Paleolithic in practice

[razzleccentric]

Wow. Just watched a segment of the BBC's current series, The Truth About Food. Go to their video clip index and check out the first one, "Can eating like an ape save your health?"

Apparently influenced by Katharine "Diet and Primate Evolution" Milton (hee), a group of folks with high blood pressure & cholesterol levels were a) put into a UK zoo exhibit for a week, and b) fed only raw fruit & veg, water, some nuts, and one olive a day during their stay.

First off, I am delighted by the humans-in-the-zoo concept. I wish ALL zoos had a human exhibit ALL the time. And how interesting it must have been for the other primates! You know they're all thinking, "Well it's about freakin time you ogling bastards were on the inside!"

Scientifically speaking, I'm not impressed by the diet components. I know the title says "eat like an ape" (which is decidedly un-Darwinianly-correct to begin with) but the narration discusses hominid evolution and pre-agricultural diet. Presenting our evolutionary diet as being completely devoid of meat is not at all accurate - what about the insects for heaven's sake?! But for the purposes of simplicity I understand using the vegan approach.

The results of their raw foodist week were impressive. All that fibre did its noble duty, lowering their collective cholesterol levels by 23%. Woo! Blood pressure went down too (I suppose spending a week goofing off in a bucolic park setting had nothing to do with that ;) and one guy's sodium level plummeted. I was impressed that weight wasn't mentioned by the nutritionist - chances are they didn't lose much if any weight, but look at how nicely their biochemical risk factors decreased anyway!

No, this isn't a valid research study by any means, but it's a REALLY cool idea. How I would love to do something like this!

Comments

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Or we could eat like Neanderthals, all meat all the time if I remember correctly...

I missed that programme, they only had them eat fruit and veg and nuts? No birds eggs? No smal mammals, raw or otherwise? Even chimpanzees eat monkeys from time to time. And olives? Doesn't that limit the part of the world where this supposed diet would have been eaten?

I suppose its better than the one I saw where they made a famous athlete eat a pound of cheese *every day* for a fortnight and then looked at how bad it was for his health and digestion...

[razzle.livejournal.com]

It really should have been promoted as the Gorilla Diet. ;)

And the olive was brined - hardly Paleolithic! - just to provide adequate daily sodium. Had it been me, I would have sucked that olive all day long. I loves me some salt.

Have you seen Morgan Spurlock's film "Supersize Me"? Sounds like the athlete's cheese stunt was very similar.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

definitely.. heh, did they provide cocktails to go with the olive too? :) A salt lick would have been more sensible

[peradouro.livejournal.com]

Sounds like it beats going to a fat farm hands down. :D However I have to agree on the animal protein part. I've seen where some people have gone back to the "basics" and consume raw meat. But I suppose if they'd presented a couple of monkey carcasses to the participants, the study may have come out quite differently.

I wonder how long they'd have to be in the zoo before they'd eat raw meat? I also wonder how it would have effected the study if they were given a cooked monkey to eat (I'm assuming most people would eat it if it were cooked). Monkeys would be, I'd imagine, a lean source of animal protein. Guess we'll never know.

[bluestocking7.livejournal.com]

I am very curious about the slow food movements and the raw food movements. I personally prefer my food cooked (ex: I hate cold cheese), but I can see some of the arguments in it. Too bad so many people who are vegans or raw-foodists have such huge cases of The Smugs about it.

Great - now I'm hungry.

[razzle.livejournal.com]

Yes, there are some vegans out there who seem to enjoy being morally superior to mere omnivores, but the skeptic in me has to wonder... how much of that stereotyping is promoted by the food industry? Why is vegan/vegetarianism *always* treated as a political viewpoint but meat-eating is not? Yes, we're evolutionarily omnivorous, but most of the time it feels like our culture is very carnivoro-normative. ;)

I am... bemused... by the mixed messages in our dietetics curriculum about vegetarianism (veganism is barely mentioned). On one hand, the research indicates that eating a plant-based diet is unquestionably better for modern human health. On the other hand, our textbooks (and professors) are full of dire warnings about how hard it is to get adequate nutrition on a vegetarian diet.

I feel as if we (as science-based dietitians) should be actively promoting vegetarianism to some extent; of course that stance doesn't sit well with the diary and meat lobbies that control the ADA.

Politics! Why did it have to be politics???!!!

[ginamariewade.livejournal.com]

I think that to some extent, because historically eating meat=success,wealth and fine living, that's why it has been ingrained in our culture. We eat meat because we can afford it. I don't think people at as much meat 200 years ago. Even 60 years ago. My mother and grandmother would often have buttermilk and crackers or biscuits for supper as an "old-timey" thing.


But it really irks the shit out of me when vegetarians and/or vegans promote their diet as something that would help me lose weight, as if that's the secret I've been missing all along. I tried being a vegetarian for a while - it made me good and anemic, but I didn't lose an ounce.

[altamaha.livejournal.com]

I think Ted Nugent makes meat-eating very political. He thinks that if people are going to eat meat, then they should hunt their own wild, lean meat. It's all that feedlot-fattened, hormone-pumped and genetically altered meat that is the bane of the Dilemma'd Omnivore.

[razzle.livejournal.com]

I do agree with Mr. Nugent. The meat we evolved with is nothing like the meat we serve today at dietetics' department brunches.

Squeal!

[altamaha.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the effort it takes to bag a deer vs. driving to the Kroger to pick up a slab of ribs is quite different.

[nishar.livejournal.com]

If you really wanna eat like an ape, termites, ants and the odd monkey or two need to be added to all the veggies.

[altamaha.livejournal.com]

I gotta have Colobus Helper with my monkey!

[nishar.livejournal.com]

Isn't that just a bunch of bananas and rice??? hehe

Hello!

[peradouro.livejournal.com]

I stared at your blog and your info page could I add you and stare at it on a regular basis? Then you could add me and we could have mutual stare-age?