Paleolithic Diet - History

History

Gastroenterologist Walter L. Voegtlin was one of the first to suggest that following a diet similar to that of the Paleolithic era would improve a person's health. In 1975, he self-published The Stone Age Diet: Based on in-depth Studies of Human Ecology and the Diet of Man, in which he argued that humans are carnivorous animals and that the ancestral Paleolithic diet was that of a carnivore — chiefly fats and protein, with only small amounts of carbohydrates. His dietary prescriptions were based on his own medical treatments of various digestive problems, namely colitis, Crohn's disease, irritable bowel syndrome and indigestion.

In 1985, S. Boyd Eaton and Melvin Konner, both of Emory University, published a key paper on Paleolithic nutrition in the New England Journal of Medicine, which caused the concept to gain mainstream medical attention. Three years later, S. Boyd Eaton, Marjorie Shostak and Melvin Konner published a book about this nutritional approach, which was based on achieving the same proportions of nutrients (fat, protein, and carbohydrates, as well as vitamins and minerals) as were present in the diets of late Paleolithic people, not on excluding foods that were not available before the development of agriculture. As such, this nutritional approach included skimmed milk, whole-grain bread, brown rice, and potatoes prepared without fat, on the premise that such foods supported a diet with the same macronutrient composition as the Paleolithic diet. In 1989, these authors published a second book on Paleolithic nutrition.

Starting in 1989, Swedish medical doctor and scientist Staffan Lindeberg, now associate professor at Lund University, Sweden, led scientific surveys of the non-westernized population on Kitava, one of the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea. These surveys, collectively referred to as the Kitava Study, found that this population apparently did not suffer from stroke, ischemic heart disease, diabetes, obesity or hypertension. Starting with the first publication in 1993, the Kitava Study has subsequently generated a number of scientific publications on the relationship between diet and western disease. In 2003, Lindeberg published a Swedish language medical textbook on the subject. In 2010, this book was wholly revised, updated and published for the first time in English. The 2010 book is geared towards both professionals and interested laypeople alike, cites more than 2000 references, and provides a comprehensive resource for the scientific foundation for the Paleolithic diet and the relationship between what humans eat and western diseases.

Since the end of the 1990s, a number of medical doctors and nutritionists have advocated a return to a so-called Paleolithic (preagricultural) diet. Proponents of this nutritional approach have published books and created websites to promote their dietary prescriptions. They have synthesized diets from modern foods that emulate nutritional characteristics of the ancient Paleolithic diet, some of which allow specific foods that would have been unavailable to pre-agricultural peoples, such as some animal products (i.e. dairy), processed oils, and beverages.