Evolutionary nutrition science and dietary recommendations of the Stone Age – ideal answer to present-day questions or reason for criticism?

Part 2: Ethnographic results and implications on nutritional science

A. Ströhle, A. Hahn, Hannover

Because of methodical problems it is difficult to reconstruct human diets of the Stone Age. The nutritional behaviour of recent hunters-gatherers is therefore used as a model to reconstruct the diet of preagricultural humans.

Depending on season and local conditions, the plant-animal subsistence ratios of hunters-gatherers vary considerably . However, animal food is important in all hunter-gatherer cultures. Up to 1999, based on an assumed plant-animal subsistence ratio of 65:35, the macronutrient ratio of the paleo diet was considered to include 35 energy% protein, 45 energy% carbohydrates and 20 energy% fat. A recalculation in 2000 has shown macronutrient consumption ratios for most of the hunters-gatherers of 19-35 energy% from protein, 22-40 energy% from carbohydrates and 28-58 energy% from fat.

The paleo diet has been defined as a diet exclusively consisting of high-vitamin and high-mineral food (fruit, vegetables, nuts, fish and lean meat). At present lots of diets claim to be ‘paleolithic’. Depending on the theoretical approach, some are based on an ontological, others on a methodological adaptationism. The first are scientifically interesting but include some questionable axioms; the latter are theoretically unproblematical but their message is trivial.

Keywords: Paleolithic nutrition / hunters and gatherers / adaptationism / niche construction

Sie finden den Artikel in deutscher Sprache in Ernährungs-Umschau 02/06 ab Seite 52.