Paleolithic diet

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Nature is the cure of illness. Leave thy drugs in the chemist’s pot if thou can heal the patient with food.  —Hippocrates of Cos (460-370 BCE)


A Paleolithic diet consumed by contemporary humans consists of items of foods selected from the types or groups of foods consumed by ancestral humans who lived during the Paleolithic age, or Old (paleo) Stone (lithic) age, predominantly in Sub-Sahara Africa, beginning approximately 2 million years ago (2 mya)[1] and ending with the introduction of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago (10 kya).[2] [3] The term applies also to the diet consumed by those Paleolithic human ancestors.

Interest in the Paleolithic diet by nutritional scientists stems from the argument that humans adapted their biology (physiology and metabolism)through evolutionary processes operating for millions of years before adopting a dramatically diet different following the recent inventions of agriculture and husbandry, and the industrial and fast-food revolutions, creating a mismatch between evolved biology and diet deleterious to health.[2]

References and notes

  1. Harris JWK, Williamson PG, Tappen MJ, Stewart K, Helgren D, de Heinzelin J, Boaz NT, Belloma RV. (1988) Late Pliocene hominid occupation in Central AfriCa: the setting, context, and character of the Senga 5A site, Zaire. Journal of Human Evolution 16:701-728. | From Abstract: Dating estimates based on fauna1 correlation indicate an age of about 2.0-2.3 million years B.P. [before the present] making it the earliest archaeological site of its size and state of preservation currently known in Africa. As the westernmost Oldowan site known in Africa, Senga 5A significantly expands our knowledge of the geographic range of early tool using hominids.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named eatonkonner1985
  3. In 'mya', 'm' stand for 'mega-'=million; in kya,'k' stands for 'kilo-'=thousand.
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