Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: LaurenaS on 21/01/2021 08:42:57

Title: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: LaurenaS on 21/01/2021 08:42:57
Diets are really diferent. I found one that I never saw before.
With these diet it is important only to eat what humen in stone age ate.
That means only high quality meat is allowed and products whitch contain no additives.

I heard of this diet in a german Article https://www.wiespartaner.de/steinzeitdiaet/ and wondered if anybody else heard about these diet and what your thoughts are.

For me this diet contains something new and something i never thought of. Maybe a good experiment? ;D Does someone know if there were done some experiments according to this diet?

I am curious for your answers. Thank you
Title: Re: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: evan_au on 21/01/2021 09:10:28
Quote from: OP
With these diet it is important only to eat what humans in stone age ate.
That means only high quality meat is allowed and products which contain no additives.
There is one thing about the stone-age diet of which we may be confident: there was no single "stone age diet".

Humans are basically omnivores. Like hunter-gatherers today, stone-age people ate whatever they could catch: meat, fruit, vegetables, seeds, etc.
- If you live in the arctic, fish and meat is 99% of what you can catch
- But most other parts of the world have fruit and vegetables for some of the year

Since we can't ask them what they ate, we have to look for evidence like:
- In coastal areas of Australia, there are large shell middens, showing that the original inhabitants liked their seafood.
- Ancient rubbish heaps reveal the bones of prey, and inedible/discarded vegetables
- Coprolites (fossilised sh!t) show what was eaten, but not digested. Pollen grains sometimes reveal what plants were flowering in the area
- Stone-age tools are suggested to have different functions, like arrow-heads, cutting and digging tools
- Isotope ratios give an indication of what people have been eating
- Recently, DNA analysis of tooth plaque from human skeletons revealed an indication of what this human had been eating.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet#Ancestral_diet

Quote from: Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?”
Title: Re: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: vhfpmr on 21/01/2021 09:59:39
It's worth bearing in mind that neolithic life expectancy was 20-33.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
Title: Re: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: alancalverd on 21/01/2021 11:18:06
Traditional diets of Native Americans hadn't changed much since neolithic times, are well documented, and still form the staple food of many groups. Basically, meat and fish, with yams, potatoes, gourds, spices and green vegetables wherever and whenever these are available.

Onions date back to the later neolithic or early bronze age Asia in some form, with tomatoes not much later in southern Europe.

There is evidence of grain grinding in every known civilisation throughout the world.

So there's probably not a lot of difference between a roast dinner or curry, and whatever our early ancestors ate. 
Title: Re: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: queenofscience on 16/02/2021 11:33:58
Hey ,
I guess the point about a stoneage diet is to eat just natural food. Its not important what they eat, in which part of the world, its more about a diet without additives and natural products. If you have for example a look at the mediterane kitchen, you will get a glue of the positive impact of going back to basics in a healty way. Heres a very inspirational german articel, which you can translate easily with GoogleTranslate or DeepL: https://www.kuechenbook.de/mediterrane-kueche/
Title: Re: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: Bored chemist on 16/02/2021 11:51:34
I guess the point about a stoneage diet is to eat just natural food.
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Title: Re: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: alancalverd on 16/02/2021 14:32:05
A chemist colleague of my father held up a bottle of Heinz salad cream (other brands are available) in the staff canteen one lunchtime and announced "All good clean chemicals. None of your natural muck." His 80th birthday was good fun.
Title: Re: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: Bored chemist on 16/02/2021 19:51:51
If you look at the ingredients of salad cream  the only "chemical" chemical in there is vitamin B2 used as a colour and listed as riboflavin.
Obviously the rest of it is chemicals like water.
Title: Re: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: alancalverd on 16/02/2021 23:51:58
But, apart from egg yolks, almost nothing  that neolithic man would have recognised. And even those have been laid by an unrecognisable bird and pasteurised.
Title: Re: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: scientistlover1 on 17/02/2021 07:44:59
Hey Guys,

Instead of cereal products and sugar, Paleo foods should be eaten.
This means: fresh and natural foods that were probably already available in the Stone Age. It includes primarily meat (preferably game), fish, seafood, eggs, fruit, vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, nuts and honey. Paleo is not only supposed to be healthy, but also to help you lose weight.

The Paleo diet is supposed to improve blood sugar levels and reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
The Stone Age diet is more filling than the Mediterranean diet and therefore prevents obesity.

The criticism is that people today have a much lower energy requirement than our Stone Age ancestors.
Nowadays, people in modern civilisation do not need such high energy intakes. A person who sits in an office all day needs far fewer calories than a hunter-gatherer in those days, who spent most of his time foraging for food and thus moving around. the German Nutrition Society uses 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight as a guideline.
In the long run, the high protein content demanded by the diet can lead to health problems such as gout, kidney stones and arteriosclerosis. Moreover, some scientists question whether Stone Age people really ate so much meat back then.

Best regards :)
Title: Re: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: Bored chemist on 17/02/2021 08:50:07
Instead of cereal products and sugar, Paleo foods should be eaten.
Why?
The Paleo diet is supposed ...
By whom?

Moreover, some scientists question whether Stone Age people really ate so much meat back then.
Other scientists have worked out that the people living in arctic regions will have had little to eat except meat, and yet they survived .
Title: Re: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: maike11 on 17/02/2021 08:56:32
Hi guys,

topics and discussions about eating, dieting and foods in general will never extinct, right? Ok let's talk about stone-age diets. First of all, I like the fact, that you should only eat foods without any fake additives. It's always a good thing to do, so that your body's digestion can work perfectly.

What I don't like/recommend, is eating all that fat and protein of fish and meat. As somebody in this discussion mentioned, they only lived 20 or 30 years. That sums up the whole diet and its sense. If you concentrate on the fruits and veggies and stay away from animal protein and fats, you should be doing fine.
Title: Re: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: Bored chemist on 17/02/2021 09:06:25
I like the fact, that you should only eat foods without any fake additives.
That's OK I only eat real additives.
Title: Re: Is a stone-age diet recommended?
Post by: alancalverd on 17/02/2021 11:11:44
This means: fresh and natural foods that were probably already available in the Stone Age. It includes primarily
meat (preferably game), fat, cholesterol, zoonoses (tapeworm, COVID....)
fish, some poisonous (blowfish, most shore dwellers) most inaccessible (deep sea fish) some with zoonoses (lake fish) or high mercury content
seafood, loaded with fecal bacteria and viruses
eggs, salmonella
fruit, very little available outside of Africa (almost none in the arctic) and all seasonal
vegetables, only in the last 20,000 years
herbs, mostly poisonous, negligible food value
mushrooms, ditto
nuts , some poisonous, seasonal and prone to rot
and honey. sugar, sugar and sugar. Plus dangerous stings.