Quote:
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).
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Remember what Taubes said about obesity? It occurs over several years and the caloric balance can be off by as little as 20 kcals per day. The implication here, of course, is that cavemen expended about 10 more calories per day, and ate about 10 less calories per day. It's absurd and obviously doesn't fit the idea that "food availability was marginal, and populations had to work much harder to obtain food."
The reality is that food availability was not marginal as a rule, but instead depended on local conditions. The I Caveman show showed that food was scarce here, but go just a few miles that way, and elk was abundant. It makes sense. Elk go where food is, cavemen go where elk go. It was the same before hunting. We scavenged so we went where predators went. Due to the nature of hunting and scavenging, even if it's very expensive in terms of energy cost, the product provides literally a surplus of energy which we can store after only the most basic processing. After all, fat is the most stable form of biological fuel storage we know. This would probably still be true outside of the body.
I understand how it's easier to explain it all with calories. If our modern cavemen lost weight during the show because of Ein-Eout, then we can continue to blame calories for obesity today, and we can keep our paradigm intact, and the Paleo diet becomes much easier to accept. But dig just a little bit, and the whole thing falls apart. If the whole thing falls apart, then the Paleo diet becomes just another fad diet. For the Paleo diet to be taken seriously, it must rely on actual facts, not try to fit the existing paradigm.
Just a few weeks ago, it occurred to me that the Paleo diet in its most popular incarnation looks almost exactly like a generic Mediterranean diet: Lean meats, fruits and vegetables, nuts and healthy fats. I digress, but this is just another example of the Paleo diet trying to fit the existing paradigm instead of trying to fit the facts.
Notice how when they quartered the elk, they showed the big guy carrying a leg to the camp. The reality is that a caveman would have taken the skin and the back fat if he couldn't have taken the whole animal back to the camp.