Philip J. Goscienski, M.D.
April 2011
During tens of thousands of generations humans adapted remarkably well to the foods that were available in their surroundings. Even during the last 25,000 years or so when restless Stone Agers wandered into inhospitable regions of cold and desert the local cuisine allowed them to thrive and multiply. It's only in the last 5 or 6 generations that we have developed the technology that turned nutritious food into promoters of chronic and ultimately fatal disease. Two examples will suffice: meat and potatoes.
When humans became good hunters they added high-quality protein to their diet in the form of lean meat from large animals. Perhaps they barbecued their prize just as we do but there's a downside to that. Cooking meat at high temperatures produces chemicals called heterocyclic amines that play a role in cancer, especially colon cancer. Present-day hunter-gatherers cook food in heated pits, a slow heating method that makes meat tender but that does not yield high levels of heterocyclic amines. Stone-Agers probably used similar methods.
Early in the last century ranch-raised cattle had less fat than today's corn-fed variety. The animals that Stone Agers hunted had even less. The fat content of wild game is about one-fourth that of modern beef and most of it is not the saturated type. Saturated fat may be only a minor villain in causing heart disease and stroke but it adds to the calories that have led us into an epidemic of obesity. It's ironic that the government assigns the best grade to the unhealthiest meats.
The other example is the potato, a vegetable so nutritious that it can supply almost all the dietary needs of humans. There are thousands of varieties, all of which originated in South America. The overwhelming mass of potatoes that enters our bodies is baked or fried and it comes from a handful of varieties that have the right taste and texture for fast-food processors.
There's little harm in a well-marbled steak with a dressed-up baked potato from time to time but not when this pattern is replicated almost daily in the average Western diet.
There's no reason to give up being a meat-and-potatoes person but it shouldn't be hard to downshift toward leaner cuts of meat and to avoid charring. Make that big Idaho spud a bit healthier and less fattening by replacing the butter or sour cream with salsa or yogurt. And eat the skin!
Philip J. Goscienski, M.D. is the author of Health Secrets of the Stone Age, Better Life Publishers 2005. Contact him at drphil@stoneagedoc.com.