Linda Jamison

A Paleo Prescription

The Hunter-Gatherer Diet

The hunter-gatherer diet was eaten by all people on earth before the coming of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. It was refined over hundreds of thousands of years. So if there is a diet natural to the human makeup, one to which our genes are still best suited, this is it.

There was a specific diet we were designed to eat. The one we ate when we were evolving. It’s harder to get, prepare, eat and digest than the foods we know and love, but it’s low fat, low salt, low refined carbohydrates, high fiber, high complex carbos, and high protein. It’s natural. And combined with the right exercise plan, which is natural too, people who follow it will start to shape up. It is the hunter-gatherer diet.

For Homo erectus to be able to adapt to the more temperate climate of Europe and Asia, it was necessary not only to tame fire, but to have both effective shelter and clothing to protect against heat loss, and to store dried meat and other foods for use in the lean months.¹

These people were hunters and foragers who lived in tiny bands of a few families, perhaps only encountering a handful of strangers in their short lives. Among their many skills, they developed new techniques for meat preparation.

The limbs and carcass were first separated, then pounded so that the bones were broken into small pieces and the meat could be hung easily on nearby drying racks. Drying meat concentrates the protein, increasing the food value per pound. It also allowed the hunters to store meat, making them less reliant on seasonal movements of their prey.

But game meat was not their only source of food. Without question, wild plant foods collected by the women were of paramount importance, perhaps eaten more frequently than animal flesh. By 130,000 years ago, plant grinders and pounders were in widespread use, so less palatable meat and vegetable foods could be processed, then cooked, before it was eaten. Everything points to a more efficient hunter-gatherer lifestyle, one based not only on game and plants, but sometimes on fish, shellfish, and some sea mammals as well.²

The first Homo sapiens who lived in the Savanna homeland enjoyed a virtual “Garden of Eden” that was even richer than it is today. South of Ethiopia and Somalia lies a vast region of plains, great mountains and plateaux that drain into the Indian Ocean on the eastern side, and into the lake basins of the far interior. It is a varied environment with subtle seasonal changes and great natural diversity. The rainy season brings lush grass amid a deep green woodland. Timid, small antelope and other woodland animals graze at the fringes of the forest. Vast herds of wildebeest and zebra range over open grassland plains, gathering near the ponds and seasonal water holes where lions and other predators lie in wait. A myriad of trees and plants yield edible fruit and nuts for humans and animals alike.³

In a sense, Africa was a giant nursery for modern humanity, a relatively undemanding environment where food was fairly plentiful, where Ice Age climatic changes were relatively benign.

According to physical anthropologist and ecologist Robert Foley of the University of Cambridge, early populations of Homo sapiens ranged over large territories, lived in groups with some kin-based social structure, and were highly selective in their eating habits, preferring meat and nutritious nuts and fruits. Plant foods were relatively predictable because they came into season at regular times of the year. Game animals, the major human prey on the savanna, are much less predictable, because they can redistribute at will. Even more important, they are far from easy to kill once located, especially if one has to kill them at close range. So how does the typical hunter-gatherer diet compare to what we eat now? The difference between our diet today and that of our hunter-gatherer forbears may hold keys to many of our current health problems. Particularly since the greatest single threat to the survival of our species is our diet.

Today’s so-called balanced diet includes foods from four major groups: meat, fish, and poultry; breads and cereals; fruits, nuts and vegetables; and dairy products. Whereas, people living before the development of agriculture had no dairy foods at all, except for infants at mother’s breast, and seeds and grains were available only in such small amounts as could be collected from seed-producing wild plants. So almost the entire diet was derived from wild game, uncultivated vegetables and fruits, and insects.

In fact, plant foods were the staples of diet even before the advent of agriculture. A great variety of plant foods were eaten, and the bulk of carbohydrates consumed in the past were complex, unlike the finely ground flours and refined sugars so abundant in our current diet. As a result, intake of non-nutrient dietary fiber was greater. Without knowing why, our forebears were on the right track. One of the greatest risks a human being can take is to allow the remnants of their food to remain in contact with the lining of the colon for three and four days at a time. Yet Americans and others who eat a modern diet are doing just that. Our grandparents had the right idea when they instinctively felt that there was something vaguely undesirable about becoming constipated. Analysis of 153 species of wild plant foods eaten by hunters and gatherers shows the average protein to be 4.13% and fiber content 12.6%-much higher than in our plant foods. Thousands of years of plant breeding and modern food processing have greatly increased simple, less desirable sugars, decreased many needed carbohydrates and increased calorie content. ( See table on the next page)

As for meat, 43 game species relied on by various hunter and gatherer groups averaged only 4.3% fats, compared to 25-35% in supermarket meat. Overall, the average diet of hunters and gatherers consisted of 33% protein, compared to 12% in the modern American diet, an equal percentage (46%) of carbohydrates, and 21% fat with a high ration of polyunsaturates, compared to our 42%.⁴

The fat of game meat tends to be much less saturated, meaning less harmful, because the browse eaten by game animals is higher in polyunsaturated fat than the artificial stuff fed to cattle and pigs. And, the excess fat in today’s meat animals is storage fat (found in layers under the skin, in the marbling of muscle tissue, and within the abdominal cavity) which is overwhelmingly saturated.

As for our fat-loaded dairy products—ice cream, butter, cheese, milk—early people had none at all. Nor did our ancestors garnish their roots with sour cream, add salad dressings to their greens or spread their wheat and seed cakes with a greasy layer of margerine.

Although early people did enjoy simple sugars from honey and fruit, studies of fossil teeth show that they ate far fewer sweets than we do. And, except for a deficiency of iodine in some geographical locations, our ancestors probably ate an abundance of vitamins and minerals (including calcium, even without any dairy foods). Their intake of potassium exceeded their intake of sodium. For most western people throughout the world, the reverse is now true. In fact, hunter-gatherer sodium consumption is estimated at 690 milligrams daily, which came from wild game and plants and on rare occasions, natural salt licks, as compared to between 2,000 and 7,000 for present-day Americans. As for blood pressure, which has at least some relationship to salt intake, six contemporary hunting and gathering groups were below 120/80, normal for modern Americans and Western Europeans, and unlike us, showed no increase with age.