Read how human nutrition has changed over the past 200 million years of its existence and what conclusions can be drawn in terms of our health and beauty today.
Today – Summary
Since the Neolithic Age, our diet has not changed much, aside from the fact that large quantities of refined sugar are consumed in recent years. For the first time since the Mesolithic period, meat is being heavily consumed again for a few decades in wealthier countries.
Our today’s diet: grain, sugar, meat, fat, dairy products
So, how does our summary look like? Is there really a species-specific diet for us humans? Basically, humans are very adaptable. In many countries, it led to genetic adaptations that enabled people to digest cow’s milk which made an important protein source to become available.
In general, humans are able to manage a great number of different types of food quite well.
However, it can also be observed that people function averagely well by consuming those foods who they had been used to over several million years:
The Paleolithic diet: Mainly meat, fat, and animal organs, including fried or boiled fish as well as insects, roots, vegetables, nuts, and fruits. The smallest part of the Paleolithic diet constituted of starchy crops and grain, as well as sweet occasional desserts made of honey, nuts, and flour.
Tribes who still subsist on this diet until today are largely free of diseases of civilization that keep on torturing us these days: diabetes, heart diseases, tooth decay, obesity. Even cancer seems to appear significantly rarer.
So, how does our ideal diet look like?
We should follow a Paleolithic diet in the closest possible way without falling into dogmatism: Even bears that live in Yellowstone National Park love pizza and burgers, if they are able to steal them from parked cars. Consuming pizza and burgers on an occasional basis also can do us no harm.
It is important to emphasize that when adopting Paleolithic diet, it means nose-to-tail eating and not just meat: intestine and stomach, inner organs, fat, brain, as well as genitals. In this way, our ancestors consumed a lot of substances that we are no longer able to get with our diet these days:
Bioidentical hormones are present in the brain, internal organs, and genitals, whose regular supply we have been used to for millions of years: pregnenolone, testosterone, DHEA, cortisol. These bioidentical hormones have probably been the reason why people of the Golden Age remained strong, juvenile, and attractive even in old age, except for gray hair, as Hesiod had told it.
Digestive organs, including the pre-digested chyme of animals, contain enzymes which ease our digestion and keep our digestive system healthy.
However, if we really do not want to return to those customs that rather take a lot of getting used to it, we should consume these missing substances in a different way. This would also have the advantage of a better therapeutic controllability:
Bioidentical hormones, the precursors of growth hormone, peptides, and amino acids, as well as extracts from internal animal organs and digestive enzymes were already contained in our food in the Paleolithic era and should be supplemented, where appropriate, with our today’s diet in order to keep us young and active.
At the end, a question of global importance: How can we create a foundation of a halfway paleolithic, protein-rich, and healthy diet for the huge population in the world?
Now, since there are no longer any mammoths around and we are also not able to produce enough beef or pork to adequately feed these billions of people, one must go back even a little bit further into the evolutionary history and remember what our ancestors ate during the dinosaur age: No, it wasn’t dinosaur eggs, but insects!
DDr. Heinrich, MD
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Thank you for the article in your blog! I try to avoid as much carbohydrates as possible. Can I still benefit from bioidentical hormones?
Healthy nutrition is always recommendable. Nevertheless, even when avoiding carbohydrates your endocrine glands will get weaker over the years. We are able to support our body by supplying bioidenitcal hormones.
Best regards,
Team Clinic DDr. Heinrich®