edit: If you don't want to read the whole thing just go to the last paragraph, it gets to the point.
This is a little off topic but I still think we could benefit from having this discussion. In recent years there seems to be more and more debate on the ideal and optimal diet for humans, with people espousing ancestral diet, vegan diet, carnivore diet, and paleo diet. Looking into our hunter gatherer past and at primitive people can help us understand what we should be eating, as much as a lot of people argue against evolutionary reasoning, claiming it's an appeal to nature fallacy, I think we can gain a lot from understanding what humans in the past ate.
Shown in this study, https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/71/3/682/4729121, although not representative of all hunter gatherer groups, it's clear that we ate plants and animals in significant portions, with of course more northern populations subsiding a higher percentage of their diet on meat (60%+), while equatorial populations ate more plant foods. This is pretty obvious but what I personally feel more lost at is if humans thrived on animal foods, or did they thrive on plant foods; or maybe they're more equal in contributions.
The argument I find interesting is that humans are actually obligate carnivores, and they thrive on animal based foods, which goes against conventional advice and wisdom. People on this side point out the fact that plant foods have numerous different anti-nutrients and argue that they are harder to digest, which makes me wonder if the typical theory that humans learned to control fire to cook meat is actually true; cooking could of perhaps been more instrumental in breaking down plant food. At the same time, when we look at our closest relatives, the chimpanzee, they eat tons of plant food (and some animal food), and have no problem digesting it. However, our evolutionary history is pretty different compared to chimps at least in the last million years or so therefore I'm not sure how reliably you can support plant subsistence on that fact alone. Perhaps when we diverged from our common ancestor we made the trade off with the ability to consume more meat by not being able to eat as much raw plants.
You also have to consider whether cooking food is what made us intelligent, or our intelligence is what allowed us to control and make fire. For example the North Sentinelese haven't been observed to be able to make fire on their own, but of course their still human and although we can't reliably measure their intelligence we know enough that they're human and therefore have the traits we associate with as such. They're just extremely isolated which is a big factor in human ingenuity and development.
What are your guys' opinion on this? Do we thrive on animal or plants foods, or are they equal in their contributions to human health? We know the modern diet of humans is way softer than that of prehistoric ancestors, but is it attributed to lack or raw plant foods, or maybe it's actually raw animal foods that attributed more towards our strong jaw muscles. Any typical carnivore doesn't actually chew, our mastication process seems more similar to herbivores than it does carnivores. However, even though carnivores don't chew, they still have very powerful jaw muscles because meat is very tough. It seems to me that the strong jaws of herbivores are more attributed to the fact that they chew all day long rather than the food that they eat is super hard. I'm going off-topic on my off-topic topic but I will get to the point, I think the conventional thinking to eat more raw plants to build up the chewing muscles isn't the best idea and maybe it's actually smarter to eat tougher meat. People want to know what they can do in their diet to toughen it up and while adding raw vegetables still helps, I think the addition of tougher meats makes more sense, we aren't the type of animals like chimps to be chewing all day on leafy greens, we are more intermittent in our feeding patterns, closer to carnivores but not quite the same, we seem to be in the middle. Of course we can never really know for sure how our ancestors ate but this is what makes most sense to me.
Here's something I actually know about. If you're really interested in overall health, as well as gene health, here's a crash course. Diet is without a doubt the reason we've seen such a degeneration in health and, since that's probably what you care about, aesthetics. The food industry is disgusting.
First off, stop looking back to prehistoric times to see what they ate. Diets like the paleo diet fall into clear fallacious thinking. Simply because we used to eat a lot of some food, like meat, doesn't mean it's optimal for us now or even was optimal then. We actually can't process more than around 190 grams of protein in our diets (the rest is just poop) so eating that much meat is not ideal. It's also pretty ridiculous to look at what chimpanzees eat because, like you said, they have a completely different evolutionary path. It's much better to look at what our ancestors ate 100-200 years ago. This whole jaw epidemic is a consequence of the industrial revolution, so what were your Great-grandparents doing that gave them good genes? (Look up epigenetics) Here's what the (good, unbiased) science says. If you need evidence I'll post some links but for now it's late so I'll just type what I know to save time. Forgive the tone, once again it's late.
1.) Cut out refined sugar. It's toxic. That means anything you buy that has any type of sugar in the ingredients. CHECK LABELS!! One of those little ketchup packets has about as much sugar as an Oreo cookie. Causes all sorts of diseases, diabetes, heart disease, spikes your insulin, it's addictive, makes you fat, kills your metabolism, makes you tired, messes up your cholesterol, high blood sugar, empty calories... the list goes on.
2.) Cut out all vegetable oils (vegetable oil, canola oil, soy etc.). They're toxic. Nutritionally equivalent to trans-fat. Largely the cause of heart disease and linked to all sorts of brain disorders. Pretty much name a disease (Alzheimers, dementia, cancer...) and there is a clear link to vegetable oil.
If you do those two, you'll already be eating much much better than you probably do now without even thinking about what your diet should consist of. You'll see how much tougher your diet gets even just with the elimination of sugar.
3.) Sleep. Never before in human history has the body had to adapt to a lack of sleep. This one might be the most obvious.
4.) Exercise. Lowers cortisol levels, boosts metabolism, keeps your joints functioning, etc.
Those two weren't diet, but are almost more important.
5.) Drastically limit carbohydrates. This one you'll like, because there really is a link to our evolutionary history. We simply aren't built to handle the amount of carbohydrates we eat every day. A lot of nutritionists worth listening to are recommending 10% of your calories from carbs. That's low, but it's actually impressively backed up by evidence. I'm doing 30% carbs 25% protein and 45% fat right now and it's completely doable. Hopefully I'll be able to keep cranking down the carbs and cranking up the fat percentages.
6.) When you do eat carbs, sprouted grains >>>> whole wheat >>> white/refined
7.) When you buy food, the closer to the source you can get the better. If you're trying to buy organic and you're on a budget, prioritize better meat/milk/eggs over better veggies. Bioaccumulation means that when you buy meat that has been eating a diet of shit and corn, locked inside a tiny cell, you're eating meat that's mostly shit and corn. Miles better for you to buy grassfed/pasture raised/free range/organic. Also, those are the only labels that mean anything. Everything else (natural, cage free, hormone free etc.) means nothing. It's all a scam.
8.) Eat your veggies. That's how you get vitamins. Don't be fooled by industries selling you supplements. Want Vitamin C? Eat broccoli, or green bell peppers, or red bell peppers, or spinach, or tomatoes...
Bonus:
9.) Fruit has sugar. Sugar is bad for you. Fruit has fiber, too. Fiber is good for you. Guess what else has fiber and nutrients? Vegetables! Lay off the fruit. Seriously, limit the fruit. Sugar is sugar. Those Naked shakes are pretty much the nutritional equivalent of a Coke. Not even exaggerating.
10.) Fish is important. Omega 3's. You need them.
11.) Saturated fat is not bad for you. Eggs are not bad for you. It's all a myth, so read up and eat up.
Good luck, and I'll elaborate on anything if anyone actually reads this and wants to know more!
WOW!!!!! This woman is brilliant!!!!!!!
https://drgominak.com/2018/12/01/why-the-american-diet-is-not-the-whole-story/
HOWEVER... I will say that diet is a part. I've seen it... BUT... I do want to elaborate... This article goes one step back, but... eating good food is still an intermediary step! Wanting fatty foods and crap is one thing. Eating them is another.
I noticed just yesterday... swallowing with my head facing down applies much less pressure to my palate then with my head straight or even up. What does this mean? It might be able to intermediately apply pressure to the roof of our mouth. If you need your maxilla raised or widened, that may be good. However, with a maxilla too high... maybe facing down is good?
I think a lot of digestive issues stem back to how a compromised airway disrupts sleep and that causes havoc in the autonomic nervous system. The ANS is very involved with digestion. With optimal airway then optimal sleep and then the gut lining doesn't leak, the blood brain barrier doesn't get tested, and a lot of the inflammation associated with digestion doesn't take place. There's a lot going wrong when breathing isn't right because jaw structure is impaired. We know stress messes with our gut microbiome; fragmented sleep and periodic breathing are extremely stressful. More stressful on the heart than the stress tests cardiologists use. Breathing issues affect both day and night, and change hormones... poor sleep will change what foods people seek, change hormones that regulate energy, other stuff all of which influence what food gets eaten and how it gets handled by the body.
I think there is no optimal human diet. I think humans filled a niche in which they found ways to access calorie dense foods with little regard to whether it was animal or plant. Wherever the cookie jar was there was a human trying to find a way to get into it.
I'm not advocating that diet doesn't matter, just that it matters because of other insults. Moreover, the change in our food due to agriculture is significant. Paleo potato and modern potato are vastly different and has nothing to do with GMO.
Think of it like a car with a busted engine. Doesn't matter if you put premium oil and gas into it, it's still going to have subpar performance. Asking 'what's the optimal fuel for a broken engine' is the wrong question to be asking. Fix the engine, and it'll do just fine on plain oil and unleaded.
People in the diet discussions often try to optimize every little detail, from macros to meal timing, but it quickly becomes overwhelming when there’s too much noise and not enough clarity. That’s why having an intuitive intermittent fasting timer calculator helps cut through the confusion — instead of guessing when to start and stop, you see it laid out and can stay focused on your goals. I’ve been using https://wellness-app.com/ and its simple tools make timing and tracking feel natural rather than stressful, which honestly makes sticking with the routine way easier than juggling spreadsheets or random advice.
Skull and Jaw Correction
Join hundreds who are Tensegrity Mewing, enhancing the good results of mewing and reversing damage. Free Newsletter and Classes
Your email is safe with us, we don’t spam