EATING LIKE A CAVEMAN

It's Day One of my caveman diet, and I'm sitting down to a breakfast unlike any I've eaten before. Next to the sliced banana are two fluffy scrambled eggs and a boneless chicken breast. No oatmeal. No bagel. No milk.

Experts call this the Paleolithic diet, a menu plan based on what our hunting and gathering ancestors probably consumed 40,000 years ago. Proponents believe that by eating the way Fred and Wilma Flintstone did, we could help ward off many of the modern ailments that bedevil us, including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

The idea of going back to a hunter-gather diet isn't new. In 1988, S. Boyd Eaton, MD, an associate clinical professor of radiology and an adjunct associate professor of anthropology at Emory University, co-authored a popular book called The Paleolithic Prescription. Lately, web sites devoted to the Paleolithic diet have been springing up, with loyal followers sharing their experiences, along with suggested menus. "If it's a fad, it's the oldest fad going," says Loren Cordain, PhD, an exercise physiologist in the department of health and exercise science at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. "The whole world ate this way for thousands of years."

As I soon discovered, the forbidden foods list can make the Pritikin Program seem generous: no dairy products, grains, potatoes, cereals, salt, yeast, anything in a can, alcohol, or caffeine. (I negotiated a keep-the-caffeine clause with my editors.) What I do get to eat in abundance are lots of fruits, vegetables, wild game meats, and fish like salmon.

The World's Oldest Diet Sparks New Controversy 

Can a prehistoric menu really make us healthier? In an article in the March 2000 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Cordain, Eaton, and several colleagues reviewed what is known about the diets of 229 hunter-gatherer societies, gleaned from the Ethnographic Atlas, which summarizes information from 1,267 world societies. The diets varied widely, but in general were heavy on protein (up to 35% of total calories) and low on carbohydrates (about 25% of total calories), compared to typical American diets. The hunter-gatherer's fat intake -- about 40% or more of total calories -- was very much like ours in modern America, but our ancestors ate less saturated fat, Cordain says.

According to its advocates, such a diet today could offer important health benefits. The unprocessed carbohydrates typically eaten by the hunter-gatherers -- high-fiber fruits, for instance -- are digested slowly, thus avoiding the problem of large amounts of glucose being dumped into the bloodstream at once. Exposure to large glucose loads, many nutritionists now think, could create insulin resistance, leading to such ailments as obesity and type 2 diabetes. The Paleolithic diet, being rich in fruits and vegetables, is also rich in antioxidants, which have been shown to lower the risk of cancer and heart disease.

But there are plenty of skeptics. In an editorial accompanying the article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Katharine Milton, PhD, a biological anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley, notes that it is unlikely that any hunter-gatherers, regardless of diet, suffered from the diseases of modern civilization. They simply didn't live long enough to develop these illnesses, which are typically associated with old age, she says. What's more, our prehistoric ancestors differed from us in at least one other important way. ''Hunter-gatherers were not on diets,'' Milton says. ''They were trying to put on weight, not take it off."

Like many nutritionists, Milton thinks it's wise to imitate our ancestors and eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. But one thing Americans don't need to do, she believes, is increase animal fat and protein. Gene Spiller, PhD, a Los Altos, Calif., nutritionist and author of Nutrition Secrets of the Ancients, agrees that increasing fruit and vegetable consumption is a good idea. ''Trying to make meat the foundation, even if it's lean, I think is incorrect,'' Spiller says. After all, Paleolithic men and women ate meat only when they were lucky enough to catch it, not every day, he adds.

John Foreyt, PhD, a Baylor College of Medicine weight control expert, also worries about diets that are relatively high in animal fat. ''Dietary fat is still the key to obesity,'' he says. ''Today we get higher fat levels in domesticated animals than did earlier man, who ate wild, leaner ones.''

One Cavewoman's Experience 

After hearing the pros and cons, I wanted to see what the fuss was all about -- and, yes, maybe dump 10 pounds. Cordain mentioned in a phone interview that his classmates always tell him how young he looks at reunions -- another reason why I was ready to give the caveman diet a try.

I started the day with a chicken breast, the closest thing to wild game I could find. The chicken helped tide me over until 1 p.m., long past my usual lunchtime. But soon after lunch (more chicken and a half-pound of raw carrots), my brain was screaming, ''Bread!''

At the car wash, I instinctively reached into the bowl of miniature peanut butter cups by the cashier, then realized no respectable cavewoman would touch those things. Fortified with a cup of mocha java, I set out to gather some fresh salmon for dinner. I detoured through the bakery section, sniffed, and was then so hungry I caved (sorry) and got frozen salmon burgers that would cook in four minutes. Cranky by now, I reflected on how much easier my Paleolithic sisters had it: no fresh bakeries, no Girl Scout cookies, no pizza delivery, no swimsuit season.

I was tossing the salmon burgers into the pan when I realized that they contained salt and other forbidden stuff. Over the edge, I went for broke, and squirted each one with a dollop of honey Dijon mustard.

Trying to follow a prehistoric diet in modern day Los Angeles, I had learned, was no one's idea of easy. But the experiment wasn't a complete failure. In one short, grueling day, I had discovered that my diet, which I used to consider fairly healthy, could use some help: Fewer cookies, less sugar, more fruit.

After wolfing down the salmon, I spent the rest of the evening listening to my stomach growl. Then, at the stroke of midnight, I rewarded myself for having lasted 24 hours by inhaling a bagel.

By Kathleen Doheny in "MSN Health", originally published May 1, 2000 and updated Dec. 19, 2001. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa. 

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