Our Ancestors Ate a Low-Carb Diet

I’m a believer in the concept that our diets should, for the most part, emulate those of our ancient ancestors. The diet we ate for long periods of our evolution is likely the diet we are best adapted to and is the best for us. There is abundant scientific evidence to support this concept.

Do we actually know what our ancient ancestors ate? There is evidence that prior to 10,000 years ago, our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. For the vast majority of our evolution, our diet was devoid of many modern-day foods, including bread, pasta, breakfast cereals, milk, refined vegetable oils, and refined sugar.

“New” foods eaten in the last 10,000 years make up about 75 percent of the typical calories consumed in a standard Western diet.

Until recently, in evolutionary terms, the human diet was ostensibly made up of primal foods such as meat, fish, shellfish, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and nuts. However, it stands to reason that the relative proportions of these foods in the diet would have varied considerably as a result of availability and necessity.

Our ancestors evolving near the equator would have decent access to plant-based foods, including fruits and vegetables. But the further away from the equator, our ancestors would have been more reliant on hunting for meat and fish.

One way of getting insight into our evolutionary diet is to examine the diet of modern hunter-gatherers. Probably the best source of relevant data is the Ethnographic Atlas. Within it can be found dietary information from 229 contemporary hunter-gatherer societies.

This data was recently analyzed by two German researchers in an effort to gain insight about the carbohydrate content of primitive, hunter-gatherer diets. The data was published in June in the journal Nutrition Research.

The percentage of calories contributed by carbohydrate varied from about 3 percent to about 50 percent. It will come as no surprise that they discovered that the percentage of the diet coming from carbohydrate was higher in populations close to the equator than those further away. The most common percentage among all the groups was about 20 percent.

Official recommendations are that about 60 percent of the calories we consume should come from carbohydrate. That’s actually higher than the most carbohydrate-rich hunter-gatherer diet of all, and about three times the average carbohydrate percentage in such diets.

The authors of this study conclude, “The range of energy intake from carbohydrates in the diets of most hunter-gatherer societies was markedly different (lower) from the amounts currently recommended for healthy humans.”

Not only has the quantity of carbohydrate changed in percentage terms but also its quality. Long gone are the days when our carbohydrate mainly came from fruits and vegetables, including tubers. Now, we consume much more grain-based products, many of which have been refined, and refined sugar and fruit that has been cultivated to be sweeter than fruit found in the wild.

There are many problems with such a diet. We can have the blood sugar disruptions and surges of insulin. Blood sugar peaks damage the body through a variety of processes, including inflammation and glycation (binding of sugar to tissues).

Highs of blood sugar can lead to low blood sugar, which can trigger symptoms such as hunger, food cravings, mental fatigue, mood changes, and insomnia.

The surges of insulin that come in response to high blood sugar can predispose to problems such as weight gain, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes.

Of course, one way out of this would be to reject conventional nutritional advice on carbohydrate consumption and keep the diet as primal as possible.

Dr. John Briffa is a London-based physician and author with an interest in nutrition and natural medicine. His website is DrBriffa.com