The archaeological record shows that hunter-gatherers had an abysmally short lifespan, and were far from healthy... Pretty much every positive development in human health history happened after the advent of agriculture. Hunter gatherers were lucky to live past 30...
I'd guess your 'low carb' diet still had more vegetables and grains than most hunter gatherers had access to...
Most of the statistics about our ancestors having a 35ish life expectancy are skewed by high infant mortality, and high risk of death due to injury or other external ailments (a broken leg on the savannah can easily be a death sentence). A hunter-gatherer who surived those things would tend to live into their sixties or beyond.
Sure, a large proportion of them die at early childhood - "life expectancy" measures takes that into account by definition, as it measures the total average life expectancy; and if you get a 100 kids who live to 70 and 100 kids who die as infants, then the average life expectancy is 35.
It's not about the ancient societies but is relevant because for this discussion the point is not history, but the effects of a hunter-gatherer diet.
http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2...
However there is evidence of populations in pre-agricultural times which had favorable environments and consequently better health.
In fact there was just published by the Smithsonian an interesting article describing findings in the 9000 year old Kennewick Man specimen. Of particular interest was a comment about the condition of the teeth: all intact, no cavities attributed to low CHO diet. Age at time of death was estimated to be 40 years old. Not bad for 9000 years ago.
BTW I'd appreciate references you have to the differences in pre- and early post-agricultural health in human populations. Isolating dietary effects on health is difficult to be sure and a subject I'm always eager to learn more about.
As far as my diet is concerned, vegetables are emphasized, especially the green, leafy kind. (Foods that are relatively high in protein, low in CHO.) I recommend, and practice myself, reducing grains to a minimum.
As you no doubt know, protein, certain fats, a bunch of minerals and vitamins are essential to humans because we can't synthesize certain molecules--we must get them in our diet. Curiously, there is no essential carbohydrate. Our bodies can produce all the CHO it needs from non-CHO sources.
That's not to say CHO intake is not useful, and it is useful as a source of calories. In the past when calories were expensive, less costly CHO sources of calories were valuable, in essence to prevent starvation. In the current era when calories are extremely cheap, high CHO intake is positively dangerous--it's easy to consume a surplus of calories.
Interestingly, the data shows over the last 30 years there has been very little change in dietary fat intake in the USA, but sugars have increased dramatically. The rise in obesity has been attributed to inclusion of sugars in manufactured foods. The idea of decreasing dietary CHO intake, especially sugars, is logical.
Gluten and corn intolerance is common according to reports. Wheat, corn and many other grain products are grass seeds. Grass and its seeds are frequently allergenic to humans, which supports the idea humans are not native grass eaters, hence the advice to minimize it.
*Aristocrats and other people that had high protein intake, security etc.
Do you know as fact that humans when they died did so from malnourishment? It's very possibly more likely due to some kind of famine which tended to happen from natural causes.
Yes, humans could endure longer with vegetation because it's easier to maintain it for longer periods of time in raw form, but were they in better physical health from eating the same thing over and over again? I'd imagine they had horrible vitamin deficiencies during famines.
(I am on a low carb diet with plenty of veg.)
"some of the healthiest people on earth eat vegetable heavy diets..."
That doesn't mean anything. That barely even makes any sense.
Hunter gatherers were lucky to live past 30...
Not true. If you made it past 5-10 years, you were likely to live a fairly full adult life. Infant mortality was very high, but it wasn't like most people dropped dead before 30 if they survived early childhood.
In the Upper Paleolithic, life expectancy at birth was 33 years, and by 15 years of age the total expectancy went up to 54 years.
In Classical Rome, life expectancy at birth was 20-30 years, and by 10 years of age the total expectancy went up to 45-47 years.
In Medieval Britain, life expectancy at birth was 30 years, and by 15 years of age the total expectancy went up to 64 years.
This looks kind of mixed to me. Certainly, as you point out, people weren't "dropping dead at 30". But dying around 45 or 55 is not what people nowadays would call a "fairly full adult life" either.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy...
Certainly in a sociological sense, most people consider the years 60+ to be twilight years where you're not living life to the fullest - whether it's true or not, that's the perception.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/fat/
It's a fascinating read, all the more impressive when you consider when it was written.
The idea of knowing the optimum diet for humans is exciting. I used to spend a lot of time reading these studies, then I realized that like many other people I know, we read and pontificate these points to everyone else we know without actually putting them into practice to a level that makes spending so much time reading about them worthwhile. This is why I rarely look at diet and nutrition articles.
I'm sure some of you do follow them, but is being obsessive over everything you put into your mouth going to make your life significantly healthier and longer than just following the general principles we've established? I mean, I go shopping and buy fruit, vegetables, meat and some grains. I get my macronutrients and exercise frequently. Will I gain a decade of good health if I start doing paleo? I doubt it. Do I reduce my risk of preventable death if I follow religiously the latest diets (there's at least one every six months that everyone at works will tell me about)? Not likely.
Sorry if it sounds like I'm dismissing nutrition research, I know it's important, but if you're spending hours talking about whether a 30:30:40 ratio is better than a 20:20:60 ratio, then you eat dessert after every meal and get drunk every weekend, I think you'll find better things to spend your time on.
There's currently a group of anti-carbs lobbyists. The pro-carbs is not as vocal, but they have equally strong evidence that eliminating carbs isn't as important as you may think.
There can't be, and there are not, absolute rules. The research I'm talking about has nothing to do with arm wresting over dogmatic rules shouted out by people insisting they're right and the other guy wrong.
Nonetheless, when nutrition drifts far enough out of range of optimum to the point it is clearly associated with harmful health effects, and it's alarming when an ever greater segment of the population is affected.
That is exactly what's arousing so much concern. The rates of obesity, metabolic disease and diabetes have risen sharply in recent decades. Diabetes alone burdens the US economy (total costs) to the tune of $170 billion a year. The ever-growing burden of disability has been linked (in part) to dietary factors.
The problem is not going to be solved by medical science primarily, but rather the commitment of individuals to save themselves by altering dietary patterns, increasing exercise, and being an active participant, a real-time partner in their own health care.
Where science can help is teasing out the factors that contribute to the problems. The medical community must get behind the educational and political challenges that have a chance to reduce the unfavorable food industry practices that contribute to the problem, and increase individual change.
It would help to substantially reduce excessive sugars and trans-fatty acid content in manufactured and fast foods. Efforts at education of the public aimed at choosing one thing that's better than another must be attempted. These can work, but not quickly. Think of tobacco--it's taken 5 decades, but headway is finally being made reducing tobacco use.
Obsession over arbitrary dietary rules is not the idea. In severe form, it's tantamount to an eating disorder. That's not at all what we mean in any way. Fanaticism has no place in my world.
The same arguments about dietary composition have been going on for at least 150 years. There may be many opinions but for my part, I'd rather listen to the scientific evidence.
I was medical director of an obesity treatment clinic for many years. The low carbohydrate (CHO), optimal protein intake diet was often effective for weight loss and was not associated with bad effects. We felt compelled to closely track indicators of potential adverse effects but none were apparent.
There were good effects, e.g., type 2 diabetics had reduced insulin requirements, in some it was decreased to none. Other metabolic conditions, hypertension, dyslipidemias, etc., improved as well.
The science surrounding diet, metabolic disease, obesity and related things is indeed very complex. However as I see it, research into human evolution sheds light on what the optimum diet would be.
There's evidence that human hunter-gatherers were taller, stronger, healthier than their agricultural descendants. The idea is consuming a diet closer to that of pre-agricultural humans would better meet our physiological requirements.
Pre-agriculture diet had more high-quality protein (animal sources), less fat, with an omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids ratio approximating 1:1, and low in saturated fat. Importantly, the intake of simple sugars was much lower that it is today.
On average, in the ancient human diet it's estimated that protein intake accounted for about 35% of calories, fat ~20%, and the rest ~45% from CHO. Of course, diets varied widely. These averages suggest a direction to take to improve health rather than absolute prescriptions to be followed rigidly.
So I guess everyone is partly right. Ideally, get more protein, less saturated fat, more omega-3, less omega-6 (seed oils), and moderate the CHO intake, especially sugar in all forms.
Sorry to say this, but our remote ancestors were conspicuous meat eaters, never natural vegetarians, though vegetables (leaves, stems, roots) were an important part of the human diet.
And BTW exercise was a constant component of primordial human lifestyle; we might do well to emulate that as well.