The Paleo Diet - Loren Cordain [7]
I have examined thousands of early-nineteenth and twentieth-century photographs of hunter-gatherers. They invariably show indigenous people to be lean, muscular, and fit. The few medical studies of hunter-gatherers who managed to survive into the twentieth century also confirm earlier written accounts by explorers and frontiersmen. No matter where they lived—in the polar regions of Canada, the deserts of Australia, or the rain forests of Brazil—the medical records were identical. These people were free from signs and symptoms of the chronic diseases that currently plague us. And they were lean and physically fit. The medical evidence shows that their body fat, aerobic fitness, blood cholesterol, blood pressure, and insulin metabolism were always superior to those of the average modern couch potato. In most cases, these values were equivalent to those of modern-day, healthy, trained athletes.
High blood pressure (hypertension) is the most prevalent risk factor for heart disease in the United States. It’s almost unheard of in indigenous populations. The Yanomamo Indians of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela, to whom salt was unknown in the late 1960s and early 1970s, were absolutely free from hypertension. Their blood pressure didn’t increase with age and remained remarkably low by today’s standards. Amazingly, scientific studies of Greenland Eskimos by Drs. Hans Bang and Jørn Dyerberg from Aalborg Hospital in Aalborg, Denmark, showed that despite a diet containing more than 60 percent animal food, not one death from heart disease—or even a single heart attack—occurred in 2,600 Eskimos from 1968 to 1978. This death rate from heart disease is one of the lowest ever reported in the medical literature. For a similar group of 2,600 people in the United States during a ten-year period, the expected number of deaths from heart disease would be about twenty-five.
When you put into practice the nutritional guidelines of the Paleo Diet, you will be getting the same protection from heart disease that the Eskimos had. You will also become lean and fit, like your ancient ancestors. This is your birthright. By going backward in time with your diet, you will actually be moving forward. You’ll be combining the ancient dietary wisdom with all of the health advantages that modern medicine has to offer. You will reap the best of both worlds.
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Not Just Another Low-Carb Diet
What’s the diet craze this week? You name it, there’s a book selling it—and people buying it, hoping for a “magic bullet” to help them shed excess pounds. But how can everybody be right? More to the point, is anybody right? What are we supposed to eat? How can we lose weight, keep it off—and not feel hungry all the time? What’s the best diet for our health and well-being?
For more than thirty years, as an avid researcher of health, nutrition, and fitness, I have been working to answer these questions. I started this quest because I wanted to get past all the hype, confusion, and political posturing swirling around dietary opinion. I was looking for facts: the simple, unadulterated truth. The answer, I found, was hidden back in time—way back, with ancient humans who survived by hunting wild animals and fish and gathering wild fruits and vegetables. These people were known as “hunter-gatherers,” and my research team and I published our analysis of what many of them (more than 200 separate societies) ate in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. We were astonished at the diversity of their diet. We were also amazed at what they did not eat—which we’ll get to in a minute and which may surprise you.
Health Secrets of Our Ancestors
What do Paleolithic people have to do with us? Actually, quite a lot: DNA evidence shows that basic human physiology has changed little in 40,000 years. Literally, we are Stone Agers living in the Space Age; our dietary needs are the same as theirs. Our genes are well