Eat like a Caveman for Better Health

Only about 10,000 years separate us from our caveman ancestors. Before that time our diet was simple, natural and healthy. Here is why you should still eat like a caveman.

What we consider 'cavemen' would have been a prehistoric human who lived during the Paleolithic era. Early man was nomadic, traveling in groups that hunted and gathered their food. Farming had not yet been invented. These primitive folk just ate what they could find and moved along when pickings became slim.

How Did the Caveman's Diet Differ from Ours?

There are several key differences that make primitive diets healthier than our modern fare:

• Raw food: Early man did not gain control of fire until about a million years ago. So before fire was used for cooking, all food was eaten raw. Even after people started using fire to cook, heat was mainly used to roast meat and toast wild nuts and grains. Much of their diet was still uncooked food.
• Dairy products: Other than the mother's mild that infants consumed, early man did not eat any dairy products until the domestication of animals, less than years ago.
• Refined sugars:Natural sweets such as wild honey and the sugars present in fruits, were the only goodies that cavemen ate.
• Fats: Although the caveman diet contained a lot if meat, wild meat, rich in healthy omega fats, is healthier than the meat from domesticated animals. The nuts and grains that early man consumed also contained healthy fats, much different than the trans- and partially hydrogenated man-made "Franken-fats" the people consume today.

Modern Books on How to Eat Like a Caveman

There are two books that I use, in the cell biology course I teach, to help my students learn about how the cells of their body metabolize food, and the types of food that are good and bad for the body--Doctor Mark Hyman's book Ultra-metabolism and the book Ultra-prevention, co-authored by Dr. Hyman and Dr. Mark Liponis.

These books are filled with great information on how the body uses food, but the bottom line for both is that the modern diet has very little in common with the fare that our ancestors consumed. Our bodies have become accustomed, over millions of years, to eating a diet rich in grains, nuts, fruits and wild meats. We are not built to consume dairy products and loads of highly processed foods and sweets. We'd be much healthier consuming food similar to the caveman's diet, and cavemen didn't eat Twinkies.

For additional information on cavemen and healthy diet, see:

• U.S. News and World Report, "Paleo Diet: Can Our Cavemen Ancestors Teach Us the Best Modern Diet?"
• Hyman, M.D., Mark (2006) Ultra-metabolism: The Simple Plan to Automatic Weight Loss.
• Hyman, M.D., Mark & Liponis, M.D. Mark (2003) Ultra-prevention.