Would you be better off eating like a caveman? : LC Research/Media Forum : Active Low-Carber Forums

#1 ^

Wed, Sep-14-11, 10:38

Demi

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Would you be better off eating like a caveman?

Interesting interview with a Paleo nutritionist ...

Quote:

Jess Mullen: The Paleo Diet

Dave is intrigued by the idea behind the Paleo Diet, where people only eat things our Stone Age ancestors might have hunted or gathered. We talk with Jess Mullen, a Nutritionist at Crossfit Seattle. She has been adhering to the Paleo Diet for a couple of years and explains how it works.

http://mynorthwest.com/?nid=577&a=33417&p=&n=AudioClip

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#2 ^

Wed, Sep-14-11, 10:42

Demi

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Paleo enthusiasts turn the "caveman diet" into a lifestyle

Quote:

September 15, 2011

Paleo enthusiasts turn the "caveman diet" into a lifestyle

If there's something strange about reverting to the way of your ancestors and throwing inordinately heavy objects around Tower Grove Park, neither Alex Born nor the other six people wielding 10- to 30-pound weights on this Tuesday evening can see it. And maybe, just maybe, there really isn't anything weird here: What they're doing is going back — think caveman far back — in history for both today's workout and the lifestyle behind it. What's so odd about that?

Right now, however, they're being reprimanded by a park security guard, who appears uninspired by their reckless abandon.

"Don't do that anymore," he says with a dramatic shake of his head. "You can't just throw things around the park."

OK, so maybe it is a little weird.

The seven-person crew is divided into teams: "hunters" and "gatherers." For about fifteen minutes, they vie to see which team can toss the awkward weights the greatest number of times before succumbing to exhaustion and moving on to the next task. To the victor goes, well, nothing — other than the knowledge that they worked out the hardest.

But what might appear to be seven rogue nut jobs is actually a small contingent of Primal Living STL. And that group's 87 members are a proud part of a larger picture, a lifestyle devoted to the practice of the "Paleolithic," or "primal," diet. Defined only by its strictest intentions, the diet calls on an informed knowledge of how pre-Homo sapiens ate roughly 2.5 million years ago. The goal here is that 80 percent of the food followers consume should be something their predecessors might have picked up, brushed off and ingested: grass-fed meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts.

The list of forbidden foods is longer: Dairy products, sugar, salt, processed oils and even grains and legumes are off-limits. Although Born, the group's Tuesday workout leader, insists it's possible to eat out on the paleo diet, the menu item he suggests is a salad — and even that requires removing a few ingredients.

Though informed by anthropology and practically obsessed with the concept of evolution, the diet is a tough sell, he admits.

Still, "we find in the records that humans were biggest and more robust before the dawn of agriculture," Born says. "Anthropologists have always known what we should eat. Scientists only recently got it wrong."

The paleo diet is by no means new. It gained early attention through the recommendations of a gastroenterologist in 1975 and saw its popularity rise in the '90s.

What's worth noting today, however, is the fervor with which it has been reappropriated. It no longer fits comfortably inside the category of "diet"; it's a lifestyle. Those who adhere to the diet's strictest tenets become almost religious about the ideas behind it. Today, joining can including buying a "primal living" cookbook, subscribing to the newly launched Paleo Magazine and joining one of the dozens of "Primal Lifestyle" groups on Meetup .com, of which the St. Louis branch is one.

Usually, interest in eating paleo-style starts with a different diet gone wrong. Born, his fellow workout leader Michael Libbie and a handful of other group members began their path to paleo through a similar diet called the Zone, which concentrates on food proportion over food quality. Many of the group's members, its instructors included, are also devotees of CrossFit training, a hardy brand of physical conditioning. That interest makes the birth of their paleo fixation a kind of a chicken-or-the-gym situation. Usually, either CrossFit training leads you to the paleo diet, or you use CrossFit to supplement the paleo diet once you start practicing it.

"The typical reaction is that people think it's pretty crackpot because of how much fat we eat," Libbie says. "Since the standard conventional wisdom since the '60s is to eat a low-fat diet, it has permeated everyone's consciousness to the point that it's gospel. The resistance we get is, 'Ewww, you eat all that fat?'"

Yes, you do. And, for a while, most members concede, you cheat. "There are days when I'll walk down to Schnucks and buy six donuts and eat them," Libbie says. "As time goes on, though, I do it less and less."

For Born, cheating on the diet recently meant ingesting trail mix, an action that he is more ashamed of than seems strictly warranted. (The mix, after all, was mostly nuts.) Another sign things are veering into lifestyle territory: Several of the group's members admit they look into other carts at the grocery store to see whether the shoppers might be secret paleo followers. Without fail, a carton of ice cream will destroy that curiosity.

One of the group's members is a former vegetarian. (The tension here rises: Vegetarians hate the paleo diet's reliance on fatty meat.) But she adopted the lifestyle to aid her health problems. Her story has since become popular inside the group, as her severe depression cleared when she progressed through the ranks.

Members say it can help with other ailments, too. Libbie, who is tall, lean, sweaty, tattooed and shirtless for this workout session, claims a slight drop in body fat.

"We're really focused on avoiding the diseases of civilization," he says. "We use the term 'diseases of civilization' to refer to at least three prominent conditions: type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity. Our Paleolithic predecessors never had those issues." (No one inside the group challenges such claims by pointing out how much we have yet to learn about said predecessors.)

The degree to which you adapt the principles of the caveman lifestyle to your daily routine becomes important. Some go all the way. For two months now, Born has slept on a flat bed he built from lumber and bamboo purchased at Lowe's. And though it's hard to look past his whistle, he's currently wearing Vibram FiveFingers, glorified foot gloves that are about as close to the barefoot caveman aesthetic as you can get without actually being barefoot.

"I sleep on a flat surface because the people who live in Third World countries do that and have been doing it for a long time," Born says. "They don't have back problems, and reasons like this are probably why. It's only recently that life became so complicated, and we needed all of these extra things."

The last remaining link in the chain of St. Louis enthusiasts reenvisioning the diet as a large-scale lifestyle is simply the need for more links. And that's the hardest part. It's tough to convince people to shirk modern conventions and adopt a diet that can be roughly 50 percent fat — much less to do so while name-dropping cavemen like a Geico pitchman.

"I've found that the more advice I give people, the quicker they just refuse it," Libbie says. "It's not helpful to say, 'Try this instead of what you've been doing your whole life.' I know it sounds crazy, but I also know it worked for me, which makes it harder that I have no idea how to make it work for you."

In the meantime, those who have already been converted are cracking post-workout jokes even as they struggle to breathe without panting. There's a joke about how one dieter shouldn't have eaten so much fat before the workout. There's a one-liner about spears, which early humans used to throw around, much like the weights now spread across the grass. There's some cackling, followed by the collection of those weights and the search to identify and claim the bikes they rode in on.

"Holy crap, who had this weight?" asks a member, who has picked up what is easily the most awkward piece. "This is almost Neanderthal."

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2011...c-diet-cavemen/

#3 ^

Fri, Sep-16-11, 21:04

Voo36

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Now that is interesting! Thanks for sharing

I've often wondered if a person could eat our modern fast-food diet and not gain weight... IF they had to kill a cow, grind the meat, raise and grind the grain, and raise a garden full of tomatoes, lettuce and cucumbers

#4 ^

Sat, Sep-17-11, 05:22

girlgerms

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Yep, I agree, I have found many paleos very religious about it, aint that ironic?!

#5 ^

Sun, Sep-18-11, 05:45

WereBear

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People are always looking for something to join. This is the popularity of cults of all kinds; a framework to fit oneself into that answers all your questions.

While I am subject to great bursts of enthusiasm myself, I've never been prone to just plugging myself into someone else's framework. But some people love not having the responsibility of figuring out their own life.

That's where I place such all encompassing obsessions; gee, I eat Primal, but no one will pry my computer from my hands...

#6 ^

Fri, Nov-11-11, 13:04

Demi

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Feast Like a Caveman and Watch the Pounds Melt Away

Quote:

November 11, 2011

Feast Like a Caveman and Watch the Pounds Melt Away

During the Paleolithic period, many thousands of years ago, people ate primarily vegetables, fruit, nuts, roots and meat—and a wide variety of it.

Today, these staples have been largely replaced with refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, cereal, bread, potatoes and pasteurized milk products… and a much narrower selection of fruits, vegetables, roots and nuts.

While we may consider ourselves to be at the pinnacle of human development, our modern food manufacturing processes have not created a race of super-humans in possession of great health and longevity.

Quite the contrary...

Humans today suffer more chronic and debilitating diseases than ever before. And there can be little doubt that our food choices play a major role in this development.

Can a Stone Age Diet Make You Healthier?

CBS recently ran an excellent series of reports about the Paleolithic diet movement. Of the mainstream press, Dr. Kim Mulvihill was the sole member present at the recent Ancestral Health Symposium in Los Angeles. She ended up taking part in Dr. Lynda Frassetto's scientific study on the Paleo diet herself.

As reported on CBS:

"You can eat anything that would be able to be eaten without being processed," explained Dr. Lynda Frassetto. That means no grains, no bread, and no [pasteurized] dairy but does include lots of fruits and vegetables, some nuts and oils and lots of fish, poultry and lean meats.

... Dr. Frassetto and her team at the University of California in San Francisco tested the Paleo-diet on out-of-shape volunteers. The group ate lots of food without losing any weight or exercising. "In two weeks, everybody's blood pressure went down and everybody's cholesterol and triglyceride levels got better. The average drop was 30 points, which was pretty amazing. It's the type of drop you get by taking statins for six months," said Dr. Frassetto.

Dr. Frassetto says Paleo foods, also known as the caveman diet, works by keeping your body's chemistry in better balance. The goal of the caveman diet is to reduce excess body fat, aid in the normalization of blood sugar levels and reduce toxins and anti-nutrients."

"Normalizing" your system is the true strength of the so-called caveman diet. By eating foods that are concordant with your genetic ancestry, you can avoid many of the diseases associated with our modern diet. As Dr. Loren Cordain, author of The Paleo Diet andone of the world's leading experts on Paleolithic nutrition, states:

"The nutritional qualities of modern processed foods and foods introduced during the Neolithic period are discordant with our ancient and conservative genome. This genetic discordance ultimately manifests itself as various chronic illnesses, which have been dubbed "diseases of civilization." By severely reducing or eliminating these foods and replacing them with a more healthful cuisine, possessing nutrient qualities more in line with the foods our ancestors consumed, it is possible to improve health and reduce the risk of chronic disease."

Why the Paleo Diet Works for Weight Loss

A common "side effect" of rebalancing your body's chemistry is weight loss, as the two tend to go hand-in-hand. One explanation for this is that you don't really get fat from eating too much and exercising too little. Nor do you get fat from eating fat.

So what does cause your fat tissue to accumulate and hold on to fat?

In a word: carbohydrates.

In essence, overeating and excess weight could be viewed as a symptom of an improper diet, because when you consume too many sugars and carbs, you set off a cascade of chemical reactions in your body that makes you hungry and craving for sweets:

1. First, fructose is metabolized differently from glucose, with the majority being turned directly into fat because stimulates a powerful “fat switch.”

2. This rapidly leads to weight gain and abdominal obesity ("beer belly"), decreased HDL, increased LDL, elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar, and high blood pressure—i.e., classic metabolic syndrome.

3. Dietary carbohydrates, especially fructose, are also the primary source of a substance called glycerol-3-phosphate (g-3-p), which causes fat to become fixed in fat tissue

4. At the same time, high carb intake raises your insulin levels, which prevents fat from being released

5. Fructose further tricks your body into gaining weight by turning off your body's appetite-control system. Fructose does not suppress ghrelin (the "hunger hormone") and doesn't stimulate leptin (the "satiety hormone"), which together result in feeling hungry all the time, even though you've eaten. As a result, you overeat and develop insulin resistance, which is not only an underlying factor of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but also many cancers

The resulting equation is simple: fructose and dietary carbohydrates (grains, which break down into sugar) lead to excess body fat, obesity and related health issues. Furthermore, no amount of exercise can compensate for this damage because if you eat excessive fructose and grains—the primary ingredients NOT found in the Paleo diet—it will activate programming to cause your body to become, and remain, fat.

Fructose and High Blood Pressure

As mentioned earlier, the Paleo diet can be very effective for reducing blood pressure, cholesterol and triglyceride levels—more effective, in fact, than a statin drug. According to Dr. Frassetto, people can see a 30 point drop in cholesterol in just two weeks!

That really is quite remarkable.

It is, however, also quite understandable once you realize that fructose is a major promoter of hypertension—far more so than salt. The connecting link between fructose consumption and hypertension lies in the uric acid produced. Uric acid is a byproduct of fructose metabolism, and increased uric acid levels drive up your blood pressure.

Excess sugars (including grains) also promote unhealthy cholesterol levels and raise triglyceride levels.

How does it do this?

Dr. Stephanie Seneff explained this in some detail in a previous interview. In summary, when you eat a diet high in fructose and other sugars, it over-taxes your liver as it cannot properly make cholesterol while simultaneously processing fructose (which it turns into fat). As a result, you end up with impaired cholesterol formation, which can eventually lead to a cholesterol- and cholesterol sulfate deficiency. At that point, your body begins to form arterial plaque to compensate for this deficiency, because your platelets can produce the cholesterol sulfate your heart and brain needs within that plaque. It's a sort of backup mechanism to maintain proper heart- and brain function.

Unfortunately, it's not an ideal backup mechanism because arterial plaque also increases your risk for heart- and vascular disease. So truly, you'll want to avoid forcing your body to resort to these measures in the first place, and the way you do that is by feeding it correctly... This is yet another important detail that explains how and why excessive fructose consumption is so detrimental to your health.

As you can see, simply cutting out fructose and grains from your diet effectively eliminates one of the underlying causes of a number of health problems, including:

• Hypertension

• Insulin resistance

• High cholesterol

• High triglycerides

• Overweight

... and that's one of the primary reasons the Paleo and other low-carb diets work so well.

The Diet that May Beat All Others...

While you wouldn't be able to find many of the wild varieties of plant foods eaten by cavemen even if you wanted to, you can certainly mold your diet around the principles of Paleo eating rather easily by following my nutrition plan.

I believe it to be one of the most profound interventions for the 21st century. Quite simply, we've strayed too far from the foods we are designed to eat, so going back to basics and refocusing your diet on fresh, whole, unprocessed, "real" food can improve just about anyone's health. The full details are outlined in my nutrition plan, but generally speaking a "healthy diet" is qualified by the following key factors:

• Unprocessed whole foods

• Often raw or only lightly cooked (ideally, try to eat at least one-third of your food raw, or as much as you can manage)

• Organic or grass-fed, and free from additives and genetically modified ingredients

• Come from high-quality, local sources

• Carbohydrates primarily come from vegetables (except corn and potatoes, which should typically be avoided)

The Case for Moving Like a Hunter-Gatherer Too...

Going back to our roots in terms of what we eat is about 80 percent of the battle and subsequent reward in terms of improved health. But there's a lot to be said about moving like a hunter-gatherer too. Instead of being sedentary for much of the day and then running for an hour on a treadmill, our ancient ancestors combined lots of walking with regular lifting and short bursts of high-intensity activities, and health experts agree that this may be a healthier way to live because this is what your body is "wired" for.

http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite...1111110719.html

Click on the link above to view the CBS videos:

Part One: Caveman Trend Starting to Catch Fire
Part Two: Surprising Results from the Caveman Diet
Part Three: Caveman Diet Shows Blood Pressue and Cholesterol Benefits
Part Four: How Realistic is the Caveman Diet at Home?
Part Five: For Some, Caveman Lifestyle Goes Beyond Diet

#7 ^

Fri, Nov-11-11, 13:26

howlovely

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Did I see that right? Are mainstream news sources finally starting to report that it is carbs that make us fat and mess up our cholesterol?

#8 ^

Fri, Nov-11-11, 14:16

aj_cohn

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Not too shabby, but coming from Dr. Mercola, I had a higher expectation than I do from the MSM. The author missed the other primary function of insulin, though: making cells take up fat. This notion of eating 1/3 of your food raw is a zombie: it's been killed multiple times but refuses to die.

Most importantly, the article ignores the proverbial "elephant in the room": If you cut down on carbs, you must eat more saturated animal fats. I know the vegetarians will take issue with that, but the weight of the evidence supports this idea. I'm really disappointed in Mercola for ignoring this issue.

Last edited by aj_cohn : Fri, Nov-11-11 at 15:03.

#9 ^

Fri, Nov-11-11, 18:44

Ilikemice

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Quote:

Originally Posted by aj_cohn

I agree, but when it comes to fighting the conventional wisdom, one must tread carefully, one step at a time; any implication that evilsaturatedfats are actually beneficial will immediately cast doubt and throw these ideas into wacko territory in the general public's mind (and also open up for attacks from nutritionists, etc.) Changes in attitudes must sometimes inch along at a snail's pace.

#10 ^

Fri, Nov-11-11, 22:50

aj_cohn

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We shouldn't set people up to fail. Dr. Kim Mulvhill and Dr. Mercola are doing just that by emphasizing only one part of the paleo diet: reducing carbs. Without fat, you're going to be mighty hungry. If carbs are the only fuel source you know, then that's what you'll eat.

*That* will discredit the paleo diet quicker than the truth.

#11 ^

Sat, Nov-12-11, 06:38

WereBear

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I used to like Dr Mercola, but he dangles just enough of the truth to suck people in... there are far better sources out there.

#12 ^

Sun, Nov-13-11, 02:54

Demi

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Eat Like A Caveman To Lose Weight

Quote:

November 12, 2011

Eat Like A Caveman To Lose Weight

Researchers from UCSF say that their research has shown people on a diet of high protein and plenty of vegetables show dramatic health improvements, including weight loss without exercising profusely and lower blood pressure. In short it's the diet of our caveman ancestors thousands of years ago who were what is termed "Hunter Gathers".

Dr. Tim White a paleobiologist from University of California Berkley says :

"Our Biology is still basically the same biology that we had as hunters and gathers 100,000 years ago in Africa."

Dr. White says that the constant physical activity that cavemen had to undertake to hunt and find food, not to mention cutting up animals or pounding grains or root vegetables to make the edible, using only very basic tools, kept them fit, lean, muscular and active. Their diet consisted of large amounts of lean meat, and basic vegetables. Fruits would have been highly seasonable and salt, pure sugar, and large amounts of carbohydrates in their diets pretty much impossible.

The problem today is that we just consume whatever and whenever we want, and generally speaking the food is heavily processed and high in sugar and salt compared to anything natural our ancestors would have eaten.

Dr. White continues :

"We don't have to pound it, we don't have to cut it, we don't have to break into the bones, we just consume it and there is very little energy that goes into that consumption ... and we are paying an enormous health cost for that."

Dr. White didn't want to confirm that obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and cancer are directly caused by poor diet, his area of specialty is not concerned with the present day. However, researchers at University of California San Francisco tested out the diet on volunteers.

Dr. Linda Frasetto, MD. and her team selected people who were unhealthy in one way or another. They were given a specific diet of lean meat, fish, fresh fruits and vegetables. The diet includes only healthy fats, such as those in nuts and seeds, as a caveman faced with an entire carcass and no refrigerator would have been likely to go only for the best cuts in as much quantity as he could physically eat before the meat went rotten or attracted scavengers or predators.

Frasettoconfirmed the results :

"Everyone's blood pressure went down. In two weeks everybody's cholesterol and triglycerides got better and the average drop was 30 points ... That's the kind of drop you get by taking Statins for six months. "

Robert Lustig, MD. an endocrinologist at UCSF, said that people on the diet have experienced a regression of their diabetes as a result, to the point they are effectively cured.

Dr. Kim Mulvihill, a reporter from CBS tried the diet herself and doctors recommended she should stay on the diet permanently. Her cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar levels dropped dramatically over a few weeks. After seven weeks she was no longer pre-diabetic, and by combining the so called paleo diet with a weight loss program she lost thirty pounds.

Robert Lustig, MD. says :

"The bottom line is we are killing ourselves ... We have 66 million obese adults and 20 million obese kids in this country ... They are not all going to go on the Paleolithic diet."

He says the solution is not to be extreme, rather to get back to basics, effectively run our bodies on the correct fuel they were designed to burn :

"Low Sugar, High fibre and you've got it nailed. That's something you can do and its called ... Eat ... Real ... Food."

The one thing you can't really do is to be on the paleo diet and vegetarian, because so much of the diet comes from meat and fish.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/237563.php

#13 ^

Sun, Nov-13-11, 12:01

aj_cohn

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If "Their diet consisted of large amounts of lean meat, and basic vegetables," then they would have starved. Other studies have determined that Paleo humans' diet was much higher in fat, with hunters/warriors of tribes being allocated the majority of that.

As I mentioned in another article that cited this study, leaving fat out of the equation sets people up to be hungry, and therefore to fail.

#14 ^

Mon, Nov-14-11, 06:01

Ron_Mocci

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aj_cohn , You are so right ! that was the first thing I seen * were is the fat *

#15 ^

Sat, Dec-03-11, 10:34

Demi

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Diet like a caveman

Quote:

December 1, 2011

Diet like a caveman

Many modern-day diets look to prepared low-fat, high protein or low-calorie options as the ideal way to lose weight, but what if you could lose weight without any of these strategies? Instead of buying packaged “diet” foods, people would go outside and fetch dinner for themselves, like hunters and gatherers of the Stone Age did to survive.

William R. Leonard, anthropology chair of the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University, said reverting back to a Paleolithic diet could be the answer to our country’s health problems.

After studying biology at Penn State University and earning his Ph.D. in biological anthropology from the University of Michigan, Leonard has spent his career studying human evolution and ecology. He talks about Paleolithic diets and the Discovery Channel’s “I Caveman,” a show he helped orchestrate along with doctoral candidate Aaron A. Miller that features 10 people who lived on a diet of meats, fish, fruits, vegetables roots and nuts in Colorado.

Q. Tell us about your research. What drew you to studying Paleolithic diets?

A. My research examines how human populations, in the past and today, adapt to the particular stressors of their environments, and how these adaptations influence their biology and health. Much of my work particularly focuses nutritional and metabolic adaptations: how do populations adjust to constraints or abundance in food availability, and what are the implications for various aspects of health and wellbeing (for example, child growth, obesity, or malnutrition, chronic diseases).

To date, I have worked with 'traditional' farming populations of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, animal herding groups of Siberia and farmer and foragers of the jungles of Bolivia. In each place, many of the basic research questions have been the same: how have these populations adapted to their particular dietary and nutritional environments, and how ongoing patterns of lifestyle change and 'modernization' influences their diets and nutritional health.

Beyond the field research portion of my work, I also draw on comparative information from other primates and the human fossil record to model how our ancestors lived and survived in the past. What is clear is that food and nutrition were critically important factors that promoted the evolution of many unique human characteristics: for example, our big brain and our upright, 'bipedal' locomotion.

Ultimately, these are the issues that drew me to study Paleolithic diets. Seeing that nutrition has been such an important force of human evolution, and seeing that an evolutionary perspective on nutrition can also be helpful for understanding and dealing with modern day health problems like obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases.

Q. What were your findings?

A. Broadly, our work has shown that throughout most of our evolutionary past and among tradition subsistence-level (i.e., food producing) populations today, food availability was marginal, and populations had to work much harder to obtain food and stay alive. Our work with traditional foraging, farming and herding populations has shown that these populations typically expend more calories over the course of a day than people in modern, urban societies.

These differences between 'traditional' and 'modern' life ways were clearly evident in the 'I Caveman' project. Over only a 10-day period, the group members lost an average of 13.6 pounds. Part of this weight loss reflected limited food availability; however, part of it also reflected the fact that they were spending many more calories living as Stone Age hunter-gatherers (an extra 500 calories a day for the men, and an extra 250 to 300 calories a day for the women).

Q. What exactly is a Paleolithic diet, and how can it be translated to modern-day eating?

A. Paleolithic diet refers to dietary patterns of human hunting and gathering populations from the Stone Age (up to 10,000 years ago). The term was coined in a famous paper from the New England Journal of Medicine in 1985.

The reconstruction of Paleolithic diets potentially gives us an idea about what humans were eating throughout most of our evolutionary history. This is the central idea of evolutionary approaches to health and nutrition: that many of our health problems today reflect an imbalance between our current dietary and lifestyle patterns and the conditions we adapted to throughout most of our evolutionary history.

Q. Tell us about the television show, 'I Caveman.' How did it work?

A. The program was shot out in Colorado. For the program, 10 people (six men and four women) were selected and provided with training in basic tool making, how to make fire and foraging hunting strategies. They were given traditional and primitive clothing, like skins and hide boots. For 10 days, they lived as Stone Age hunter-gatherers, using basic Paleolithic technology to obtain food.

There was at least one camera crew on the group at all times. I served as the expert on nutrition and health. Before they started, we collected baseline nutrition and health measures (like height, weight, percentage of body fat, resting metabolism, grip strength, blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose and hemoglobin levels). We then collected the same measurements at the end to see how well they did.

Two of the participants (one man and one woman) did not complete the entire 10-day experiment. We measured them immediately after they quit.

Q. How do you hope to expand your research?

A. We have continuing research among rainforest populations of Bolivia and among indigenous horse and reindeer herders of Siberia. In both places we are tracking how people's health changes over time in response to changes in lifestyle and environment.

There is talk of doing another 'I Caveman'-type show, in a different environment.

Q. How does your research relate to the obesity crisis in the United States? Why do you think Americans are so obese?

A. Rates of obesity in U.S. adults today are about 33 percent, which is 2.5 to three times what it they were in the 1960s. In discussing our obesity problem, most of the attention is focused on food intake alone. This is certainly a problem. However, the available data indicate the calorie intakes have increased only modestly over the last 40 to 50 years. What are generally ignored are changes in activity and energy expenditure.

This is where the evolutionary/Paleolithic perspective is helpful. It highlights the fact that our obesity problem is not simply a problem of too much food or what we eat, but also a problem of limited activity and exertion in our daily lives. So many of the elements of our modern lives, like cars, elevators, dishwashers, heating and cooling our houses, reduce the energy, or calories, we spend just to stay alive.

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu....aspx?id=197182