Saturday, January 20, 2007

more on the cave diet

So what it boils down to is that for our first million years or so, we ate a diet very different that what we do now. We know that our ancestors didn't have McDonalds, but at least they had the meat. It was really the bun they lacked.

I'm not sure how somebody figured out that the typical cave person diet consisted of 40% carbohydrates, 30% proteins and 30% fats. With an uncertain food supply, these figures no doubt varied a lot. I have little doubt that when a group of cave people stumbled on a patch of fresh strawberries or apples, they gorged themselves but didn't eat any more for another year.

Same with meat - after killing a large wooly mammoth they would have had a huge feast and probably didn't try to balance the wooly mammoth steaks with any leaves or roots to get carbohydrates.

But such times would have been the exception. Maybe they ate a balanced diet just because they had to, to feel full at the end of the meal. Not enough squirrel meat to go around for everybody? Just add in some ants, some leaves and a bird's egg.

So if cave people weren't always in the Zone, it's also unlikely that except for stuffing themselves with fruit in season they ever got an overload of carbohydrates.