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Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Paleo -my thoughts

I have been reading some writeups on paleo diet/living past few months. Mostly it revolves around low carb diet, natural food/vegetables and fruits and physical work. I can't comment on any of the articles but here what I feel how people might have lived in those times.

Humans evolved in Africa. Chimps and us branched out from a common ancestor which was predominantly tree living. Our branch evolved as bipedal organisms that left our hand dangling from our shoulders which allowed their use for doing other things than locomotion. Further we chose a omnivorous lifestyle distinct from vegetarian Australopethecians (our sister species).

The landscape was grassland with small patches of trees. We climbed trees to escape predators and dug tubers, ate fruits and hunted animals in grassland. The animals in grassland were fast at short distances but at marathon distances we were fastest. We were able to run down an animal just by chasing it long enough. This strategy was very successful and gave us continuous/sure source of proteins thus enabling the development of complex brain in short amount of geological time.

Later we developed tools and still continued hunting, the amount of effort reduced to a great extent with help of hunting tools. Majority of our evolutionary time went past without tools and without fish being a food source which is relatively easier to catch with simple tools. There are some key aspects to this kind of living with respect to eating habits that we have evolved with.

First, we hunted in fasting conditions, i.e, after a substancial time had passed after the last meal.
Second, we did not eat immediately after the hunt which was physically demanding task.
Third, we ate locally available tubers, seeds etc.

Hunting during fasting conditions meant we were relying on fat metabolism for energy and  persistence hunting requires running/ walking/tracking-animals in aerobic zone only in which energy supply by fat burning can be sustainable. After the hunt, the animal was cooked and then eaten which took time. Point is, we did not eat before and after  physical work (you may call it workout).

Humans ate only locally available stuff as compared to modern people following paleo-diet.

I do not want to conclude anything from this buteach one of you might ponder on how our ancestors' eating and workout pattern was and how our eating and workout pattern is.

Also keep in the back of your mind that we are predisposed towards storage of extra carbs in the form of fat for later use during fasting. 


P.S.: I request people expert in Homo sapiens evolution  to add more light on this.