I found this article very interesting. I just posted part of it, most of the rest of it is promoting his book.
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I’m always amused when I hear critics call "low carb" a fad diet. Think about it: the human genus has been on the planet for 2.4 million years, yet agriculture wasn’t invented until 10,000 years ago. So up until what is actually a millisecond in the 24 hour time clock of mankind’s history, we didn’t even have cultivated crops like wheat and corn, and up until recently there was no such thing as the processed and packaged foods that now constitute the mainstay of our diet. Fast food? Fuggedaboutit. McDonald’s didn’t exist till the 1950’s. And our cavemen ancestors certainly didn’t eat low-fat wooly mammoths or hunt low-fat caribou. So when you think about it, the low-fat high-carb diet recommended by "experts" for the last 20 years is the biggest nutritional experiment in history. And, if you hadn’t noticed, it hasn’t exactly turned out very well. Our ancestors ate foods they could hunt, fish, gather or pluck: basically meats, fish, roots, shoots, nuts and berries. In a very real sense, low carb is anything but a fad diet. What it really is, is a return to the diet of our ancestors, a way of eating far more in tune with our genetic makeup and far more likely to keep us leaner and healthier.

Jonny Bowden is a certified nutritionist, longtime personal trainer and associate editor of Total Health magazine. He has been answering reader questions on weight loss, exercise and nutrition for the last three years on his weekly iVillage column and has the most highly rated daily online radio show on e-yada. Jonny and his wife live in New York City.

Great article Cara73, thank you! I believe in the caveman way of eating!!!

That was very interesting. Thanks.

I saw this guy on MSNBC or some such show oncce and was I impressed!

He HAS researched and knows one plan from another. And I can't remember when any one guest was able to get out so much info in such a short period of time! This man can talk fast! He was impressive. I'd like to see every non-LCer read his book....for those of us that do LC "right" it's just an essay on the different plans, but for the uninformed, I bet it's good.

good point, but they didnt cook in lard or eat mayo or butter or cheese either. and i'd bet they ate mostly the meat of these animals & fed their "pets" the fat.

I don't set much store by the "caveman diet" line of reasoning... while I'd agree that we were not "meant" to be eating refined white flour baked goods loaded with sugar, it doesn't automatically follow that we should revert to a hunter/gatherer diet devoid of cultivated crops.

For the sake of argument, if one believes in creationism by a supreme being, it's certainly possible that we were "meant" to eat crops, too.

Secondly, even if one believes in random chance and natural selection as being the sole and universal explanation for the origin of life on earth, it doesn't follow that the diet eaten by our cro-magnon ancestors is necessarily the best for us today. They had to hunt for their food and got plenty of exercise; we are sedentary. Their evolutionary aim was to have the best chance of survival to childbearing age; our aim is quality of life into old age. They were subject to smallpox and polio; we're more worried about heart disease and cancer. They didn't have medication; we ingest penicillin and a lot of other drugs. So our ideal diet might be different from theirs.

Somebody will almost certainly misunderstand the above as thinking that I'm pushing creationism or bashing LC; I'm not. I'm just saying that what early humans ate is not a sure indication of the "best" modern diet.

diets have not worked in America because people eat too much. It is not rocket science.

All over the world, people maintain all kinds of ways of eating, but they dont get obese because they, willfully or forcedly, control their portions.

Only one problem with the article. People (and the planet) haven't been around for millions of years.....

Well, actually the planet's been around for 4.5 billion years. And as to the exact year homo sapiens showed up, well, fossils of pre-humans have been found going back as far as 3 million years, and all the best data show fossils that are very close to human between 2 and 3 million years ago. I'm not a paleontologist, so I can't quote the exact time without research, but I would expect the author did research and his date of 2.4 million years ago is pretty accurate.

No I mean it hasn't been even around for 1 million years and there's no such thing as 'pre humans'. Man was human from the start.

I don't know about all you folks, but I just LOVE how Christianity and low-carb diets are diametrically opposed.

As for Jonny Bowden, I wonder if he has anything new to offer? From the above, he sounds like the rich low-carb authors, which is his intent, I'm sure.

Just to hijack this thread so it doesn't get beamed to The Lounge (or worse)------->Is there NOTHING new in low-carb knowledge? Must we suffer bandwagon jumpers and charlatans now that low-carb is bankable and totally predictable? Who is doing the work for us now?

T.S. Wiley, where ARE you?


Love, Caveman

The way I look at it, everything we needed to survive was on Earth long before we got here and as humans we have not been on Earth long enough to have evolved to digest all the processed crap sold in the stores and we probably never will. Our bodies were made in a certain way for a REASON.

We were NOT meant to eat that processed crap and it is showing in the rise of obesity rates. I am even shocked when I go out and look around. People are a heck of a lot fatter then they were 30 years ago.

The article is interesting BUT--I think we are a fat race because we are inundated by Crap food in the markets, and we have no stinking will power. We have medicated ourselves with food, rewarded ourselves with food, and have learned this behaviour from our families, friends and the media. As an adult, regardless of what dieting regime you chose, you have to assume responsibility for your consumption, mental well being, and physical well being. As wildcard said "its not rocket science".
Dont get me wrong. I KNOW its hard not to eat that crap staring at you while you walk through the grocery... But your whole being will repay you when you are avoiding those high carb high calorie foods... This forum is great because it gives people the support they need to get through the initial shock to your system when those "cravings" hit you... Some great info in these forums pages... jeepers. how do I always find myself rambling so?... must be a deep seeded issue that I willl want to medicate myself over... Just kidding.
Anyway, my 2 cents...
Scotje

Actually they gave the lean meat to their pets and ate the fat.

It is hard to refute the fact that man's digestive system evolved along the same lines as wolves and certainly not at all like herbivores, whose digestive tract is completely different. That is enough to tell us that humans suffer immensely from digestive disorders (IBS, leaky gut syndrome, acid reflux, gas, bloating, indigestion, not to mention Celiac's Disease by eating the products of agriculture, that are completely cured once a paleo form of low-carb diet is adopted. Not to mention all the people that are allergic to milk and dairy products, which are also the products of agriculture.

Regarding the writing of this book and the comment of repetition and anything new to offer. If that were the case, perhaps we should outlaw gardening books, or cookbooks, or detective novels, for example, because they may have nothing new to offer.

btw Atkins was a bandwagon jumper by your definition Caveman, because there was already lot's written and researched about the low-carb and paleo way of eating before he wrote his first book. In fact, in Scandinavia for several decades, the term "To Bant" referred to dieting according to William Banting.

Oh and Wildcard, regarding your simple comment about eating too much, there is much documented evidence that in countries that adopted the western way of eating (processed) rather than their traditional way of eating (unprocessed) the incidence of obesity went way up. It wasn't because they ate too much, it was WHAT they ate.

But nor did they eat meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I'm sure. I was lucky enough to visit a remote island off Indonesia where the people are still largely hunter-gatherers (they keep chickens and pigs but don't cultivate crops) and from that I know that it takes a group of men 4-7 days to catch enough monkeys to feed their family.
So while Atkins and other LC diets work in the short term because they do fit in with our physiology, I wonder what the long term effects of so much meat are on the system. Come to that, the average caveman didn't live much past the age of 30 so diseases of middle to old age (heart disease, stroke, cancer) would not have been evident.

Christabella