Anyone heard of this or tried it? Sounds interesting...
http://www.motleyhealth.com/diet-and-nu ... w-approach
http://www.motleyhealth.com/diet-and-nu ... w-approach
Caveman Diet
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phoenix
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There's a comprehensive (but a bit dense) account on wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet
loads of recent videos about the 'paleo' way of living here at a recent conference. Many of the speakers are leading lights in the movement: (read the abstracts to get an idea as some are very specific but a few from people not normally considered paleo at all)
http://vimeo.com/ancestralhealthsymposi ... ort:newest
One source worth borowsing is called Paleohacks. it's a kind of forum and looking through you'll get some sort of feel for varied ways people approach paleo . It's not one diet. The movement has lots of controversies as to what constitutes paleo and there are lively ( :lol: ) debates about the types and proportions of foods that should form part of a diet .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet
loads of recent videos about the 'paleo' way of living here at a recent conference. Many of the speakers are leading lights in the movement: (read the abstracts to get an idea as some are very specific but a few from people not normally considered paleo at all)
http://vimeo.com/ancestralhealthsymposi ... ort:newest
One source worth borowsing is called Paleohacks. it's a kind of forum and looking through you'll get some sort of feel for varied ways people approach paleo . It's not one diet. The movement has lots of controversies as to what constitutes paleo and there are lively ( :lol: ) debates about the types and proportions of foods that should form part of a diet .
After a quick scan of the first link in the original post, only a couple of things I would pick up on - with my archaeologist's hat on, I'm no nutritionist! :
Palaeolithic man, particularly in higher (more northern) latitudes, was very definitely in control of fire, so while some food would certainly have been eaten raw, s/he could and did cook.
Salt was certainly used if available, though not in such quantities as later, once its use for preserving had been realised.
One of the most important things about the palaeolithic diet is its seasonality. They would have had some grain at the end of the summer, but not much 'cos the original varieties didn't yield well, and though they learned to dry it, they probably wouldn't have preserved enough to take them through the winter. They dried meat, fish, veg and fruit for the winter, and hunted. Probably some of the time they lived almost entirely on meat.
Those communities that lived closest to the glaciers preserved food by burying it in the frozen ground to freeze it.
Spring was the lean time as far as food was concerned, until everything started growing again and the herds of animals, with youngsters, moved north following the grazing.
A good (fictional) account of Palaeolithic peoples is Jean M Auel's Earth's Children series. She has done her research well in terms of tools and resources, though obviously the story-lines are fictional. Ignore the sex scenes - IMHO repetitive and badly written! :wink:
Sorry - you pushed a button, Fencer :lol: :wink:
Viv 8)
Palaeolithic man, particularly in higher (more northern) latitudes, was very definitely in control of fire, so while some food would certainly have been eaten raw, s/he could and did cook.
Salt was certainly used if available, though not in such quantities as later, once its use for preserving had been realised.
One of the most important things about the palaeolithic diet is its seasonality. They would have had some grain at the end of the summer, but not much 'cos the original varieties didn't yield well, and though they learned to dry it, they probably wouldn't have preserved enough to take them through the winter. They dried meat, fish, veg and fruit for the winter, and hunted. Probably some of the time they lived almost entirely on meat.
Those communities that lived closest to the glaciers preserved food by burying it in the frozen ground to freeze it.
Spring was the lean time as far as food was concerned, until everything started growing again and the herds of animals, with youngsters, moved north following the grazing.
A good (fictional) account of Palaeolithic peoples is Jean M Auel's Earth's Children series. She has done her research well in terms of tools and resources, though obviously the story-lines are fictional. Ignore the sex scenes - IMHO repetitive and badly written! :wink:
Sorry - you pushed a button, Fencer :lol: :wink:
Viv 8)
phoenix
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I've just refound this reasonably concise article by Cordain, one of the academic researchers who have promoted a Paleo diet.
http://www.vitaminb17.org/paleo_diet.htm
http://www.vitaminb17.org/paleo_diet.htm
Thanks for the article, Phoenix. The only note I would add - and I don't have the source for this, so my memory may not be 100% accurate - is that in a later edition of his book, Professor Corden lowered his emphasis on lean meat somewhat.
In northern latitudes about 40,000 years ago, there certainly would have been times of the year - late winter through into early summer - when fat meat was not available. However, from mid-summer onwards, all the animals are laying down fat to help them survive the winter, most meat would be fat. I believe there is also some evidence from ethnographic parallels that communities eg the Native Americans of the North-west deliberately stored rendered fat from carcasses to see them through the winter. But obviously that would be fat from non-grain-fed, free range, organic meat! - which most of us cannot afford to eat
The diet of peoples in warmer latitudes might well have been somewhat different in Palaeolithic times - I only know the northern evidence.
Viv 8)
In northern latitudes about 40,000 years ago, there certainly would have been times of the year - late winter through into early summer - when fat meat was not available. However, from mid-summer onwards, all the animals are laying down fat to help them survive the winter, most meat would be fat. I believe there is also some evidence from ethnographic parallels that communities eg the Native Americans of the North-west deliberately stored rendered fat from carcasses to see them through the winter. But obviously that would be fat from non-grain-fed, free range, organic meat! - which most of us cannot afford to eat
The diet of peoples in warmer latitudes might well have been somewhat different in Palaeolithic times - I only know the northern evidence.
Viv 8)
Viv I would have though that any healthy mammal (including humans -- not that I am suggesting eating them!) would have some fat tissue all year around... maybe higher leading up to the Winter months but never absent? Also bone-marrow, brain etc... are all sources of fats.
phoenix
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Viviennem,
I found what seems to be the most recent offering,
Estimated macronutrient and fatty acid intakes from an East African
Paleolithic diet
It's long and I haven't read it but skipping to the conclusion I found this
edit: I just tried the link and it only gets to the site, you then have to go to the research section and get it from there.I think you can find many of his papers on that website.
I also found an interview with him about sat fat (google: Loren Cordain – Caution: Saturated Fats – Disaster with Grains).
Not sure about how much it should inform our diet but I find the whole thing fascinating, (I started an external diploma course in Archeology once but work got in the way and that's one I didn't complete)
I found what seems to be the most recent offering,
Estimated macronutrient and fatty acid intakes from an East African
Paleolithic diet
It's long and I haven't read it but skipping to the conclusion I found this
http://thepaleodiet.com/wp-content/uplo ... cdiet1.pdf
edit: I just tried the link and it only gets to the site, you then have to go to the research section and get it from there.I think you can find many of his papers on that website.
I also found an interview with him about sat fat (google: Loren Cordain – Caution: Saturated Fats – Disaster with Grains).
Not sure about how much it should inform our diet but I find the whole thing fascinating, (I started an external diploma course in Archeology once but work got in the way and that's one I didn't complete)
On the topic of lean meat I just recalled that in his account* of the Bellevue trial of an all meat (+ fat) diet Stefansson describes a period where he was only allowed lean muscle meat and became ill. I also seem to recall mention of folks who only had access to rabbits (which are naturally very lean) and became sick and malnourished despite having apparent access to plenty of food.
*http://www.biblelife.org/stefansson1.htm
Found this in Wiki... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_starvation
I think this may be a problem when some folks try a low carb diet in that there has been so much phobia of fat built up in recent decades such that fat is actively avoided... plenty of shrink-wrapped, boneless, skinless, chicken-breast; boiled or cooked in a non-stick frying pan :?
*http://www.biblelife.org/stefansson1.htm
Found this in Wiki... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_starvation
I think this may be a problem when some folks try a low carb diet in that there has been so much phobia of fat built up in recent decades such that fat is actively avoided... plenty of shrink-wrapped, boneless, skinless, chicken-breast; boiled or cooked in a non-stick frying pan :?
Hi
Check out this Paleo blog - she's an Australian med student http://www.primalmeded.com/start-here
Peter
Check out this Paleo blog - she's an Australian med student http://www.primalmeded.com/start-here
Peter
Hi again
Here's another blog I follow (he's no fan of Cordain :wink: ) http://www.gnolls.org/715/when-the-conc ... ely-paleo/
Peter
Here's another blog I follow (he's no fan of Cordain :wink: ) http://www.gnolls.org/715/when-the-conc ... ely-paleo/
Peter
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pianoman said:
Ah That was on QI - it was gold propectors I think - they didn't have access to ANYTHING other than rabbit and they actually died! :shock: - wasn't the leaness of the meat though - I think rabbit is lacking in something and even if they had had just cabbage and rabbit they would have survived - well so Stephen Fry said anyway :lol: - can't be bothered to google it though as I am tired and off to bed
phoenix
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It's obvious he doesn't like Cordain, in fact so much so that he starts from a totally wrong premise about fig 6, (read the coments where it has been pointed out and then tries to alter his arguments.reidpj said:
I gave up trying to follow his logic at that point.
I wonder if the author has eaten any meat other than from the supermarket. Even a truly free range chicken is much leaner (and tougher) than it's pappy supermarket counterparts.
lovinglife said:
Well... if there were plenty rabbits about, couldn't they have just stolen their cabbages?
Pianoman wrote:
Yes, there would be some fat tissue all year round (and brains and other offal seem to have been delicacies), but most animals come out of a northern winter quite lean, and build up fat reserves as the year works through summer. They go into winter quite fat, and use their fat stores for insulation and energy in the cold weather. Professor Cordain's original assumption seemed to be that all wild meat was lean all the time, and I would dispute that. You've only to look at the wild ponies on Dartmoor, Exmoor and the New Forest, which do not get supplementary feeding at all once the grass is growing (apart from tourist sandwiches :lol: ). They are really quite fat by the time they get to autumn! Also plump little bunnies around by then, and pheasants etc carry quite a bit of fat at the end of the summer - though many of those are fed grain, of course.
The fat on wild animals would be natural, free-range and organic, as opposed to the fat on grain-fed butchers' meat. Possibly the only 'domesticated' meat that compares to wild meat, apart from deliberately free-range organic, is new season's hill- and fell-raised lamb at this time of year, which eats nothing but grass and herbs after it's weaned until it goes to market.
I think much organic meat seems tougher because it gets more exercise.
There really is a tremendous difference in taste between local lamb in the areas where it's raised, and turnip-fed store lamb that you get in the lowlands at the end of winter.
Viv 8)
Yes, there would be some fat tissue all year round (and brains and other offal seem to have been delicacies), but most animals come out of a northern winter quite lean, and build up fat reserves as the year works through summer. They go into winter quite fat, and use their fat stores for insulation and energy in the cold weather. Professor Cordain's original assumption seemed to be that all wild meat was lean all the time, and I would dispute that. You've only to look at the wild ponies on Dartmoor, Exmoor and the New Forest, which do not get supplementary feeding at all once the grass is growing (apart from tourist sandwiches :lol: ). They are really quite fat by the time they get to autumn! Also plump little bunnies around by then, and pheasants etc carry quite a bit of fat at the end of the summer - though many of those are fed grain, of course.
The fat on wild animals would be natural, free-range and organic, as opposed to the fat on grain-fed butchers' meat. Possibly the only 'domesticated' meat that compares to wild meat, apart from deliberately free-range organic, is new season's hill- and fell-raised lamb at this time of year, which eats nothing but grass and herbs after it's weaned until it goes to market.
I think much organic meat seems tougher because it gets more exercise.
There really is a tremendous difference in taste between local lamb in the areas where it's raised, and turnip-fed store lamb that you get in the lowlands at the end of winter.
Viv 8)
'There really is a tremendous difference in taste between local lamb in the areas where it's raised, and turnip-fed store lamb that you get in the lowlands at the end of winter.'
Not after I've cremated it, there aint :lol:
Not after I've cremated it, there aint :lol:
