Was caveman healthier than modern man? Most of us assume that he was: all that barefoot running and preservative-free food. Some men are so convinced of the health benefits of the Stone Age way of life that they are trying to emulate it now.
The caveman diet — or palaeo diet as it is often known — is finding followers here and in the US among men (and, occasionally, women) wishing to mimic prehistoric, pre-agrarian meals. Stripped of dairy, wheat, sugar and, of course, processed foods, followers claim that the regimen will make them slimmer, fitter and more energetic.
Professor Loren Cordain, of Colorado State University — and the founder of the Institute of Paleolithic Nutrition, author of The Paleo Diet and champion of the diet — was recently quoted in The Washington Post, saying: “Look at us.
We’re a mess. We eat too much, we eat the wrong foods and we’re fat.” Our prehistoric ancestors, Cordain says, were “lean, fit and free from heart disease and other ailments that plague Western countries”.
His book has inspired thousands of contemporary cavemen and in Britain the poster boy for the movement is Ray Mears, the survival expert. “I probably know more about living as a caveman than anyone else on the planet. It’s important not to think of our ancestors as less sophisticated than us. The palaeo diet can be great,” he says, and then adds: “If we were still eating that diet, I’m certain we wouldn’t be getting as ill.”
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So what does it involve? Palaeo-dieters eat large amounts of meat (offal is particularly encouraged), fish, eggs, fruit, vegetables, nuts and berries.
The primary theory behind some health benefits of the diet are that human beings have been hunter-gatherers for millions of years but our digestive systems have had to cope with farmed foods only for the past 10,000 years and we have not evolved sufficiently to cope with them. The New Age cavemen also believe that farmed foods contain small levels of naturally occurring toxins that have a detrimental effect on our bodies when eaten in the large quantities that we now consume.
Controversially, some cavemen choose to combine the diet and exercise approach by following a feast and famine pattern of eating, consuming large amounts of meat and then eating nothing for between 24 and 48 hours. This, they say, emulates a typical hunter-gatherer routine of killing an animal, eating heavily and then, without another easily available source of food, going hungry until their next kill. Some adherents heighten their fast by exercising hard in the lead-up to a meal as a hunter-gatherer might have in the build-up to a successful kill.
This interpretation of the caveman diet does not impress Mears, who says that this style of eating misses the subtleties of a hunter-gatherer diet. “I wonder how well they have studied what was available to our ancestors. The caveman diet is not about pigging out on meat and pretending to have hunted it. Our distant ancestors had a much higher diversity. In terms of plant food there was much more available then than there is today.”
He even argues that our cravings for sugary or fatty food aren’t a modern phenomenon at all but date back to an era when coming across such foods would have been a rare treat. “You could argue that today we all follow a palaeo diet in that we seek out sugar and fat.” It is his belief that the balance of the modern diet has tipped too far towards what should be occasional indulgences.
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The emphasis given to meat by modern cavemen means that some followers may be in danger of compromising rather than enhancing their health. “It seems a shame to reject wholemeal bread, pitta and pasta which add fibre and useful energy,” says the Times nutritionist, Amanda Ursell. Moreover, although it was men who were generally in charge of hunting (meat), women gathered (fruit and vegetables) intensively and their food was as important to the pre-agrarian diet. While Mears is happy to eat modern food, with all its associated drawbacks, he is careful to include plenty of foraged foods such as wild greens and game that would have been familiar to Stone Age man.
“I do eat a lot of wild things and it’s important to incorporate them into one’s diet.”
TIPS FOR MODERN CAVEMEN
Eat more wild greens such as wood bittercress, a herb available even at this time of year. Or try nettles that have been blanched or wilted to take away the sting
Forage for wild mushrooms
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Do not overcook food — cavemen did not have cooking pots and foods would have been charred briefly rather than cooked
Try to eat fish and game rather than reared meat. Venison is a particularly good choice as it is lean and has no cholesterol