What did Homo sapiens eat? Diet of the Stone Age: how primitive people ate.

Today it is very fashionable to lead a healthy and natural lifestyle. People tend to be closer to nature. And, of course, preference is given to everything natural.

The so-called " stone age diet". She gained particular popularity in Europe and America. Even many Hollywood stars got hooked on it. One of the founders of this direction is Prof. State University Colorado Laurent Cordain.

main point stone age diets easy to understand from its name. So, it implies eating only those foods that were part of the diet of ancient people who lived in the Stone Age. As you know, ancient people obtained food by gathering and hunting. Agriculture and animal husbandry were still in their infancy.

Many scientists believe that such nutrition is very beneficial for the health of modern man. Compliance stone age diets does not require constant calorie counting. Also not limited total amount food, which is very important for us women who are used to eating well and often.

You can follow this type of diet for a long time. And this is due to the fact that all the proposed stone age diet foods are diverse, they contain all the substances that our body needs daily.

Primitive Diet: The Stone Age Diet

It may not sound surprising, but the diet of primitive man was quite diverse. The food consumed a lot of fiber, vitamins and antioxidants. Paleolithic people ate a large amount of vegetables and fruits every day. These foods contain phytonutrients and antioxidants. These substances protect against various diseases, even cancer and problems with the cardiovascular system.

Beans were also a great source of fiber, which is essential for good digestion. Ancient people hunted wild animals and birds and ate their meat. The amount of protein in their diet was about 35%. Moreover, this meat was drier and contained healthy omega-3 fats.

Eating nuts provided the body with healthy fats and various nutrients. Also, our distant ancestors ate a variety of herbs, roots and tubers. Only healthy wild honey was used as a sweetener.

It should be noted that all these products were consumed in raw form. Of course, they also absolutely lacked any chemical additives.

It is important that then there was a different ratio of plant and animal food. Ancient people received 65% of all energy from animal food, and 35% from plant food.

In their diet, the proportion of protein was 37%, fat - 22%, and carbohydrates - 41%. Today we get 15% protein, 34% fat and 49% carbohydrates. We can say that a modern person consumes one and a half times more fat. It should be noted that most of them are harmful saturated fats.

Fiber people of the Stone Age per day received more than 100 gr. Modern man does not even reach the norm of 25-30 gr. In addition, in ancient times, people did not salt their food, did not eat mayonnaise, and did not use sugar. All this had a very beneficial effect on their health.

Do's and Don'ts: The Stone Age Diet

At the core proper nutrition, according to stone age diet, lies eating a large number fiber. It can be obtained from unpeeled vegetables and fruits, as well as from herbs, legumes, grains, and root vegetables. Meat, fish, eggs are allowed only in small quantities.

Need to eat as much as possible natural products, without any dyes, preservatives, fragrances and flavoring additives.

First of all, you need to give up sugar and other sweeteners. Vegetable fats and simple carbohydrates should be avoided.

Dairy products cannot be completely abandoned, although they were not in the diet of ancient people. Only saturated milk fats should be avoided. You need to eat the most low-fat foods.

Sample menu for a day on the Stone Age diet

For breakfast - oatmeal porridge on the water, to which you can add raisins, grated apple or concentrated Apple juice and also some cinnamon. Low-fat natural yogurt, fresh berries and nuts are also suitable. You can eat a couple boiled eggs, apple and green salad dressed with olive oil.

Lunch - thick vegetable soup, green vegetable salad, low-fat cottage cheese. You can eat, for example, mushrooms stewed with herbs. Black bread, some nuts are allowed.

Dinner - baked turkey or chicken with stewed vegetables, vegetable curry with brown rice. A salad is suitable, you can eat fruits or berries.

Health Benefits of the Stone Age Diet

This diet helps in the prevention and treatment of diabetes, obesity and several other diseases. improves everything gastrointestinal tract. Relieves constipation. also reduces the risk of oncological diseases. Has a positive effect on cardiovascular system. Allows you to effectively deal with allergic diseases. Increases immunity, makes a person more energetic and active.

Weight Loss: The Stone Age Diet

It also allows you to get rid of obesity. She helps to shed excess weight. However, the person does not experience constant hunger and does not become discouraged by the need to count the calories eaten all the time. Fiber inhibits the absorption of carbohydrates, regulates insulin levels. All this leads to getting rid of excess fat in the body. Fiber also contributes to the feeling of fullness.

Avoiding the consumption of unhealthy fats and sugars also helps to fight obesity effectively. Such weight loss does not harm the body at all. Vice versa, stone age diet aimed at general health improvement. The approximate weight loss is 1-2 kg per week. Weight is reduced slowly but steadily.

The Stone Age diet, or Paleo diet, is the result of many years of research conducted by scientists during archaeological excavations, on expeditions to tribes still living in the Stone Age, as well as in the most modern laboratories.

Bread alone

The essence of the diet is counter-revolutionary. Its creators debunk the achievements of the "great agricultural revolution", thanks to which we learned to grow cereals and turn them into flour and cereals. And they began to eat bread, cereals, and other grain products. It happened about 10 thousand years ago - the time for evolution is negligible. Since then, only 500 generations have changed, which means that we have not had time to adapt to these products. They are strangers to us. And no matter how blasphemous it sounds (especially in Russia), but bread, from the point of view of the creators of the paleo diet, does not bring life, but illness and death.

Ancient people, having taken up agriculture instead of hunting and gathering, learned what obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, infections, caries, anemia caused by iron deficiency, osteoporosis (weakening bone tissue), kidney stones, etc. Their life expectancy has decreased, their height has decreased, and infant mortality has increased. Scientists explain these revolutionary "achievements" primarily by the influence of phytates - substances that are found in cereals and prevent the absorption of many micro and macro elements.

Some believe that in the Stone Age people did not live long and simply fell short of heart attacks and strokes. This is not entirely true: many really died young, but among the ancients there were plenty of “pensioners” over 60 who did not know the current diseases of civilization. This scientific fact. By the way, do not complain about the health and the tribes that have preserved the prehistoric way of life. But as soon as they switch to our diet, they begin to get sick in a “civilized” way.

Better than cattle

It is known that ancient people ate very little salt and did not know sugar at all. In Europe, they met him only 500-600 years ago. Therefore, fans of the Paleo diet avoid both the sugar itself and the products containing it. But the biggest pain point of the paleo diet has to do with meat. Wildlife meat is about 10 times leaner than livestock and contains many of the healthiest omega-3s. fatty acids. Since these acids are absent in the meat of farm animals due to feed, they are 10-12 times less in our diet than omega-6 acids. And in the Stone Age they were equally divided. How do Paleo fans solve this problem today? They choose lean meat (although it does not completely replace game) and consume fish and seafood rich in omega-3s.

These protein products- the most important in the diet, since, according to scientists, ancient people received 65% of calories from animal food and only 35% from plant food. But the children of the Stone Age also complained about the gifts of nature, because while the men were hunting, the women were gathering fruits, vegetables, berries, nuts. All these are necessary components of the diet, they can be eaten without restriction. They give us a boost of vitamins, antioxidants, fiber and more. the most useful substances, and also do not allow the body to "turn sour", prevent the acid load on the kidneys. The fact is that bread, cereals, cheeses, fatty meats, pickles and smoked meats acidify the body, contributing to the development of hypertension, the occurrence of strokes, asthma, osteoporosis and the formation of kidney stones. And vegetables and fruits protect against this bunch of diseases.

For those who do not believe in the Paleo diet, its developer Professor Lorraine Corden advises a simple test: reduce the consumption of grain products, replacing them with vegetables, fruits, lean meats and seafood. And then assess your health.

By the way

The principles of the Paleo diet: the consumption of lean meat, fish, seafood, vegetables and fruits is not limited; avoid bread, cereal products, beans, dairy and food products made industrially.

Sample menu for the day for a young active woman doing fitness

(daily requirement 2200 kilocalories)

PD 1(17) Secrets of dietetics

Nutrition of primitive man

nutritionist, GBUZ of the city of Moscow Psychiatric hospital No. 13 of the Department of Health of the city of Moscow "

The dietology of ancient man is intuition. It was this feeling that guided our ancestors, helped them choose the right food (meat, fresh and frozen blood of animals, fermented foods, etc.), and learn new ways of cooking.

In turn, the expansion of the diet, the introduction of such products as animal meat, receiving with food required amount proteins of animal origin, fats and carbohydrates, vitamins and microelements contributed to the socio-cultural and intellectual development of mankind.

The upper limit of the described period, which marks the beginning of a new time in the history of mankind, is considered to be the beginning of the retreat of the glacier, which occurred 12-19 thousand years ago. According to archaeological periodization, this is the time of the Upper Paleolithic (colloquially, the Stone Age), according to geological periodization, the final period of the Würm, or Vistula, glaciation (on the territory of Eastern Europe the term "Valdai glaciation" is also applied to it) Quaternary period Cenozoic era.

The social function of food

What did Stone Age people eat, what did their food consist of, how did they prepare and store it? Unfortunately, researchers of ancient times paid little attention to such important issues. However, these areas are seen as extremely important.

The social function of food seems to be the key to understanding the process of formation of ancient societies, in which many traditions and rituals of a much later time, up to the present, are rooted. It is extremely difficult to understand them without referring to the origins. The history of nutrition shows that food and the traditions associated with it contributed to the establishment of social relations to no less extent than their work activities.

Directions that reveal the topic of food consumption by an ancient person can be divided into three groups. The first, the simplest, is related to what primitive people ate. The second and third are more complex: how ancient people prepared and preserved food. These three areas will be discussed below.

WHAT DO THE PRIMARY PEOPLE EAT?

Diet evolution

Enough long period ancient man ate fruits, leaves and grains. Confirmation of his vegetarianism is found in the remains of the teeth of ancient people and in some indirect evidence, for example, about the absence of large groups of ancient people necessary for hunting animals.

Then climate change led to a reduction plant food, and man was forced to eat meat, which in the Paleolithic era formed the basis of his diet. And finally, climate change after the retreat of the last glacier led to the fact that the human diet was significantly diversified - meat and plant foods were supplemented with seafood and fish.

We propose to consider key points in the formation of the diet ancient man from the moment when plant food was not enough for him.

HUNT FOR THE MAMMOTH

Most often, people followed the laws of logic and practice - they got food and ate what was found and was nearby, close to the habitat - "housing". It is known that ancient people tried to settle near places convenient for finding food, for example, near water bodies where herds of animals gathered. It is believed that mammoths were one of the most important food sources of ancient man. Mammoth in terms of nutrition attracted people with a mass of meat and fat, the latter, most likely, was indispensable for ancient man. Since the beginning of the melting of the glacier, which finally receded in the 10th millennium BC, partial changes have occurred in the meat diet of ancient man. The climate becomes milder, and where the glacier has receded, new forests and lush vegetation appear. is changing and animal world. Large animals of previous eras are disappearing - mammoths, woolly rhinos, some species of musk ox, saber-toothed felines, cave bears and other large animals. For your information, Russian scientists currently do not give up hope of cloning an ancient representative of the elephant family. The project "Mammoth Revival" was created - this is a joint brainchild of the Yakutsk Research Institute of Applied Ecology of the North of the North-Eastern Federal University and the Korean Foundation for Biotechnological Technologies Soom Biotech.

Switching to meat

Thanks to the “instinct for perfection inherent in human nature”, a person began to produce tools and switched to a meat diet, notes the French philosopher, lawyer, political figure Jean Antelme Brillat-Savarin in 1825 in his treatise "Physiology of Taste". The transition to meat food was a natural process, since “a person has too small a stomach for plant food to give enough nutrients”, proteins, fats, in fact, energy for life.

A special role in the formation public behavior in human culture, meat was assigned, since meat has retained a special place in nutrition since ancient times.

A lot of meat

Of course, the ancient man consumed meat and, apparently, a lot. Evidence of this is a significant accumulation of animal bones throughout the habitat of ancient man. Moreover, this is not a random collection of bones, since researchers find traces of stone tools on the bones; these bones were carefully processed, removing meat, and often crushed - the intramedullary marrow, apparently, was very popular with our ancestors.

Hunting was sometimes supplemented by the gathering of berries, plant roots, bird eggs, but it did not play a significant role. These data indicate that the assumption of an exclusively meat diet of ancient people has quite real grounds and that such food may be quite sufficient. If numerous peoples of the North could and can survive at the present time only on meat food, then this means that ancient man could survive only on meat food.

For people of the late Paleolithic era, wild animal meat was the basis of the food system and existence. All these animals - wild bulls, bears, elks, deer, wild boars, goats and others - for many nations today are the basis of everyday nutrition.

An important role in the diet of ancient people was played by the blood of animals, which they consumed both as fresh and as part of more complex dishes. Modern scientists have confirmed that, with an exclusively meat diet, it is an invaluable supplier of vitamins and minerals.

Animal fat, subcutaneous and visceral, playing significant role in the diet of ancient people. For example, in the conditions of the Far North, fat was indispensable and often was the only source of various necessary for the body substances.

Plant foods in the diet

Researchers of primitive society now have no doubt that food plant origin and the method of obtaining it - gathering, as well as meat food and the method of obtaining it - hunting, occupied a special place in the life of ancient man.

There is indirect evidence of this: the presence of plant food residues on the teeth of fossil skulls, the medically proven human need for the intake of a number of substances contained primarily in plant foods. Moreover, in order to move to agriculture in the future, a person had to have an established taste for food of plant origin.

Vegetable food was indispensable for primitive man. Ancient physicians and philosophers wrote many works on certain types vegetable food. Based on written evidence from a later era and the surviving practice of eating certain types of wild plants, we can say that plant foods were varied.

For example, ancient authors testify to the benefits and wide application in that period of acorns. So, Plutarch extols the virtues of the oak, arguing that "of all wild trees, the oak bears the best fruit." Not only was bread baked from his acorns, but he also provided honey to drink.

The medieval Persian physician Avicenna, in his treatise, also writes about healing properties acorns to help various diseases, in particular in diseases of the stomach, bleeding, as a remedy for various poisons. He notes that there are "people who are accustomed to eating acorns, and even make bread from them, which does not harm them, and benefit from it."

Ancient ancient authors also mention arbutu, or strawberries, as the main advantages. This is a plant whose fruits are somewhat reminiscent of strawberries. Another heat-loving wild plant known since ancient times is the lotus. The root of this plant, round, the size of an apple, is also edible.

Variety in nutrition

As we can see, the food of ancient man was represented by both meat products and vegetable products. Perhaps he quite consciously diversified his diet, supplementing the basic meat food with plant foods. This leads to the idea that the diet of ancient man was not so monotonous. He certainly had taste preferences. His food was not directed solely at satisfying hunger.

By the end of the Paleolithic, the first "food" differentiation and the associated features of the socio-cultural development of ancient people took shape. This moment is especially important for the subsequent history of human nutrition.

First, it clearly shows the relationship between food consumption and lifestyle, culture and in some respects public organization ancient human collective. Secondly, differentiation indicates the presence of preferences, some choice, and not just simple addiction from circumstances.

Understanding benefits and harms

More and more new types of food appeared in the human diet. How did ancient people determine the benefits or harms of food?

This happened in stages. With the advent of fire, a variety of diets arose, especially meat and fish. Then a person formed the concept of taste, what is tasty and what is not tasty. Then came the data from practical life, purely intuitively, and then consciously, what is useful and what is harmful. For example, people used fresh blood, without any understanding, but it saved their lives. We can say that intuitive concepts about "vitaminology" have appeared.

Blood instead of salt

An important issue that needs to be addressed when talking about the nutrition of prehistoric humans concerns salt intake. Primitive people did not need salt and, most likely, did not use it.

Before the transition to agriculture with a predominance of plant foods in his diet, man was content with the salt that he received from the fresh blood of animals. The blood of the animals eaten contains a sufficient amount of necessary natural trace elements and minerals.

consumption of fresh blood and raw meat by primitive people it was necessary even after a person mastered the fire and learned to cook on it, since in cooked meat there is no enough natural salt substitutes.

Numerous testimonies of Russian and foreign travelers of the past indicate that the indigenous inhabitants of the North of Russia, engaged in hunting, did not know salt until the 20th century. So, the "steam" blood of animals among the northern peoples is revered as a delicacy. But they did not use salt and even felt disgust for it.

But the further south, the greater the need for salt. Firstly, this is due to the significant amount of plant foods consumed in the south. BUT Secondly, in itself, life in a hot climate forces the body to consume more salt.

E501 - legacy of ancestors

In ancient times, salt was obtained from ash by burning plants, evaporating salt from spring salt water. The substance obtained by burning plants became widespread in later eras. It is called potash or potassium carbonate, currently registered as food supplement E501 (permitted for use by TR TS 029/2012). Potash is a good natural preservative, and they often replaced salt in cases where it was not possible to get it.

With the transition of man to agriculture, the most ancient sources and salt substitutes were not enough. The so-called Neolithic revolution, among other things, meant the end of the “salt-free” existence of a person who was forced to start looking for ways to find and obtain salt for his needs.

Domesticated herbivores could not exist without salt, thus, the extraction of salt in large quantities has become a vital necessity for humans.

PALEOLITHIC COOKING

Piping hot

It was also a necessity for man to discover new ways of cooking - "cooking", if you can apply this word to a person of the Paleolithic era. As a result, the food became more satisfying and plentiful. It became possible to eat all the parts of the animal that were previously thrown away, that is, people began to use the results of production more rationally. Man's influence on food for its transformation began to be of a conscious nature, and was not the use of the situation.

Regarding the methods of cooking, there are enough archaeological and late ethnographic data to restore an objective picture:

• simple frying of meat on an open fire;
• roasting meat in ash;
• roasting meat on coals, in skins, in leaves, clay, in its own shell;
• cooking on hot coals;
• cooking meat by holding it between hot stones;
• cooking in dishes made from animal skins, parts of their body (for example, stomach, gall and Bladder), recesses hollowed out of wood, woven from different parts plants - bark, stems, branches of vessels, natural vessels - shells, skulls, horns.

Archaeological evidence indicates the presence various types Cooking ovens in the late Paleolithic era:

• cooking in dug holes in the ground, where a fire was made from above;
• cooking in pits dug in the ground, where a fire was first made and, after the fire burned out, the ashes were raked up to the walls, and food for cooking was laid out on the liberated bottom;
• pits - stoves lined with stones.

Bonfires were often fueled by the bones of the animals themselves, especially in winter time when it was more difficult to get a tree in cold regions, as well as in those regions where there was a shortage of wood.

The conscious transformation of food, in addition to the physiological benefits of better absorption of nutrients, has also affected physical development a person, and this could not but lead to the appearance of a taste for food, the desire to diversify it for pleasure.

FOOD STORAGE

Delicacies of the Ancients

Ancient and simplest way food processing without the use of any additional devices is associated with its fermentation and fermentation. Moreover, initially this happened without the addition of salt or other reagents that provoke and enhance the process. This method of cooking led to softening and improving its taste, increasing the shelf life of products, even turning inedible into edible. This method of cooking was very common among primitive tribes, and meat, fish, and plants were prepared in this way.

Everything is suitable for fermentation: herbs, and meat, and individual parts of animals, and fish, even the blood of animals. Of course, you will not find archaeological traces of the fermentation of products in the primitive era. But the fact that this method of harvesting products has been preserved among many peoples of the world is hardly accidental.

In Russia, where for a rather long period in most regions there was a shortage of fresh vegetables and fruits, a method of fermentation of food products was mastered. The famous sauerkraut is an indispensable source of vitamins in the Russian countryside for almost the entire year, as well as pickled cucumbers, beets, apples, berries, green herbs and other plants remain on our table to this day.

In fairness, let's say that fermenting, for example, fish is customary among many peoples - not only in the Far North and Scandinavia. In Russia, this method of cooking was widespread among the Pomors, who fermented fish in barrels until completely softened. Thus, the fish was not only preserved long time, but also received additional useful properties.

Shark meat is prepared in the same way in Iceland. True, the health benefits of this dish are dubious - the product contains ammonia and smells strongly of it.

In a word, fermentation is a simple technology, the absence of any special devices or additional complex ingredients, even salt, is the maximum affordable way cooking for ancient man.

Technology for the Ages

Another very common way of preserving food, inherited from our ancestors, is freezing.

In ancient times, they were also engaged in food preservation: there were pits around ancient dwellings, which could also be used as a kind of hermetic containers - “canned food”.

Other methods of food processing known to us were widely used - drying and curing of meat, fish and plants.

All the above methods of cooking: on fire, in the likeness of furnaces, in holes dug in the ground, etc., are quite simple, they do not require special vessels.

"Gastronomic" fate of man

Certainly, modern knowledge about the nutrition of ancient man are very limited. More large-scale interdisciplinary work on the study of this issue remains to be carried out, especially since man has changed very much over 10 thousand years. Moreover, it has been scientifically proven that modern world protein, fat and carbohydrate requirements vary from culture to culture. Now it is impossible to restore those foods that made up the food of antiquity: domesticated animals bear little resemblance to their distant ancestors, including chemical composition meat and fat. The same can be said about cultivated plants.

It is impossible not to take into account the changes that have occurred in water, air and other essential elements human habitat. Study of initial stage history of mankind is extremely important for understanding what happened in the future. It was in antiquity that many foundations were laid that determined the further "gastronomic" fate of man. The most important moment here lies in the folding by the end of the Stone Age of a highly developed food system, with certain principles of cooking, adaptations for this and taste preferences. During this period, the foundations were laid social behavior usually associated with the extraction, preparation and eating of food. After all, the relationship between members of the community, a representative of his team with representatives of other teams was based to a large extent on the "food basis".

Intuition - the dietology of the ancients

If we talk about the dietary side, then, of course, there was no need to talk about any dietology at that time. Ancient people purely intuitively, and then consciously used fresh and frozen blood, fermented foods ( sauerkraut, fermented fish products, honey drinks, fresh berries and fruits). There were no data and concepts about the composition of products (proteins, fats, carbohydrates), about its energy value(calorie), about vitamins and minerals, due to the fact that there were no such sciences as chemistry, biochemistry, physics. But the ancient people were already well aware of which products were beneficial to human health, and which ones were harmful.

LIST OF USED LITERATURE

Kozlovskaya M.V. The phenomenon of nutrition in the evolution and history of man, M., 2002. - 30 p.

Kozlov A. I. Food for people, Fryazino, 2005.

Dobrovolskaya M.V. Man and his food, M., 2005.

Kolpakov E. M. Nutrition ancient population European Arctic // In: Scientific and Practical Conference. Nutrition and intelligence. Collection of works. - St. Petersburg. - 2015. - p. 29-33.

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They didn't eat pizza and curry. They didn't know the taste of cake. They hunted for meat, fished, and gathered nuts and berries from the forests. And, according to some sources, the Paleolithic people, who lived between 2.5 million and 10 thousand years ago, observed the most suitable for modern life diet.

The argument in favor of the so-called Paleolithic diet is as follows: human body adapted to life during the Stone Age, and because our genetics have changed very little since then, biologically speaking, we are far more suited to the hunter-gatherer diet that existed before the agricultural revolution.

Specifics may vary depending on the diet variant, but in general it is recommended to avoid dairy and grain-based foods such as pasta, bread or rice, and some versions also ban lentils and beans. Proponents of this diet argue that new diseases - heart failure, diabetes and cancer - arose primarily because of the incompatibility of our modern eating habits with prehistoric anatomy.

But what is the evidence that the food of primitive people suits us better? There are two questions to be answered here. First, is it true that we are biologically identical to Stone Age humans? And if so, then, secondly, does this mean that we should eat the same way? Would such a diet be better for us?

Followers of the Paleo diet say that the reason we have to stick to it is because our bodies, especially our digestive system adapted to this food. It is claimed that the consumption of dairy and other products that were not available before the advent of Agriculture, challenges both evolution and our organism at the same time. A 2012 Polish study estimated that 70% of the energy we need every day in the Western world comes from foods that primitive people ate very rarely or not at all: dairy products, cereals, refined sugar and processed fats.

Evolutionary biologists take a different view. Marlene Zook of the University of Minnesota in the US, author of Paleofantasy, says that because different genes change at different rates, there is no reason to believe that we are genetically identical to people who lived during the Pleistocene era. Evolution doesn't work that way - it doesn't stop by creating " perfect man"Human beings never stopped evolving. As Zouk explains, "Some of the genes we had back in the Pleistocene are the same genes we inherited from living beings whose habitat was the ocean. However, no one suggests that we eat like biofilter animals do."

An example of a relatively recent genetic change that occurred about 7,000 years ago is the so-called persistence of lactase. Infants feed exclusively on milk, but for ancient man, after stopping maternal feeding it became an unusual food and could cause stomach pain and diarrhea. People began to raise cattle for meat and skins rather than for milk. But those who managed to digest dairy products without experiencing discomfort could drink cow's milk. This gave them an evolutionary advantage: they received not only an additional source of food, but also a clean drink. And they survived by passing on to their children a variant of the gene that helps digest milk. Everything large quantity adults could drink milk, different places- to varying degrees.

One way or another, whether we are genetically identical to cavemen or not, there is a possibility that the Paleolithic diet is still more beneficial for us. Few would argue that constantly eating refined foods is not very healthy, or that we will only benefit if we eat more fruits and vegetables.

Roughly speaking, if we compare junk food with paleolithic diet, the latter will undoubtedly win. But what if you compare it to a healthy diet?

Only a small part of the research is devoted to this. They suggest that we tend to lose weight faster on the Paleo diet, but most of these studies cover a short period of time, asking participants to stick to the diet for three weeks or so, and there are not very many subjects themselves.

One review provides samples of only 10, 29, 14 and 13 people. It's not always easy to convince people to try this diet. One of the studies ended prematurely because no new participants could be found in six months.

At the beginning of this year, publications appeared claiming that proof had finally been found that we should eat like people of the Stone Age. The reason for such statements was the results of a long-term randomized controlled trial. It took two years, but, compared with the previous ones, - and this is enough long term. The sample was also larger than before. The study involved 70 obese postmenopausal women, average age which was 60 years old.

For two years they followed either the Paleolithic diet or the Scandinavian diet with low content fat, which does not exclude any meals, but emphasizes low-fat dairy products and fiber-rich foods such as whole grain cereals. Within each of the diets, the subjects had to adhere to the given ideal proportions protein, fats and carbohydrates.

And what? Participants in both groups lost weight, but after six months, women on the Paleo diet lost more weight and had thinner waists than women on the Scandinavian diet. It seemed that this diet was better, but then everything changed.

After two years, there was no difference in weight between the two groups. The only difference was in the level of harmful fats in the blood, triglycerides, but within the safe limits. Participants in both groups admitted that these diets were difficult to stick to and most failed to achieve the desired balance of nutrients.

So there is no conclusive evidence yet that we should eat like prehistoric humans.

Of course, there is nothing useful in eating a diet consisting mainly of refined foods, such as White bread and sweet cereals. But that doesn't mean you should avoid all dairy and grains unless you're having some particular problem with them.

In a 2011 three-week study, people admitted that it was difficult to maintain the recommended daily intake of calcium, iron, and fiber with the Paleo diet. But the studies are hard to compare because they don't all study exactly the same diet.

If we are talking about weight loss, the advice will always be boring: eat less and exercise more. Perhaps that is why any diet that offers an alternative looks attractive to us. But, unfortunately, the magic pill has not yet been invented.

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