“So easy a caveman can do it!” Praise them, the Geico commercial. Well, Geico, an article on the Paleolithic diet (see “The consumption of trace elements and minerals by Preagricultural Humans” by Eaton and Eaton at the Clinical Nutrition of the essential trace elements and minerals) tells us that cavemen were not far stupid, they were smart eaters. In fact, their diet and tell us what is wrong with the modern.

Meat was very important. They ate mainly the organs, bone marrow and brain of animals that are nutrient-rich parts are present. They also ate wild plants and berries, but rarely grain. Stone Agers living in small groups as nomadic hunters and gatherers. The time and energy necessary to gather and mill grains into digestible forms with primitive technology was not worth it.

The authors list the nutritional advantages Stone Agers were compared to modern humans.

They got their energy from foods with more nutrients per unit of energy than the modern man. It consumes no “empty calories” without a corresponding energy nutrients such as you find with baking soda, sugar and white flour.

Probably in two to 8 times more minerals than we do. Uncultivated and wild plants usually have more nutrients per unit of energy than comparable foods in the local supermarket. The authors compare wild honey with commercial honey. Wild honey has far more of iron, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium, as well as fruit and vegetables compared to cereals or wild uncultivated with commercial meat.

Stone Agers generally consume more energy per day than most modern people because of their need to roam and hunt, it took an absolute higher number of nutrients. Most modern people are not as physically active as they were.

Our food is so different, because there have been two revolutions in the diet.

The first is the transition from nomadic hunter-gatherers to an agricultural lifestyle. Cereals such as wheat was the main source of energy in the first crops. People living in larger groups than the groups of Stone Age hunter-gatherers. They built city-states in ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, or river-mouth-states in ancient Egypt and China. It was always worth it large crops of corn and cultivate and gather the mill, established in the country with better technology and a division of labor.

I have not seen a final report on how much the health of the population, because the transition from cultivated a diet of mostly game and wild plants altered crops. We can look only at advanced research and opinions about the role of cereals in our diet and health to guess how our newly-civilized ancestors went to their new diet. Some, like say Dr. Mercola, that a non-grain diet is optimal, while others, like Dr. Hark, a whole grain diet, which presumably is what the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians and others recommend eating too.

I do not think that we know whether an intolerance for many grains such as wheat, oats, barley and rye, but not corn or rice, is not purely a modern problem or. For example, wheat intolerance is caused by the properties of the wheat, so that old people in agricultural societies would have experienced, even if they do not know the cause, or it is a modern phenomenon, the treatment and processing of wheat as part of Industrial caused by agriculture?

I lived in Morocco for a year in the eighties. It is an agricultural country where agriculture is done with much less use of fertilizers and pesticides than in Western countries. The people eat bread as a staple food and appear to be very strong and healthy. Their wheat is pure in the rule, so I think it is the quality of the wheat, instead of holding the attributes of wheat itself, such as gluten intolerance.

The second revolution in diet is the conversion of food during the Industrial Revolution, when people left the land for factories and towns. People lost their connection with the land. Agriculture was mechanized and industrialized countries as in the novels of Thomas Hardy’s, which support a large urban population as cheaply as possible. The impact of this second revolution in health are much clearer and more critical in many ways.

Affluent Western countries now consume food groups, which has never happened before: refined flour, sugar and other sweeteners, edible oils and pasteurized milk. Many of them provide only “empty calories”, while a proportion may be used by two thirds of our energy and preservatives, flavor enhancers and colorants before. Chronic degenerative diseases such as cancer, arthritis and diabetes are the result.

It is difficult for sure if cavemen were healthier than people know in agricultural societies or modern times. However, the article’s position is that we as a Stone Age diet, the gold standard, because human biology can see developed as an adaptation to the circumstances of the preagricultural times.

The first man lived, perhaps 2 million years ago. The first agricultural civilization arose 10,000 years ago, perhaps in the Middle East. Human Biology takes many generations to evolve, and may not adapt to changes in diet in the short time since the foundation of agriculture. Our bodies are built to thrive on the food that was available before that date. We are genetically very similar to our Stone Age ancestors from 20,000 years or more.

This theme is found in another interesting article: “The Late Role of cereals and legumes in human nutrition and biochemical evidence of their Evolutionary Discordance” by Loren Cordain, Ph.D. We suffer from what Dr. Loren Cordain describes as an “evolutionary discordance” - negative results with genes, a different environment from the current adjusted. Many suffer from living in a modern diet with a body built for a preagricultural diet. To the extent that is modern life and the food from the time of preagricultural are different, we suspend our disease and other chronic degenerative diseases.

The most practical remedy is to avoid processed foods and are only liable to the food you find around the periphery of a supermarket: fresh fruit and vegetables, fish and meat (organic, if you) can afford it. This is probably the closest you can to the diet of the caveman and eat in harmony with your genes. Thus, Geico, caveman excuse me with you!

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