
The New Cavemen Lifestyle - rglovejoy
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/fashion/10caveman.html
======
andrewvc
This looks like nothing but BS to me, there's a reason this is in the NYT's
Style section.

The most telling quote from the article is _“I didn’t want to do some faddish
diet that my sister would do,” Mr. Durant said._ This just reeks of pathetic
insecurity, I'm not surprised the conclusions he came to were ridiculous.

Apparently, there's not even much of a consensus about what people used to eat
back then. According to Wikipedia: _However, there is little direct evidence
of the relative proportions of plant and animal foods.[94] According to some
anthropologists and advocates of the modern Paleolithic diet, Paleolithic
hunter-gatherers consumed a significant amount of meat and possibly obtained
most of their food from hunting.[95] Competing hypotheses suggest that
Paleolithic humans may have consumed a plant-based diet in general,[58] or
that hunting and gathering possibly contributed equally to their diet.[96] One
hypothesis is that carbohydrate tubers (plant underground storage organs) may
have been eaten in high amounts by our pre-agricultural
humans.[97][98][99][100] However, the relative proportions of plant and animal
foods in the diets of Paleolithic peoples probably varied between regions. For
instance, hunter gatherers in tropical regions such as Africa probably
consumed a plant-based diet, while populations in colder regions such as
Northern Europe most likely obtained most of their food from meat.[101]_
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic#Diet_and_nutrition>

This whole thing smacks of a silly trend among a small group of NY hipsters to
sound cool and eat a shit load of meat.

~~~
tlack
So you're saying human evolution (what our bodies have evolved to digest and
process over the past half million years) should have no bearing on what we
eat today? I think that's the silly part.

~~~
Retric
We are omnivores like raccoons, we can and did eat just about anything from
plants and fresh kills to rotting meat and insects. We gorged on fruit when in
season and starved when we could not find anything. We even eat each other and
feces like dogs from time to time. Which is why we can still eat just about
anything for long periods of time and survive.

~~~
kingkongreveng_
Yes we can digest fructose. And when people found honey (basically pure
fructose) I'm sure they gorged on it. But as a few links on the front page of
this site have explained in recent days, fructose is borderline toxic.

Anthropological research in conjunction with modern medical research
convincingly indicate several foods cause disease. The fact that we can digest
all kinds of things is irrelevant.

It pretty much all boils down to avoiding sugars, grain products, and certain
oils. It's a very easy case to buy if you read into it.

~~~
Retric
Whole grain bread is the foundation of western civilization for a reason. It
contains a huge assortment of what the human body needs as a single food
source. Combined with a little meat and a little fruit and a human go go from
a child to live a long and healthy life eating nothing else. However, you can
also make a healthy diet by completely avoiding it. A large part of a healthy
diet is variety and while that can be a pain in our modern society blaming any
single highly refined food as horrible while ignoring the other components of
your diet is missing a large part of the story.

The less verity in a persons diet the closer to perfection what they do eat
needs to be. When you consider the quantity of fructose in the average
American diet of course there is a problem, but mainly because of what it
replaces and not what it is. If you burned 4k calories a day and drink 1k
worth of sucrose water you can still have a healthy if unusual diet. However,
when you are only consuming 2k worth of calories a day 50% of which provides
zero nutrition your body is probably missing out on important things.

~~~
kingkongreveng_
> bread is the foundation of western civilization

Yes, and there is a panoply of diseases only people eating grain get. They're
referred to as the "diseases of civilization."

Do your own reading. I did mine and concluded bread intake should be
minimized, whole grain or not.

~~~
vorador
I don't think that this appellation is correct ; iirc, at a time,
homosexuality too was considered a disease of civilisation.

------
n8agrin
I'm sorry but there is no way I would subscribe to this diet. According to the
article being "paleo" means excluding bread and I'm going to assume cheese,
beer and wine as well. Well that's where I draw the line. I don't think they
realize how amazing those creations are. Cheesemakers, winemakers and beer
brewers are gods among men.

~~~
kingkongreveng_
> cheese

Cheese is OK as long as you have no casein allergies, which you probably
don't.

Wine is low on the list of things to eliminate. This article painted a picture
of some wacky lifestyle built around a paleo canon. I suppose with this sort
of thing a lunatic fringe is inevitable. That stuff in the article about
giving blood was just nonsense.

It's really just a short list of diet recommendations. Eliminate sugars &
sweeteners and cut grain & potato products as low as feasible and you're doing
90% of it and getting 90% of the benefit.

~~~
Ixiaus
Meat and Potato diets should be separated, _especially_.

Starches mixed with proteins (animal proteins in particular) stimulate the
stomach to over-produce digestive acids which strain it, and as a result bile
needs to be produced to neutralize the acids which strains the small intestine
- it often results in very little nutrition actually being absorbed from the
food because the acids produced for the two different types combine into an
acid that doesn't digest either starches or protein very well.

Meat and Potato diets are highly stressful on the body, also keep in mind that
the fasting aspect of this "paleo" diet is very important, without the
fasting, your colon won't have enough time to eliminate all of it and it can
end up compacted in the colon.

Consistent and high animal protein diets are unhealthy, but animal protein
diets spaced with fasting and vegetables (fibers and nutrients) are great for
the body.

------
kentosi
I find this type of a diet rather off-putting due to the high amount of meat
you have to eat.

Now I'm not a vegeterian, nor am I a PETA campaigner, but I do believe in
animal rights. And the idea of promoting a diet that makes people eat copious
amounts of meat sounds .... unkind (for the lack of a better word). It creates
a grown in the demand to rear and kill animals.

I'm not trying to draw on a vegeterian vs meat-eaters debate here, but does
anyone else feel this way when they read about this diet?

~~~
kelnos
Not at all, but I personally put animal rights pretty low on my priority list.
Dif'rent strokes for dif'rent folks, I guess.

------
tokenadult
People who are interested in upper Paleolithic lifestyles will be fascinated
by the book The Nature of Paleolithic Art by R. Dale Guthrie, my favorite read
of 2008.

[http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=sy...](http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=3534406)

[http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Paleolithic-Art-Dale-
Guthrie/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Paleolithic-Art-Dale-
Guthrie/dp/0226311260)

The author is a paleozoologist who specializes in upper Paleolithic megafauna
(which occasionally are found as frozen specimens with soft tissue preserved
in the part of Alaska where he conducts his research) and is also an
experience bow-hunter and expert visual artist. The book has an astounding
bibliography listed literature in English and other languages about all
aspects of human life in the Pleistocene epoch.

------
nova
The topic is very important but the article was really bad. A few no-nonsense
links for the interested:

<http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/>

<http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/>

<http://www.paleonu.com/>

<http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/>

<http://nephropal.blogspot.com/>

I very much like Dr Harris (PaNu blog) position: is not about blindly
replicating cavemen lifestile, but studing their metabolism (which is ours) in
the light of modern science.

------
adrock31
So, I'm actually both a geek and a Paleo eater. And I did create a site called
www.paleoplan.com because after eating this way for a while, I was amazed at
how healthy I felt.

Could this be a fad diet? of course... to some people. Could this be a bunch
of bullshit? sure. However, after 30 days of completely eliminating wheat,
dairy, complex sugars, and starches, I was blown away by how good I felt. I'm
still surprised at how I feel, and at my energy levels and general weight
loss. So, as I said, I started a site (because that's what geeks do) and now
this is how I eat. There's lots of people who follow Paleo eating for a
variety of reasons. Some are purely performance driven, and have found Paleo
to be a great diet plan to help their athletic performance. Some people are
celiacs and have wheat allergies and/or lactose intollerant, so eating Paleo
is a natural decision. I've also met people who are just interested in eating
whole foods, versus processed foods, and have found this diet makes them feel
better.

I have to leave it to people like Scott Hagnas, Robb Wolf, and Loren Cordain
for the science of it, but for me, I feel great, look great, and am just in a
better mood all the time after giving up a few things. Call it hocus pokus,
call it a fad diet, I don't care, it works for me and I plan to stick with it.
The actual article is what you'd expect; media grabbing on to the "story."
It's not exactly a true representation of the people I know following this
diet.

------
icey
Has anyone heard if this has some proven health benefits? I wonder how much of
the benefits can be attributed to a cut in processed foods and less sugar
intake.

I was surprised to see Nassim Taleb show up in the article as well.

~~~
kowen
I read Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" 4 months ago, which had me
curious enough to experiment. [http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-
Controversial-Scienc...](http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-
Controversial-Science/dp/1400033462/)

The book is a meta study of the research done on the so-called metabolic
disorders (obesity, diabetes, heart disease). The research doesn't talk about
evolution and cavemen, but rather health markers, hormones, and metabolic
processes.

I've been eating a less -ahem- tribal version of this for 4 months, and the
results have been pretty remarkable (if entirely anecdotal).

I have lost a large amount of weight, my skin and hair are much improved, my
digestive functions have normalized after a lifetime of trouble, and I'm no
longer tired all the time.

I haven't been sick since I started, but 4 months isn't exactly long enough to
suggest anything in that respect.

What I do differently from the tribal version in the article is 1) I don't
exercise (yeah, I know, evil, but I just don't feel like it yet) 2) I eat
tomatoes and cheese and cream 3) I don't fast; I eat whenever I'm hungry.
Interestingly, I'm only hungry about twice a day now, rather than 5 or 6 times
a day which was the norm for me before I started this experiment 4) I'm super
relaxed (pragmatic?) about the whole thing. I haven't seen the light or
anything like that, I've simply had some really good results with very little
effort.

There is a blog at <http://www.marksdailyapple.com> which has plenty of
interesting articles, as well, but the Gary Taubes book is the closest thing
I've found to _proven health benefits_.

~~~
phlex
At least in the UK it's recommended that the average male consume 2500
calories per day. I have a really hard time coming up with something close to
that without carbohydrates - am I just being unimaginative? How do you solve
this problem? How much fat is it reasonable to eat? (I'm sure this is covered
in detail in Taubes' work - unfortunately I haven't found a short summary of
his ideas).

~~~
kowen
I can't remember the percentages that Taubes suggests.

Personally, I solve it by replacing carbs with fat - but without actually
measuring. I just eat plenty of flavorful food (and drench my veggies in
butter).

Mark Sisson has written about fats in the diet here:
<http://www.marksdailyapple.com/saturated-fat-healthy/>

The general idea floating around on his forum seems to be "when in doubt, eat
more fat".

------
chipsy
This article borders on tabloidesque shock-value, but the "Paleo diet"
concept, at least, has a reasonably logical basis. But I would recommend this
instead of googling "Paleo" immediately:

<http://www.performancemenu.com/articles/proteinDebate.pdf>

The link is down at the moment, but the above is a 4-paper written debate
between T. Colin Campbell (The China Study) and Loren Cordain(Paleo Diet).
They each advocate widely different approaches to diet, but agree on a few
things, most notably that dairy's nutritional benefits are suspect.

~~~
jseifer
I haven't read that yet (though I definitely will later) but that's
interesting about the dairy findings. West Price found the exact opposite of
that in his book (<http://bit.ly/4MIoVe>). Can you elaborate a bit more on
what they found suspect?

~~~
nunb
Food for thought, Dr Eades on the issue.

[http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/obesity/another-china-
stu...](http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/obesity/another-china-study/)

I also read somewhere (probably Eades) that the China Study (the book/Campbell
one) was a survey, iow, not an intervention study.

Lastly, when I read the China Study book about 3-4 years ago, it started off
with an impressive anecdote about feeding extra protein (peanut butter) to
filipino children to improve their diet and wham! cancer.

Blame protein, or aflatoxin? Campbell chose the former. Now that I know a bit
more about animal vs. nut (soy, peanut) protein, I'll take the former, thanks.

The Panu weblog puts it in the simplest terms: choose a food whose defense is
to run away from you, not one that will cook up chemical defenses to being
eaten.

------
tyweir
Lots of great info from Robb Wolf's site: <http://robbwolf.com/>

And The Paleolithic Solution podcast by Robb Wolf and Andy Deis [iTunes Link]:
[http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcas...](http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=340221970)

Robb Wolf runs Norcal Strength and Conditioning in Chico, California:
<http://www.crossfitnorcal.com/> <http://www.cathletics.com/>

------
baddox
Do these "cavemen" concern themselves with hygiene? Or practice safe sex? Or
take medicine? Or live to see 40? Those should be among many decidedly non-
Paleolithic habits which these "cavemen" should be very much against.

------
scotty79
From the standup I've seen:

The reason the caveman were skinny is that before they could eat meat they had
to chase it for few days and kill it with a stick.

~~~
ckuehne
Well, you know: that is exactly the point.

------
ArcticCelt
"eating large quantities of meat and then fasting between meals to approximate
the lean times that his distant ancestors faced between hunts. Vegetables and
fruit are fine, but he avoids foods like bread that were unavailable before
the invention of agriculture..."

"...I didn’t want to do some faddish diet that my sister would do."

Well, he is almost doing Atkins/South Beach/Low Carb but just gave it another
name.

------
joshu
> Mr. Le Corre, 38, who once made soap for a living

Tyler Durden?

~~~
tfh
Or someone who read/saw the book/film and became obsessed with it.

------
mtrichardson
A friend of mine, influenced by CrossFit, just launched a startup of his own:
<http://www.paleoplan.com/>

I love the concept, and want it expanded to other things (how many people have
tried vegetarianism only to end up eating nothing but pasta?) but I don't eat
enough meat to really consider Paleo.

~~~
ahlatimer
I was a vegetarian for 5 months. Not nearly as long as other people I know,
but I think it was long enough for me to get an idea of what the diet is like.
Anyway, I didn't have much of a problem finding interesting things to eat.
Pasta/rice is often the base or filler of a meal, but there's multitudes of
different vegetables and ways to prepare them to keep it interesting. I
particularly like Asian and Mexican food, and it's fairly easy to make a
number of dishes that contain no meat.

I felt healthier, slept better, and had more energy. I think the value in
these diets is cutting out large amounts of sugar and processed foods.

------
jsz0
They must be missing out on the amazing number of antioxidants founds in
vegetables. I wonder if they replace them? Personally I think it's a bit silly
to assume that the first nutritional habits of man were somehow the best but
it definitely meets all the criteria for an interesting fad which is probably
what they care about more than anything else.

~~~
nunb
Thought experiment: people who don't eat vegetables must get scurvy, right?

~~~
ubernostrum
Wrong.

You can get vitamin C on an all-meat diet, and various people have (of
necessity, typically by living in or travelling through areas where
agriculture is impossible and storing vegetables wasn't possible) done just
fine that way.

------
_pius
This reads like an Onion article.

~~~
nunb
If they toned it down just a bit, it would be as hugely funny as the Onion!

------
itistoday
Damn. I thought this was going to be an article about programmers.

~~~
RevRal
Me too. I said: "sweet, I'm officially a New Caveman now. I wonder what New
Dawn of Man awaits me after this."

------
tibbon
Once again, it seems someone has successfully trolled the lifestyle writers at
the NYT with something so fringe that it could possibly be simply made-up. If
this was on the front page of Reddit, we'd be calling the people trolls and
saying that was fake.

~~~
acangiano
The Paleo diet is actually quite well known amongst people with an interest in
nutrition.

