on a rant about amino acids

Nigger vegans have to literally over eat to avoid malnutrition. Animal flesh is a better total package of essential vitamins and minerals. The calories, nutrition per gram (including fat and protein), and ease of digestion is far superior. The argument of this entire thread is that it’s more likely our ancestors were facultative carnivores than the article being retarded and saying early hominids and humans were vegan. The vegan diet is literally sustainable only in modern 1st world countries.

The Okinawan diet is a meme and for manlets. Who gives a shit if you live to be 90 if you are a dwarf. The men are on average 4ft 8 inches and they lie about centenarians to scam welfare payments.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Regarding protein, there's no such thing as "animal protein", unless you're talking very loosely and mean "a food which is high in protein".

There is, though. Animal and plant proteins are structurally different, with different quantities of amino acids and different interactions with the body. Plants generally don't contain a full complement of all the amino acids we need and can't manufacture internally, which means that a vegan diet requires a great deal more effort and consumption to get the same benefit you'd get from a steak and kidney pie. Plant proteins are more hydrophobic, structurally more complex, and tend to be aggregated, which makes them much harder for our enzymes - adapted to a meat and animal-fat-forward diet - to break down. They require more energy per gramme to break down than animal proteins, and more time. Plant proteins are often toxic, so while we can break them down eventually, it comes at the cost of inflammatory issues. The most extreme example is lectin in beans, which can kill you quite easily if you aren't careful in preparing your food, and which causes inflammatory issues even after suitable preparation, if consumed in sufficient quantities. At the tamer end there's gluten, which is naturally inflammatory as well, and whose overall effect is cumulative over time. We tolerate it, but a lifelong exposure to it induces a constantly increasing risk of gut inflammation as you age.

The simple fact is, a fully plant-based diet requires more energy to digest, for less energy per gramme, and is pro-inflammatory. Our guts are not meant to process high quantities of aggregated, toxic plant proteins.

This is before we get onto the difference in fats between animal and plant sources, the difference in bioavailability between animal- and plant-source nutrients and vitamins (particularly iron, which is almost impossible to absorb from plant sources), the unhealthily high amounts of carbohydrates and sugars in plant sources, or - as I've hinted - the relative dearth of nutrients per gramme of plant sources.

Saying this as someone who eats relatively little meat, because I enjoy cooking a varied and interested diet: shut up and eat your beans. Stop trying to defend obvious misinformation. And stop treating your diet as a righteous cause.

 

[WhiskeyJack]

I think you can survive on a meat only diet without issue. You just need organ meat. The issue of scurvy is only when you rely on dried meat. Eskimos effectively are obligate carnivores, they basically have fruits and vegetables seasonally sometimes. Look up Alaskan Ice Cream if you get a chance.

A mixed diet is the best though, but a consistent supply of animal protein really helps children and young adults grow properly. It’s why anti-milk niggers get the bullet and vegans get their supplements taken away so they get acute early onset dementia.

Also, raw milk has vitamin C, but this is destroyed by pasteurizing the milk. Raw milk has roughly 5mg per glass. That's not a huge amount, but it can be enough depending on your diet.

It is well established that low-carb diets have far lower vitamin C needs than high-carb diets (Keto diet people need about 10mg a day, while standard American dieters need 70 to 100mg), as vitamin C and glucose utilize the same cell receptors. Low-carb diets have generally lower glucose levels, so more vitamin C is utilized by the cells more readily, reducing the RDA significantly.

The issue with scurvy is that traditionally sailors (specifically the British, who are the ones who actually got scurvy most of the time) ate a diet of dried meat but also lots of carbs in the form of hard biscuits. That's a bad combo, and why the Brits had close to 50% losses on their crews on any long journey. If they'd mixed some peppers into their meat or had just used fresher meat they wouldn't have had scurvy issues in most cases.

 

[WhiskeyJack]

B12 is not even a 'pill' or a synthetic vitamin. It's made growing the same bacteria which produce them in the soil and then packing them in a pill. It's not different from bread, wine, kimchi or any other fermed food or drink, so it's not really synthetic or like a medicine (not that it matters).

It's a bit more involved that that. They ferment bacteria to produce a variety of forms of B12, then introduce Potassium Cyanide to the mix to convert it all into Cyanocobalamin. The B12 you get in pills is almost always in the form of Cyanocobalamin, as it is so cheap to produce and is the most air-stable form of B12 for long term storage.

Your cells can't actually use Cyanocobalamin, but have to metabolize it into Methylcobalamin and Adenosylcobalamin for the mitochondria, and in the process this releases the cyanide.

It's not a huge amount of cyanide obviously, and is in the form of thiocyanate so it is generally only a mild irritant, but large doses of Cynocobalamin (such as the frankly insanely high levels you get from a single B12 pill) have been known to cause people to become anxious or get a racing heart rate, or vomit. Most bottles of B12 pills list this as a known side-effect. Personally, I get short of breath if taking synthetic B12 pills, so I just eat fish instead.

The main advantage of getting B12 from meat is that you are getting the same form of B12 that your own cells are actively using, instead of needing to metabolize the synthetic B12 into a new form first, and you typically get it in levels much closer to what the body actually requires, instead of having to urinate out 99% of it as you do with synthetic B12's massive doses.

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

Optimal diet is probably about 50:50 , maybe a bit higher, 65:35? good quality meat/dairy and a variety of plants, mushrooms, nuts, shellfish etc. we are omnivores.

I've always internally described it as "By calories, most of your diet should be animal products, by mass most of your diet should be plants". A hundred grams of soft cheese is like 500 calories, a hundred grams of cucumber is 15. A couple eggs with breakfast and a cut of something that used to breathe with dinner, and fill the space between with dairy n greens.

You can get fancier, and figuring out how breads fit into that is an eternal argument, but its a good foundation to work from. The quest for the 'perfect' or optimal diet is naïve, much like the quest for the perfect weapon or the perfect chair or the perfect house. Reality ain't perfect, nor is the stuff that's spawned from it.

I do think a lot of people way overcomplicate or focus on diet. The human body is very adaptable, and we've managed to make it work in just about every ecosystem on the planet. Even now, we survive diets primarily based on the least-food products imaginable, and only start to experience severe long term issues from prolonged consumption combined with a sedentary lifestyle. Unless your aiming for a peak physique, a bit of common sense will get you far.

 

[Snekposter]

If they'd mixed some peppers into their meat

Are you seriously asking the Bongs to use flavoring? Dear Lord, man, you'd have better chances getting the French to put the wine bottle down.

 

[Mac Monster]

So you could unnecessarily kill animals or take the pill, which is also very cheap, and the only argument against it is an arbitrary technophobia, or some ego thing of "feeling sick" for taking a vitamin? Pretty dumb reasons, to be honest. It's also impossible to overdose and there's no side effects at massive doses.

Or maybe you could stop being a self righteous faggot and let people eat what they want.

 

[More AWS-8Q Than You]

Wow, so some people were not getting enough meat in their diet, first I've ever heard of it
View attachment 5954595

Mongols are the True Chads of Asia confirmed, the Great Khan just can't stop winning.

Protein in general, looking at raw quantity, vegans eat more than enough, above 30 g.

30g of Protein, hilarious. No wonder Vegans look like AIDS patients.