Designed to Eat Meat? Reviewing the Paleo Diet Tenets [Video]

Are Humans Really Designed to Eat Meat?

Dr. Vikki Petersen discusses a lecture by archaeological scientist Christina Warinner, challenging key tenets of the Paleo diet. Dr. Warinner’s findings suggest that Paleolithic humans were not predominantly meat-eaters and did consume grains and legumes. Anatomical and physiological evidence indicates humans are better suited for a plant-based diet with high fiber intake. Dr. Petersen supports a diverse diet rich in fresh foods and legumes, criticizing processed foods and advocating for reduced meat consumption, no sugar, and no dairy for better health.

Transcript of the video

Hello, Dr. Vikki Petersen here. I was recently listening to a really fascinating lecture by Dr. Christina Warinner. She’s an archaeological scientist, and I found it so interesting because we’ve all heard of the Paleo diet. It’s been around for a very, very long time, and there are certain contentions of the Paleo diet that, of course, are based on what Paleolithic man did and did not do food-wise.

Basic tenets of the Paleo diet

A lot of the tenets of the diet have to do with the fact that pre-agricultural revolution, we were all healthier, and our downfall has been the fact that we’re eating grains and nuts and seeds. Is it nuts and seeds? Hold on. That we’re eating grains, yeah, legumes. So those are the beans, sorry, not the nuts and seeds. The grains, legumes, and dairy.

Now dairy I’m in agreement with; I really don’t see any purpose [to it]. But the legumes definitely [have a purpose in our diet]. So, are legumes, grains, and dairy our downfall? And of course, the other side of the coin is that Paleolithic man was eating a tremendous amount of meat, and that’s why he was so healthy, and he didn’t have all these diseases that we have. I didn’t know how to argue the point whether Paleolithic man ate a lot of meat or not, and certainly had no foundation in understanding whether he did or did not eat legumes and grains.

But Dr. Warinner is quite smart, and here’s what she had to say. I think it’s pretty fascinating.

Are these tenets supported by anatomical observation?

What she said was, that vision of what Paleolithic man actually has absolutely no basis in archaeological records, and that’s what she does for a living—archaeological records. She started with looking at the idea that man ate large quantities of meat, and she said that really, anatomically, physiologically, genetically, we really have no adaptations that show that we are designed to eat a lot of meat.

Dr. Warinner brought up a few key points. Carnivores who eat exclusively meat can produce vitamin C because vitamin C is so important. Those who are designed more to eat plants can’t, and we can’t.

The size or length of the intestinal tract of animals that are purely carnivorous—meat can putrefy, so they have pretty short digestive tracts to get the meat in and out and not allow it to putrefy in the system. However, animals more designed to eat plants have a very long digestive tract because it takes time to break down those plants.

Also, we have a—so that’s us humans—we have 23 feet of small intestine and about 10 to 12 feet of large intestine. So we have a very long digestive tract, which she noted is more associated with herbivores—animals designed to eat more plants because it takes time to break it down.

Moreover, plants have a lot of fiber, and we have our microbiome, which is our 39 trillion organisms in our large intestine that get fed healthfully by that fiber. If we were purely carnivores, we wouldn’t have that type of microbiome. That was a pretty interesting observation.

And by archeological finds?

Then she talked about the fact that the Paleolithic man supposedly never ate any grains or legumes. She said that they found stone tool evidence from 30,000 years ago, which is 20,000 years before we supposedly ate any grains or legumes. You know, some might think stone tools that look like mortars and pestles—well, that’s nice if they had the tools, but do you know what they did with them?

Aha! She does!

They actually found teeth and looked at the calculus. You know, that’s the thing that when you get your teeth cleaned, the hygienist is scraping off your teeth. In that calculus, they can see in this ancient calculus, fascinatingly, what people ate. Sure enough, they found grains like barley, legumes, and tubers. So they found the beans, the legumes, they found the grains in the dental calculus. Pretty cool, right?

Assumptions derived from nitrogen isotope analysis

The other thing was—Dr. Warinner calls them the myths of the Paleo diet—but a lot of it is based on looking at nitrogen isotope analysis. So apparently, there’s light nitrogen and heavy nitrogen, and the higher up the food chain you are or the more carnivorous you are, the more heavy nitrogen you’ll have. So a lot of that is, again, one of the tenets of the Paleo diet is that Paleolithic man had this heavy nitrogen in his bones.

She went to town on that one and said that this analysis is not accurate because it has to do with how arid the climate was vs. water fertilization methods. She gave several examples, I’ll just give you two. In East Africa, they found that the [nitrogen content of] human bones was higher than that of lions. Now, we know that lions are purely carnivores, and nobody was arguing that the Paleolithic man ate meat and nothing else. We know that’s not true. So to go above the lion, clearly there’s an analysis problem.

The other example had to do with the Mayans and showing that the ancient Mayans’ bones showed heavier nitrogen content than jaguars. Again, jaguar, pure carnivore, and we know ancient Mayans ate a lot of corn. So that didn’t add up either. That nitrogen analysis is flawed. I’m sure one day they’ll do better, but that’s where a lot of the Paleo tenet came from, this idea that the Paleolithic man ate a lot of meat. Christina Warinner found that it didn’t add up.

Humans need food diversity

Then she ended up with some lessons, which I think were interesting. We need a high diversity of fresh food — something with which I can definitely concur — and our processed foods are laden with soy, corn, and wheat… not to mention they’re GMO. Not just processed, but GMO, whcih makes them very toxic. It’s really a problem.

The highly processed food is creating so many problems. One, for the diversity of our microbiome: because these processed foods are really devoid of fiber.

Within the fresh foods, including the grains and legumes, fruits and vegetables, we find fibers that are designed not to be digested. They act as fuel for the other guys, you know, the good guys in your gut. That is by design. As soon as we get into this processed food, that’s part of our problems.

Low-fiber diets actually give a microbial imbalance in the good bacteria and bad bacteria, leaning toward obesity and diabetes. That’s definitely data I think we’ve talked about on the channel before.

My own take

So the reason I bring this up is, as I said, the Paleo diet—I don’t agree with the heavy meat. I definitely agree with the no sugar and no dairy. I’m a big proponent of legumes because they’re rich in fiber, and we just went over the importance of that. The longest-lived populations on the planet of humans have diets very rich in legumes, very fresh diets. You can look at the book “The Blue Zones” for more data on that.

As I said, I’m definitely not into archaeology, so I had no means of knowing how true or false the aspects of ancient man eating and not eating—you know, did he or she eat grains or legumes? Certainly, I had no evidence of that, other than what the Paleo diet tenets talk about and maintained to be the truth.

So this whole dental—the dental analysis of the plaque and what they found from the teeth proving that legumes were eaten, grains like barley were eaten— is very fascinating, I think.

Where does this leave us? I don’t think man should be consuming a lot of meat. I do think we need, obviously, very fresh food, food very rich in fiber. If we push toward a pretty strong whole-food, plant-based diet—and that whole food is really the major part of it… That is by design, the way our bodies are meant to be, based on not just current science and what we see people do best with, but also ancient man. The body’s physiology just doesn’t change that quickly.

I hope you found that interesting. I was fascinated by it, and ultimately it’s all about maintaining your good health, and that’s what I love to do.

If you’re not enjoying the health that you want or a family member isn’t, please reach out. That’s why we’re here—to get to the root of why. We have great tools. We typically use no drugs, and it works really, really well. Give a call to our Clearwater medical clinic, at 727-335-0400.

 

Additional resources

Discover the Nutrition Center at Root Cause Medical Clinic
Dr. Christina Warriner’s bio at Harvard
Dr. Warinner’s book on Amazon
Dr. Warinner’s TEDx Talk “Debunking the Paleo Diet” on YT