Meat and the paleodiet

I was making lunch for my kids this morning when I happened to hear this NPR piece on the radio. The issue, similar to what I commented on a few weeks ago, is the paleodiet. This time, the story is constructed primarily about the role of meat in a “paleodiet”:

“For millions of years, we didn’t have an obesity problem because we ate foods that our metabolism was adapted to,” Durant says — foods such as root vegetables, tubers, fish and, of course, red meat.

“We were active and lived a healthy lifestyle,” he says. Durant is one of many folks following the popular meat-laden paleo diet. He packs his freezer with deer meat and has found lots of places near his home in Manhattan to buy marrow bones and organ meats, as well as paleo-friendly barbecue joints for a meal out.

Living in America, we are often told to eat less meat in order to be healthy, particularly less red meat. So should we eat more meat or less meat?

The answer to that question, to the extent that there is an answer, involves recognizing that meat is not a single, monolithic entity. Meat is the flesh of animals, but animals come in lots of varieties and change themselves throughout their lives and throughout the year. Our Pleistocene ancestors certainly ate a considerable amount of meat at times, but at its best, that meat was coming in something like this:

These are wildebeest in Masai Mara Park, Kenya. You will notice some differences between these wildebeest and the creature below:

This second image is an angus cow, the source of a large fraction of the American beef industry. Most African game animals, particularly the bovids that are so common in the zooarchaeological record, have extremely low levels of fat. The angus cow above has been transformed through generations of intentional breeding to be a creature that not only carries a huge amount of meat, but also considerably higher proportions of fat. Both creatures pictured are potential sources of red meat, but very different kinds of meat from a nutritional perspective. No matter how much additional processing you apply to meat from angus cattle, the meat has already undergone a kind of pre-processing in the form of generations of human-directed domestication and breeding.

To be fair, the person being interviewed in the NPR story references his own stock of venison, a very lean meat not unlike those African bovids. That is wonderful that he can regularly eat venison and that it serves him well, but as I pointed out before, and as Barbara King highlighted in an earlier NPR story:

It’s not paleo-fantasy that’s going to help us negotiate a healthy future, the 7 billion of us together, on this environmentally-endangered planet.

The human population in the Pleistocene measured in the millions (at most), not the billions. No matter how overpopulated deer are across the Eastern US, there is not nearly enough lean meat in the world for everyone to eat this version of a paleodiet.

My final point is simply to note, once again, that diet is extremely complicated and there is no such thing as one “perfect” diet. Individuals have different genetic backgrounds, we have different maternal and developmental environments that have impacted our metabolic pathways, we have different energetic workloads, different attitudes towards food, and as a result, our bodies do not respond in the same way to the same food items. When I was in college, I was a swimmer and regularly consumed in excess of 5000 calories a day while losing weight. I was also 18-22 years old. More than a decade later my body has changed, my activity levels have changed, and my bodies response to the food I eat has changed. Fortunately (from my perspective), my body can still process pasta and bread by the pound (something very un-paleo) without any obviously adverse health effects.

The best evolutionary advice I could provide on diet is to go with what works. If eating lots of meat keeps you healthy, go for it (though maybe give a few thoughts now and then to where you fit in the global food system). If eating pasta five times a week works for you, go for that. If those don’t work, try something else. Your body is a better judge of what diet is right for you than any book or diet you can buy.

About Adam Van Arsdale

I am biological anthropologist with a specialization in paleoanthropology. My research focuses on the pattern of evolutionary change in humans over the past two million years, with an emphasis on the early evolution and dispersal of our genus, Homo. My work spans a number of areas including comparative anatomy, genetics and demography.
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9 Responses to Meat and the paleodiet

  1. Pat Shipman says:

    If we follow a paleodiet, WHICH diet at which point in our 7 million year history do we follow? As we evolved, our diet changed. Why pick one point over another?

  2. Zach Throckmorton says:

    Your comparison of wildebeests to angus cattle is apt, but I’m not sure even hunted deer are comparable to the meat our distant ancestors ate. At least in much of the Midwest, deer feed largely on corn, which is itself ‘unnaturally selected.’ You can tell the difference between a corn-fed Iowa-shot whitetail backstrap and a more ‘natural’ browsing/grazing northern Michigan whitetail backstrap by sight alone.

    There’s an enormous amount of variation to consider at many different trophic levels, so I think your advice to experiment, stick with what works for you, and respond to what your body tells you is about as good as diet advice gets. Go write the book! :D

  3. Mary Kelaita says:

    I’m not a fan of the paleodiet for all the reasons pointed out above. I don’t think listening to your body is necessarily the best advice either. You can certainly experiment with short term dietary modifications and then get tested – weight, BMI, cholesterol, glucose, etc… but many people are concerned about long term consequences for their health. In that regard, medicine and anthropology could still inform such questions. We study genetic and environmental variation and attempt to understand it using an evolutionary perspective. I think people should still consider this research in deciding what is best for their health.

  4. Zach Throckmorton says:

    I wouldn’t suggest dismissing medical and anthropological science, Professor Kelaita, but it’s an undeniable fact that there is a lot of bad science regarding diet that’s fed to us from less than impartial ‘authorities.’ Consider the movements away from red meat and eggs – then margarines and partially hydrogenated oils turned out to be far worse than more natural fats and oils. Then consider the economic forces that care far less for your health than pandering to politics – high fructose corn syrup is far, far worse for you (and bees!) than more natural sugars, but the former’s near ubiquity is due to subsidization of corn farmers and tariffs on imported sugar. Hell, even all of these fad diets are trying to sell you something – be it a book or a brand of foods. I think it’s important to critically evaluate what science and scientific authorities tell us what we should eat.

    If evolution’s taught us anything about what to eat, it’s that humans have tremendous dietary breadth, and this variation means there is no ideal diet – there are many diets that are healthy. Your body tells you what’s good for it, and you don’t necessarily even need medical tests to listen to it.

  5. Lesley McHugh says:

    I have recently begun reading extensively about the paleo/primal lifestyle (and am deeply immersed in a book by Nora Gedgaudas, CNS, CNT “Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a Longer Life”). What struck me about your article versus what I have been reading is that the paleo diet is not as “meat-centric” as most non-adherents believe. Most (but not all) followers favor a “moderate meat” consumption (with the exception of the extreme athletes). The photo you show of the angus cow above would not be considered “paleo” because it is grain-fed and grain-finished. All the paleo/primal proponents I have been following via blogs, newsletters, news feeds, print media, etc., stress grass-fed and grass-FINISHED beef; all of them. From what I am reading (and experimenting with on myself) is that better, fresher, real food (no processed frankenfood) equals better nutrition equals smaller meals. I find that I am eating only twice a day. Since May 16th, I’ve lost 15 pounds (and hope tomorrow the doctor’s scales shows another 2-3 pounds lost this past week). I am quite overweight and also in treatment for cancer for a third time (2nd time around in less than a year). Recently, I cooked up a batch of paleo meatloaf muffins (cooked weight about 3 ozs per “muffin”) and found that one meatloaf muffin paired with loads of fresh veggies provided a very substantive meal. I strive for a variety of fresh veggies daily, no more than about 2 servings of fruit, and no more than 6 ounces of protein via grass-fed beef, pastured pork, pastured chicken, grass-fed lamb; and of course, healthy fats (usually avocados or coconut creme). I have had better results and an easier time structuring a “lifestyle” diet change following paleo/primal principles than any other program I’ve tried in 40+ years (including programs such as NutriSystem and Weight Watchers).

  6. Mary Kelaita says:

    Zach – I completely agree with you on the bad science. It certainly makes it difficult for those without formal training to know what to believe. Nevertheless I will continue to evaluate the studies as they are published, considering their data, funding sources, and analyses to make informed decisions. After all, I’m a scientist and I don’t believe that any problem will ever be too complex for science to address. Thanks Adam for starting a stimulating discussion!

  7. JC says:

    If the Paleo Diet fad was so healthy and responsible for brain growth, then why didn’t the Neanderthals survive and thrive? They had 300,000 years in Europe following the diet to make themselves into “Einsteins!” Speaking of Albert Einstein, this is what he had to say on the subject of health and survival: “Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” http://www.veganfitness.net/viewtopic.php?t=723 & http://nutritionfacts.org/

    Low Carb vs. Plant-Based
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zVxA6yipv4

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