Common Misconceptions About a Primal Diet

An Ancestral Approach to Food

The basic gist of ancestral ways of eating – be they Paleo, Primal, keto, or carnivore –  is that we should, at least as far as possible, eat in the same way as our ancient ancestors.  There is a lot of intuitive sense to this, but a lot of people object to it for various reasons.  On the other hand, others can get a little dogmatic about it – the fact of the matter is that you will not be able to live a life following the mammoth herds across the tundra these days, even if that’s how your ancestors lived. 

 So, here are some of the biggest common misconceptions about a Primal way of eating cleared up.   First, I’ll answer some common objections to an ancestral approach to eating, then I’ll address some mistakes that proponents of an ancestral diet can make.

Answering Common Objections to a Primal Way of Eating

• Objection: Our ancient ancestors (and modern hunter-gatherers) weren’t really that healthy.  They only avoided chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease, and obesity because they died before they were old enough to get them.  If you’re only living to thirty years old anyway, it doesn’t matter how much plaque is in your arteries.  If they had managed to avoid violent deaths and reached old age like we do, then they would also be getting obese and diabetic.

• Answer: The average life-expectancy of modern hunter-gatherers (and ancient humans) was so low largely because of very high rates of death in infancy and childhood.  Averages can be deceptive – just because the average life expectancy was thirty doesn’t mean that everybody, or even most people, actually died at thirty.  Among modern hunter-gatherers, living well into their seventies is quite common – and chronic diseases still only account for 9% of deaths.  If their diets were causing heart disease and diabetes, there are certainly enough individuals who live into old age that we would notice it.

• Objection: Our ancient ancestors ate a plant-based diet.  Hunting was dangerous, so they mostly relied on gathering.  Humans’ closest living relatives (chimpanzees) are mostly herbivorous, so it makes sense we would be, too.  Furthermore, we don’t have the claws or tearing teeth of carnivores, and we have direct evidence of ancient humans cooking and eating plant-matter.  Therefore, conventional wisdom is correct that we shouldn’t eat a lot of meat, while a Primal approach encourages eating a lot of meat.  

• Answer: Ancient humans certainly ate at least some plant matter, as do all known hunter-gatherer groups today.  However, very few of them eat a diet of predominantly plants.  They all eat some meat, and most of them eat more meat (and less carbs) than any official recommendations today would suggest.  Some, like the Inuit and the Maasai, eat very close to an all-meat diet and are very healthy.  The almost universal principle seems to be that human populations eat as much meat as they possibly can given their environment, and use plants to fill in the remaining calories.  

Furthermore, the evidence that ancient humans ate a diet of predominantly meat (albeit including some plants) is very strong.  Although we are closely related to chimpanzees, one of the biggest ways that we differ is in our digestive systems (and our larger brains, of course).  Chimps have the large guts and strong jaws to digest plant matter – we don’t, indicating that we are adapted to rely less on plant matter for food than they are.  (The reason we don’t have claws and fangs to hunt is that we have the large brains and flexible hands to allow us to hunt and prepare food using tools and weapons!) 

The evidence for ancient humans hunting (including hunting large animals like elephants and mammoths) is very strong, including remains of ancient spears and spearheads, man-made cut marks on the bones of large animals, and even cave paintings depicting hunting!

Finally, scientists have a method called stable nitrogen isotope ratio sampling that can indicate roughly where in the food chain an animal was (in the same way that fish higher up in the food chain accumulate more mercury in their tissue, animals higher up in the food chain have a distinctive pattern of nitrogen isotopes in their tissues).  Virtually all nitrogen isotope samples of ancient humans taken before the dawn of agriculture indicate that humans were at the top of the food chain – we had a comparable nitrogen-ratio to lions and wolves, indicating a diet consisting mostly of large game.

• Objection: Ancient humans ate whatever was available given the circumstances.  Thus, there is no “original” human diet – modern hunter-gatherers and ancient humans have diets that vary so much that we can’t draw any conclusions from what they eat.

• Answer: This is half-true; modern hunter-gatherer groups do vary quite a bit in their dietary habits, and it is reasonable to infer that ancient humans did, too.  It is wrong to infer from this, though, that there is nothing that they can teach us about a healthy human diet.  Here are some definite takeaways:

1. “One size fits all” dietary recommendations are inadequate.  Precisely because of the variability in what ancient humans ate, it is a mistake to assume that one set of guidelines will be right for everyone.  You should experiment on yourself to see what works for you!
2. One thing which ancient humans (and all modern hunter-gatherers) do have in common is what they are not eating – none of them are eating modern processed food full of flour, corn syrup and sugar, soybean oil, and unpronounceable chemicals.  If we just cut out all that garbage and eat real whole food, that is already a huge step forward.
3. While the amount of meat that modern hunter-gatherers eat varies greatly, they all eat some – and, yet again, the general trend is that they eat as much meat as they possibly can. Combine this with the evidence that pretty much all ancient humans ate a lot of meat, and it becomes clear that we should prioritize meat, even if we can also eat some plant food.  At the very least, the demonization of meat is completely off-base – whether or not meat is essential, it is certainly a healthy whole food that humans have prized and eaten liberally for thousands of years, not just heart disease in food form.

• Objection: Humans have kept adapting since the invention of agriculture.  Modern humans are adapted to a grain-based, modern diet, not an ancient one.

• Answer: This one also has some truth to it.  Different human groups have begun to adapt, to various degrees, to post-agricultural diets.  Still, a preagricultural diet is a good “baseline” diet to start with for almost everybody, for several reasons.  For one thing, even though humans have been eating more carbohydrates, specifically grains, for thousands of years after the invention of agriculture, the most egregious offenders in our diet today – super-processed foods, food additives, processed seed oils, and high doses of white flour, sugar, and corn syrup – have only been major contributors to the human diet for less than 100 years.  We have had almost no time to adapt to any of that.  Furthermore, different people are more or less well-adapted to an agricultural diet – some people can tolerate grains and dairy fairly well, and some can’t.  Finally, just because we have begun to adapt to a more grain-heavy diet doesn’t mean that a paleo diet is now bad for us.  Even if you are a person who can get away with eating more grains, for example, that doesn’t mean that you need grains to be healthy; you can still do perfectly well on meat and veggies.

Correcting Common Mistakes of Primal Enthusiasts

• Mistake: We should all be pure carnivores, because that’s what ancient humans did.  Plants are toxic, so we would all be better off avoiding them!

• Truth: I do believe that temporarily going pure carnivore to heal, rapidly lose weight, or as an elimination diet is safe and effective for most people.  Many people stay pure carnivores for months or even years with no ill-effects, and some people with severe conditions (such as autoimmune conditions or psychiatric conditions) can only stay healthy be remaining strict carnivore indefinitely.  I am a big fan of the carnivore diet. Having said that, figuring out what works for you is a key aspect of an ancestral approach to health – and carnivore doesn’t seem to work for everyone long-term.  Some people (like Dr. Paul Saladino) feel sick on pure carnivore after a few years, and some experience, counterintuitively, an elevated blood sugar and A1C level that gets better when they reintroduce some carbs.  Let’s not get dogmatic, and accept that different things work for different people!  Looking at the evidence of ancient humans and modern hunter-gatherers, all of them do in fact eat some plants – even if they consistently prioritize meat.  This doesn’t mean that we all need to eat plants, but it does mean that we shouldn’t demonize them – most people are able to stay pretty healthy while eating some plant matter.

• Mistake: Modern medicine is all bad.  We should always use only natural remedies.

• Truth: Modern medicine, including drugs and invasive surgeries, have a place, even if they are way overused.  Remember, modern humans in pretty much every country on earth, even ones without access to very good nutrition, on average live longer than ancient humans did.  A very large percentage of ancient humans died of acute infections and injuries, many of which can now easily be treated with antibiotics.  Even if antibiotics are very overprescribed (and they are), they do save many lives.  While it is true that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, if you dropped the ball on the prevention and now you have an acute problem the pound of cure is still way better than nothing!

• Mistake: Anything introduced to the human diet over the last 10,000 years is bad.  Everyone should avoid all grains, diary, coffee and tea, alcohol, spices, etc.

• Truth: While our preagricultural diet is a good “baseline” diet for pretty much everyone, this doesn’t mean that we haven’t adapted at all to agriculture.  Tolerance to newer additions varies quite a bit from person to person.  For example, while some people can’t tolerate dairy, others can do just fine with it, and there is quite a bit of evidence suggesting that it can have health benefits.  Some people can’t tolerate coffee, but there is decent evidence that it does have moderate health benefits.  Yet again, everyone is different.

What it really all comes down to is not being dogmatic and acknowledging that different things work for different people.  Our ancient ancestors do provide a good paradigm for understanding human health – but this is just a guide.  It’s not a religion.  Feel free to experiment and find what works for you – if something leaves you looking and feeling great, don’t stress about whether or not it follows the primal “rules”.  The only hard and fast primal “rule” for health is to stick with what works!