[ExI] Meat and the paleo diet, again

[Ben Zaiboc]

"Harvey Newstrom" <mail at harveynewstrom.com> observed:
> "J. Stanton" <js_exi at gnolls.org>
> wrote,
> > "Man the wimpy" was a popular theory for a few years
> in the early 1990s, 
> > mostly due to vegetarian and feminist politics...but
> the continued 
> > weight of evidence has long since demoted that.
> 
> So now we replace it with "Man the macho" as a popular
> theory mostly due
> to and industrialist and neocon politics.
> 
> Sadly, the truth turns out to be "Man the hungry" who ate
> whatever he
> could find whether it was animal or vegetable.  It's
> an opportunistic
> diet that doesn't promote any political ideology.

<Like>

Harvey, that strikes me as being right on the money.  The question is, how can modern humans best approximate the diet that our bodies are evolved for?  (in the absence of gene tweaks that can make us optimally healthy on vegetarian or vegan diets, or any other kind of sustainable diet, for that matter).

Modern (western/'first world') humans hunt and scavenge in supermarkets and shops.  These outlets don't really cater for the kind of diet that our evolutionarily significant ancestors ate.  So those of us who buy into the whole palaeo diet idea need to adapt our diet to whatever we can approximate to the original palaeolithic diet. Bugs are pretty much out, so are plants that aren't on the modern menu (try and find Bullrush roots in your supermarket), but we can do pretty well if we concentrate on meat high in saturated fat, Omega 3s, and avoid wheat in particular, and most grains. This hasn't been too difficult in my experience, and I can confirm (so far, one-mouse-experiment warning applies) that it seems to be beneficial: More energy, slow but steady weight-loss, general feeling of well-being, *much* greater appreciation of my food, diminished cravings, increased inclination to exercise, changing muscle:fat ratio (in favour of muscle!), and the
 occasional day when I just feel on top of the world.  

It's really something that makes you take notice if, in your fifties, a regimen makes you feel like a teenager again!

Ben Zaiboc