Excerpt from the book The Paleolithic Solution by Robb Wolf

This book is a story about us. You know, H. Sapiens. It’s also a story of how to optimize our performance, health, and longevity. While combining such monumental plot lines might lead you to believe this is one of those family saga novels that jumps all over in time, don’t worry. This story both starts and ends in the past. However, in order to fully appreciate this story, it is important to replace your current view of “time” with that of certain ancient cultures. The ancients’ view of time worked something like this:

You are in the middle of a river (Time) and facing downstream. The future approaches you from behind . . . only to recede into the past, which actually lies in front of you, moving ever farther away. If you could look far enough downstream you would see the beginning of the stream and, in essence, everything.

This may seem odd and difficult to imagine at first, but as you get deeper into this book, not only will this philosophy make more sense, but you will also see that it is a more accurate description of reality. Think about it like this: Our current worldview is like the “crazy guy” at the bus station. He gets through life, but not very effectively. Once you have a more realistic, past-centric orientation, you will be able to make sense of modern health and disease. And perhaps quit scaring people at the bus stop.

Stop! Savannah Time!

It is our natural birthright to be fit and healthy. Unfortunately, science and medicine have largely missed this point. Researchers look boldly to the future, to new medicines, genetic screening, and surgical procedures, yet never ask the questions, “Why do we need these advances?” and “Is there a simpler, better way to health and wellness?” If they were to ask these questions, they would realize that the key to the puzzle is to start at the beginning. Our health researchers, who currently lack a framework from which to assess the staggering volume of information they generate every day, flounder with basic questions: “What should we eat?” “How much and what types of exercise should we do?” “How can we live a healthy life?” Although these may seem like sound questions for health researchers to ask, the answers constantly change in response to politics, lobbying, and the media. As a result, their recommendations are not based on science, but rather lobbying and political maneuvering.

Our system is confused and broken, and we are being held hostage by an Orwellian nutrition and health research community that lacks a unifying theory to assess the validity of one study over another. They do not even know where to start looking for answers, which makes our “health maintenance system” more parasitic than symbiotic. The worst part is that few people make a real attempt to fix this mess. But who can really blame them. After all, it’s hard as hell to make money off healthy people . . . unless you sell bicycles, running shoes, or teach dance classes.

Is this debacle making any sense? Let me provide an analogy to help explain it a little better. Imagine you have a box full of ceramic fragments, half of which are green and half of which are red. It is your task to put these pieces back together to form the complete, original object. Now, let’s imagine two scenarios. In the first scenario, you know the object you must construct is a bowl composed of only the red ceramic shards. In the second scenario, you have no idea what the object is, and besides that, you must wear glasses that make all the pieces, both red and green, look brown. Do you think it might be tough to complete this task if every bit of information (the ceramic pieces) looked essentially the same and you had no real idea of what you were trying to construct? I think it’s obvious this would be a damn confusing and frustrating situation. Well, it happens to be analogous to our state of affairs in the nutritional sciences, medicine, and most of health research. Everyone has blinders on, every study looks as good as any other, and we have no unifying theory from which to assess our findings. As a result, you constantly receive different information on what is healthy and what is not. One year eggs will save your life, and the next they will put you into the grave.

Need a more concrete example of how this is affecting you? Here is a good one:

Fat Makes You Fat, Right?

Oddly enough, no. Epidemiologists are befuddled by why fat does not make us fat. Ever hear of the French Paradox? Spanish Paradox? The French (and Spanish, and Sardinians, and Greeks) eat far more fat than Americans (while consuming a fraction of the sugar) yet do not get fat, diabetic, or cancerous at the rates we do. Why? Our dieticians tell us we eat too many calories and too much fat. Fat has nine calories per gram, while carbohydrate and protein only have four! Obviously the “fat makes us fat” paradigm is right, isn’t it? Don’t we just need to eat less and make “sensible” food choices? Isn’t this all just a matter of willpower? Does my inner child need a spanking because I fell off another high-carb, low-fat diet? Most people try these “sensible” approaches, fail, and end up fatter, sicker and more despondent than before. Why do all the buzzwords of dietitians (willpower, moderation, manifesting, balance, fiber, counting calories) fail?

Why?

What explains this? Unfortunately, the answer to this question requires yet another question: Are there examples of people who do not suffer from the scourges of cancer, autoimmunity, obesity, diabetes and neurodegeneration? The answer ironically is “yes,” there are people who live free of these diseases. However, when presented with this information, most doctors, dieticians, and researchers ignore it because it challenges the paradigm in which they garb themselves. Little do they know it’s a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Our medical community is naked. So, it’s back to more studies comparing a 15 percent fat diet with a 20 percent fat diet, all with 55–60 percent carbs from whole grains, because everybody knows you would fall over and die without your bran muffin.

Perhaps I should not be so hard on our research community. After all, those pointless studies are good for keeping departments of universities open and well funded. But oddly enough, I am more interested in saving you than keeping these goofballs funded and in tenure-track positions. In order to accomplish this goal of saving your fanny, I must help you face the music, and the song is an old one.

Don’t Confuse Me with the Truth

One might think that people (nutrition scientists included) would find solace in understanding how powerfully our genetic heritage influences both our present and future. But quite to the contrary, this idea generates a remarkable amount of resistance. The answer is too simple, and it annoys some folks that the answers to most of life’s ills lie in our past. For others, it’s uncomfortable to realize that we, H. Sapiens, are a part of nature.

We, like all critters great and small, are bound by our heritage on this planet. This fact has a way of undermining our sense of “beautiful flower” uniqueness, but really it should not. We just need to shift our focus from upstream to downstream and appreciate our remarkable heritage. We (you and me) represent an unbroken lineage of life that extends back to the dawn of time. Pretty cool, no?

Some of you are on board with all this; some are not. Good: don’t believe a thing I say. Instead try what I recommend in the “how-to” section of the book and see if you look, feel, and perform better. That’s a fair proposition, right? Once you see that the Paleo Solution works, you will likely want to know “why.” To address the “whys,” I will build my case throughout the book starting from mechanistic descriptions of disease. You will learn exactly how our modern life causes diabetes, autoimmunity, cancer, neurodegeneration, and infertility. Then you will learn how to avoid or reverse these ills.

Before we get to all that science, I want to look at a little anthropology. Considering I was a biochemist by trade before becoming a strength coach, you might think I would be swayed more by the mechanisms and pathology presented later. I’m not. It’s important for me to cover that material, as it helps you and your doctor make sense of how a Paleo approach can improve your health and reverse disease, but even as a geek, I find the mechanisms and pathology tedious and a little boring. In stark contrast, the anthropology and historical aspects of this story touch something in me besides the intellect, and it moves me. Instead of metabolic pathways, genetics, and biochemistry, we consider living, breathing people and how their diet affected their way of life. This is a microcosm of the world-changing shift all of our ancestors made. A change from millions of years of the hunter-gatherer way of life to the ultimate global experiment: agriculture.

As you will see, this change has been a Faustian bargain, and the Devil has not finished taking his due. Not convinced? Let’s have a few drinks in my hometown of Chico, California, and talk with the experts on this topic.

Agriculture: Get In Early! It’s the next Big Thing! Unlimited Growth Potential! Work from Home!

Chico, California, is a great little college town. The campus is beautiful and partially encircled by the quaint downtown business area. There are a number of great eateries and bars, just the place to do an undergraduate degree in four to seven years. Now, let’s imagine you came to Chico and we went out for a lunch of shrimp cocktails and NorCal margaritas. It's 11am. We have been talking Paleo nutrition throughout the lunch (I know, big yawn, hang with me here) and you are 100 percent tipsy but only 50 percent convinced on this “Paleo diet” thing. You admit that I can spin a damn convincing yarn, but you want to bounce some ideas off folks who are not “zealots” like me. I suggest that we go to the experts on this topic, as the Department of Anthropology is only a short walk across campus.

“Anthropology?” you ask. “Shouldn’t we go to the Nutritional Sciences Department?”

I smile. “Sure, but we will hit that after the Anthropology stop.”

We finish our margaritas (waste not, want not) and embark on our adventure. As luck would have it, most of the Anthropology Department is eating lunch together this day. When we walk in, someone asks, “Can we help you?”

“We need Anthropologists,” I respond. “Now!”

We do not look too dangerous, so these folks invite us to have a seat and to explain what we need. I want to do this in a way that is not leading, as you are only half convinced of this Paleo-craziness, and I ponder my first question carefully. Finally I ask, “What is the single most important event in all of human history? What changed things, for good or ill, more than any other event or occurrence?”

A low murmur builds amid the faculty as they begin weighing potential answers. This goes on for a minute or so before the room quiets and the department chair, a stately woman in her early fifties, announces, “The agricultural revolution.” All heads around the table nod agreement. Your head nods because of the margaritas, but you are drawn in by the consensus. You are not completely out of it, however, and ask an important follow-up question.

“Why? Why is the agricultural revolution so important?”

The faculty murmurs briefly and, again, the department chair replies. “Let’s look at this question in a way that paints human history in a relative scale. If we stood on an American football field (100 yards from end-zone to end-zone) we could represent a timeline of human history in the following way: If we started walking from one end-zone toward the other, we could walk 99.5 yards, and this would represent all of human history except the last 5,000 years or so. . . 99.5 of the 100 yards.

“This is when our genetics were selected for survival in a hunting-gathering lifeway and we were damn good at it. We evolved and adapted to this way of living and the interaction of our genetics and our environment made us who we were, and who we are. Our genetics are virtually identical to those of our early human ancestors from more than 120,000 years ago. The last 10,000 years, the time in which we transitioned from the hunting and gathering lifeway to agriculture, is the last half-yard of our timeline. The last few inches represent television, the Internet, refined vegetable oils, and most of what we take to be “normal” modern living.”

The room falls silent and it’s obvious the department head and the rest of the group are waiting for a response. You are taking all this in and ask another important question. “What happened with this change healthwise? What were we like as hunter-gatherers, and what happened when we changed to agriculture?”

A new surge of discussion, and then the department chair starts in again. “Oh, that’s a great question! Our HG ancestors were remarkably healthy. They were as tall or taller than modern Americans and Europeans, which is a sign they ate a very nutritious diet. They were virtually free of cavities and bone malformations that are common with malnutrition. Despite a lack of medical care, they had remarkably low infant mortality rates, yet had better than 10 percent of their population live into their sixties.

“Historical accounts of contemporary HGs who were studied by explorers and anthropologists show these people to be virtually free of degenerative disease such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. They also showed virtually no near-sightedness or acne. Our HG ancestors were powerfully built, with strength and endurance on a par with modern athletes. This fitness was built by living the foraging lifestyle, which was active yet afforded much downtime and relaxation. Most people contributed about ten to fifteen hours per week toward food, clothing, and shelter, with the remaining time spent talking, visiting family members in nearby groups, or simply resting.”

You take this in. It’s interesting, almost convincing, but you have watched your share of Discovery Channel and you seem to recall HGs lived short brutish lives. You articulate as much to the group and you add that it’s seems like a remarkable assortment of “just-so” stories, all this talk of “tall cave men with good teeth.” You ask a pointed question: “Isn’t this all a bunch of conjecture? Why don’t I hear about this more if it’s true?”

The department chair looks at her colleagues, shrugs, and then motions toward the floor to ceiling books and journals lining the walls. “These are all accounts of early peoples. Hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and agriculturalists have been extensively studied since the mid-1800s. We know quite a lot about how these people lived, what they ate, and the relative differences in their health and wellness. The whole field of forensic science is an outgrowth of medical anthropology. Are you aware that a trained forensic scientist or medical anthropologist can tell you within minutes whether an ancient skeleton was that of a hunter-gatherer or agriculturalist? This based on the remarkably increased rates of dental caries (cavities), bone malformations, and general poor health of the early farmers as compared to their hunter-gatherer cousins.”

You are becoming more convinced by the second, but you want something more tangible.

“Do you have any specific examples of this difference you could show me?”

The department chair thinks a moment, then excuses herself and heads to her office. In a few minutes she returns with an old, well-worn book titled, Nutritional Anthropology: Contemporary Approaches to Diet and Culture. She turns to a chapter called “Nutrition and Health in Agriculturalists and Hunter-gatherers: A Case Study of Two Pre-historic Populations.”

She walks you through an analysis of two peoples who lived near the Ohio River valley. The farmers, referred to as the “Hardin Village” group in the book, lived in the area about 500 years ago. The hunter-gatherers, who are given the name “Indian Knoll” for the area in which their remains are found, lived in the area 3,000-5,000 years ago. The sites are significant in that each one produces a large number of skeletal remains. For statistical purposes, this makes information derived from the sites more compelling. The agriculture-based Hardin Villagers subsisted mainly on corn, beans, and squash, as is typical of many groups of Native Americans, including the Pima of Mexico and Arizona. The HGs of Indian Knolls subsisted on a mixed foraging diet of meat, wild fruits, fish, and shellfish. The differences in the health of the two people is remarkable:

• The HGs show almost no cavities, whereas the farmers showed almost 7 cavities on average per person.
• The HGs show significantly less bone malformations consistent with malnutrition. That is—the HG’s were much better fed.
• The HGs showed a remarkably lower rate of infant mortality relative to the farmers. The most significant difference was between the ages of two and four when malnutrition is particularly damaging to children.
• The HGs were, on average, healthier, as evidenced by decreased rates of bone malformations typical of infectious disease.
• The HGs on average lived longer than the farmers.
• The HGs showed little to no sign of iron, calcium, and protein deficiencies, whereas this was common in the farmers.

The department chair whisks away to make a copy of the chapter for you to take home. (If you’d like to read this chapter in its entirety, visit my website. You contemplate your next question, while considering the information you were just presented. When she returns, you ask her the only things that come to mind: “Is the situation you showed me typical? Isn’t this an exception? Haven’t we adapted to eating grains?”

She looks at you sympathetically and contemplates her response for a moment. “Our genetics are nearly identical to those of our early H. Sapien ancestors from 100,000–200,000 thousand years ago. We are genetically wired for a lifeway that is all but gone now, and our health reflects this. The change from HG to agriculturalist that I described to you is typical of every transition we have studied. We moved from a nutrient-dense, protein-rich diet that was varied and changed with location and seasons to a diet dependent upon a few starchy crops. These starchy crops provide a fraction the vitamins and minerals found in fruits, vegetables, and lean meats. These “new foods” create a host of other health problems ranging from cancer to autoimmunity to infertility. I have no idea why this is not widely understood by the medical community, but I know for a fact few nutritional science departments offer course work in ancestral diets or the role evolution plays in our health and wellness.”

You are now completely sober and not really that happy. This is all feeling very heavy. The department chair seems to detect your disquiet and offers to take you on a tour of the department. She shows you the forensics lab where students are trained in the discovery, identification, collection, and preservation of human remains. You had no idea all the stuff you’ve see on CSI actually had its beginning as an outgrowth of anthropology and the study of ancient humans. We thank the department chair for her time and expertise and wander outside into the warm, Northern California day. We look at each other, and you ask, “Should we go over to the Nutritional Sciences Department?”

“Sure, but you will wish we went and had a few more NorCal margaritas first!”

We make the short walk across campus and enter the hallowed halls of the Department of Nutritional Sciences. Keep in mind, this department exists under the umbrella of the School of Biological Sciences. Just keep that in mind.

We walk into the department and, as luck would have it, several of the faculty are sitting together eating an early afternoon snack of bagels and orange juice. You really need to stay ahead of low–blood sugar crashes that happen midday!

We introduce ourselves and mention we have some questions about nutrition and health. The nutrition scientists tell us we have come to the right place, so we launch in with the same question posited to the anthropology professors: What is the most important event in human history?

The nutrition scientists look at each other as if suspecting one of them set this situation up as a joke, but alas this is not a joke. One of them asks us, “What does history have to do with nutrition and health?”

I look knowingly at you and encourage you to take the point on this skirmish. You ask the group, “What about the development of agriculture? Wasn’t that important for the health and wellness of our species?”

The nutrition scientists nod slowly, but you can tell they are not comfortable with this situation. Not at all. A gaunt fellow wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, “Tofu: It’s What’s for Dinner,” chimes in.

“Of course this was important. Prior to agriculture people lived short, brutish lives”.

Another posits, “Yes, it’s hard to catch animals and the “stable” food supply of agriculture allowed the population to expand. Humans developed art and science and medicine.”

We both concede the truth of cultural development, but you mention the change in health and wellness the anthropology professors related to us just an hour earlier. You mention the remarkable health of our Paleolithic ancestors as described by the anthropology professors. You mention the difference between the skeletons of agriculturalists versus hunter-gatherers.

The group of nutrition scientists are really not happy now. One quips, “How are we to know what our ancestors ate? This is all conjecture.” Another faculty member, who has a body mass index of 32, adds, “Just because our ancestors ate that way does not mean it’s healthy. All those people died young, undoubtedly from the meat they ate. Everyone knows meat gives you cancer.”

You reply that the anthropology professors related the fact hunter-gatherers appeared to suffer virtually no cancer until they adopted grains, legumes, and dairy. We are met with eye rolling and muttering. This exchange of ideas is quickly coming to a close.

I ask a few more questions: “The Nutritional Sciences Department, it’s under the auspices of the School of Biological Sciences, yes?” Everyone nods agreement. “So, really, the nutritional sciences should be looked at as a branch of biology, yes?” More nods of agreement. “What is the foundational, guiding tenet of biology? What idea is used to make sense of the ever-increasing amounts of information in the various branches of biology? What is the idea that ties together all of biology?” I’m met with blank looks. “Do you use the concept of evolution via natural selection to guide you as scientists?”

To this, one of the nutrition scientists responds, “Evolution has obvious application to the biological sciences, but it is of limited utility in understanding human beings.”

“So, humans are exempt from the laws of biology?” I ask this person.

This creates a little mumbling that winds down to stony silence. These nice people would like to see our backsides. I ask one more question: “What do you use to make dietary recommendations?” To this the cheerful nutrition scientist wearing the tofu T-shirt responds, “Oh! We use this!” And he slides me a copy of the USDA “My Pyramid” food guide.

The Rest of the Story

The story above is just that, a story. I’ve taken significant liberty here, but it has a remarkable thread of truth. I have had this conversation with faculty in the Nutritional Sciences Department (at CSU Chico and elsewhere) that was essentially the same as related in my fable above. The people who push and promote the nutritional guidelines for most of the Westernized world do not believe our hunter-gatherer origins have any bearing on our health. These people think they are scientists, yet when their feet are held to the fire, they have no science to stand upon. Physicists have theories such as quantum mechanics and relativity, which they use to answer questions about our world. These theories provide the continuity to evaluate the new information we gather.

Occasionally, our information forces us to reevaluate our models, but we know we are onto something good when we can use our model to make predictions. Physicists would not dream of operating without the models they have, yet the vast majority of people in medicine and the nutritional sciences have no idea where to look for a unified theory of health and wellness. This is due in part to laziness and, literally, a lack of thinking things through. People are spoon-fed ideas that make no sense (fat makes you fat, yet the people who eat more fat, like the French, Spanish and Greeks, are not as fat as we are. We will just call this finding “paradoxical” and move along without thinking). This laziness might be excusable if it was not costing billions of dollars and cutting short hundreds of thousands of lives. I won’t even get into the people who are profiteering from your early demise with pharmaceuticals and processed foods.

The point I’d like to make is this: You are on your own. You can walk into your doctor’s office with horrible blood work, all while eating a low-fat, high-carb diet of “whole grains.” You can then shift to an ancestral way of eating that involves lean meats, seafood, seasonal vegetables, and fruit. Walk back into your doctors’ office with perfect blood work, yet he will not believe that eating more protein and fat is what fixed your broken blood work. We are working to develop a physician network of doctors educated in evolutionary medicine and the Paleo diet—I just hope we can keep you alive long enough to see one.

Now that we understand a little more about our hunter-gatherer ancestry and the blinders most of medicine and nutritional sciences are wearing, it’s time to learn a little science so you can make sense of your Paleo Solution. It won’t hurt, and it will likely save or dramatically improve your life.