Eat Like a Caveman to Achieve a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body by Ray Audette with Troy Gilchrist
Simplified version of mankind’s evolutionary diet
Every animal on the planet subsists on foods to which it is biologically adapted. Cows, with multiple stomachs, easily digest grass. Wolves, with their sharp teeth and claws and acid stomachs easily digest meat, bone and sinew. Birds, with their crop, can break down grains and digest them. So where do humans fit in? This is the question no one can answer definitively, though many purists claim to have.
For millions of years our ancestors have been subsisting on the land by hunting for meat animals and foraging for greens, berries, fruits and some tubers. These are the foods to which we have biologically adapted over millenia. The premise of NeanderThin is that what got us here can sustain us.
Mankind began animal husbandry and cultivation of crops only a short time ago, roughly 10,000 years, and lived off the farm with some loss of vitality, such as smaller jaws (that cannot accommodate our wisdom teeth), thinner and weaker bones, some degenerative diseases, and vertabral damage from grinding grains.
More recently, the industrial revolution has moved people off the farm into the city and corporations have taken over the growing of food. Profit now trumps quality and foods are created from cheap commodities and chemicals and all life is processed out of them to increase their shelf life. We depend on grains, foods flavored from grain sugars, and meat that is grown on grains. We’ve switched from a main fuel source of protein and fat to that of plant fats and hybridized carbohydrates, and degenerative diseases abound.
Audette suggests that obesity and many of the degenerative diseases are autoimmune reactions to toxins or foods to which we are allergic, namely grains and legumes. This makes sense, since fat is a safe place to store toxins. The paleolithic diet espoused here includes meat and eggs (preferably grass-fed and free-range), vegetables, fruits and nuts, all of which can be acquired with a sharp stick (meat) and consumed raw (plants), or minimally processed.
The beauty of the book is its simplicity. Anyone can follow this diet after one reading. The book includes how the author reversed his chronic diseases and lost weight; our place in the food chain; the diet of our ancestors; the effects of the agricultural revolution; recommendations for exercising; recipes; example meal plans; a Q&A section; and an extensive bibliography.
The shortfalls are that the book is short on scientific references and notations, and the author made several claims that I would have liked more information on, like how our digestive tract most closely resembles that of the canine.
Many of us are allergic to certain foods, but the symptoms are so hidden we don’t realize it’s the food that’s causing our troubles. Try this diet for a few months, and if you simply must have dairy or grains, try a little at first and see how it affects you.
I’ve been through vegetarian, vegan, raw food, and 80/10/10 diets, all of which were unsustainable for me and left me craving and obsessing over food. Eating some of these simple meals of meat and vegetables leaves me satisfied. This diet is sustainable.
Buy NeanderThin from Amazon.
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I hunted and gathered in bookstores, but that was when I made a living selling books
Excellent review. This is one of the best books on this subject, but I agree with you about the lack of references and how some of the claims are a tad odd, like the canine one. The author, based on what I’ve read, is an interesting character. He likes to preach about the virtues of hunting and gathering in public places like book stores. Why not, right? He’s also a falconer – a skill that I have always found intriguing.
lol – I meant that he likes to preach about hunting and gathering *when* he’s in public places like bookstores, not that he hunts and gathers IN bookstores – but who knows, maybe that’s possible too.