Some People Say Beans And Grains Didn’t Exist 10,000 Years Ago And This Means We Should Eat Animal

some people say beans and grains didn’t exist until 10,000 years ago and therefore are not really our natural foods and our bodies aren’t programmed to eat them and therefore we’re actually meant to eat animal products what is the best science have to say about this

I love that question it’s a great question I guess science has two things to say about that number one is it’s not true that we didn’t eat beans and grains back then as a matter of fact we probably have at least a dozen studies showing that you know in even middle Paleolithic period people were consuming grains and beans as a matter of fact I believe it was Mount Carmel Israel there there’s very specific locations where they show the predominant foods at certain seasons were actually beans or grains so they were used in in in in those times in Paleolithic times and the second thing that I would say is just because something wasn’t consumed in Paleolithic times doesn’t mean it’s not healthful or an important food for humans today

people lived about two to four decades in Paleolithic times and I think obviously the you know the wild diet whatever people were we’re eating back then was probably reasonable for human health like the diet of other animals that eat in the wild we eat what we’re meant to eat to some extent but I think the mistake that people are making is assuming that humans just lived on animals first of all during the first 20 preserved first 80% of the Paleolithic period humans were vegetarians they didn’t have the skills to consume to kill and consume animals so they might have gotten a little bit of dead meat from something that had died or you know or or some insects that was about it for the first 80% of the Paleolithic period

if you look at nutritional anthropology research the work by Melvin Conner and Boyd Eaton is very very interesting during the the the last 20% is when they gain skills to add hunting and started eating consuming animals but even with that the estimated intake of fiber was about 70 to 150 grams a day that’s more than what vegans consume where does fiber come from comes from plants period just plants so they were eating a lot of plants secondly vitamin C was around five to six hundred milligrams the estimates for potassium were in the nineteen ninety seven they were estimated over over ten thousand milligrams and then in the in the 2010 study at about seven I think sixty seven hundred or seven thousand all was about seven thousand milligrams I believe that that’s way higher than vegans consume and and where where does potassium come from mostly for its and vegetables and and so you know really and truly this idea that they were just chewing down on these big chunks of animals is is a myth

certainly there were some hunter gathers especially in the northern parts of the world that you know probably only consume 35 or 40 percent of calories from carbohydrates and were consuming more meat but even those people were consuming about 500 milligrams of vitamin C and 70 grams of fiber sorry you know this is this is a large amount of plant food plant matter a people closer to the equator we’re probably consuming closer to 65% of calories from carbohydrates which means the vast majority of their calories came from plants and probably closer to 150 to 200 grams of fiber so there’s no question that I think that the the idea of what Paleolithic people actually consume is not quite accurate

and of course even if it was the animals today are not the same as the animals you know the wild animals they were catching today our domesticated animals are about you know 30 to 40 percent of calories from fat in their meat whereas it was closer to 10% and it is closer to 10% in wild animals very big differences even the levels of distant organic pollutants that are you know all of the all of the chemicals that you know the hormones that are added the antibiotics that are added into our you know domesticated animals today this is not the same as as the animals people were eating in Paleolithic times and even the wild plants were very different they were more concentrated in fiber they were lower in sugar they were more concentrated in trace nutrients and so it’s it’s not you know you’re not eating the same thing if you think you’re eating the same thing you’re not eating the same thing as people did in Paleolithic times

and it makes sense that if you want to get to that to the levels of vitamin C and potassium and fiber where the people were eating in Paleolithic times you need to up your produce intake big-time and and your consumption of whole grains is not a bad idea because that’s one of the more and beans is the most concentrated source of fiber it helps us to get to those numbers so you need to really look at how we’re evaluating the Paleolithic diet