There does seem to be this notion that being "too hygienic" is a negative thing because it doesn't train your immune system.

That's only kind of true. Exposing a healthy person to small amounts of weakened virus tends to build immunity. Exposing the healthy person to large amounts of the virus overwhelms the immune system and may not even lead to a strong viral immunity.

If I had to guess, eating rotten meat is something that indigenous peoples have adapted to over time and they are resistant to the specific things in rotten meat that make modern day humans sick. I think it would be wrong to suggest the rotten meat eaters are somehow better off for doing this, or that they have stronger immune systems in general.

Immune systems aren't like a muscle that you can repeatedly train to get stronger and stronger and stronger ad infinitum.

Especially in the last years, the hygiene hypothesis is not about a lack of immune training against harmful microbes, but a lack of encounter of so called old friends, harmless microbes.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1700688114

I see how easy it would be for me at least to assume they had better immune systems from eating the spoiled meat. If true our modern immune systems are most likely way less effective than theirs at that time.

Just look up the Hadza tribe's gut microbiome.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36238714/ https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4654

That's probably as close as you are going to get to truly paleo diets... not paleo-bros that eat only bacon, butter and meats.

I was going to post about "paleo" diets, but you beat me to it.

The Paleo Cafe would get closed down by the Health Department real fast if it actually served paleo foods.

I'm picturing a guy hauling a roadkill deer in, tossing it on a table and yelling "meat's up!" I mean, sure, they didn't have cars back then, but it's better than letting trash-eating deer meat go to waste.

I dimly recall a New Yorker article about people who eat roadkill. They do have their limits though. It has to be fresh roadkill :)

New paleo motto: "Maggots is protein"