Should You Eat Like a Caveman?

Key Takeaways

• Grain-free paleo (Paleolithic) diets are a popular eating style today, based on the premise that prehistoric humans ate in a healthier way than people do today.

• A new study, however, suggests that early Stone Age humans ate grains and other plants as well as mammals and birds.

• These prehistoric people most closely followed a Mediterranean-like diet.

The main appeal of the Paleo (Pleolithic) Diet is that it closely resembles the eating habits of ancient humans who excelled at hunting animals but lacked the ability to harvest or process grains.

But a new study suggests that early Stone Age people ate a much more varied diet that also included grains and legumes (including beans).

Scientists examined tools used to prepare food hundreds of thousands of years ago and found substances indicating that ancient humans ate not only meat, including rodents and water fowl, but also a range of plants such as grasses, nuts, wheat, oats, rye, barley, water chestnuts, and water lilies.

“Fad diets" like the Paleo Diet gained popularity due to their appeal to a ‘simpler, natural’ way of eating, grounded in the romanticized notion that mimicking the diet of our ancient ancestors could lead to optimal health,” says Jose Ordovas, PhD, a senior scientist and professor of nutrition and genetics at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston.

The paleo diet markets itself as a return to a pre-agricultural lifestyle, avoiding processed foods like grains and legumes and filling up instead on meat, fish, fruits, vegetables, and nuts, adds Dr. Ordovas, who wasn’t involved in the new research.

“However, this study underscores the significant diversity in early human diets, which included grains, legumes, and various plant species — foods largely excluded from modern paleo frameworks,” Ordovas says.