A multidisciplinary reconstruction of Palaeolithic nutrition that holds promise for the prevention and treatment of diseases of civilisation
Remko S Kuipers, Josephine Joordens & Frits AJ Muskiet 2012
Nutrition Research Reviews 25:96-129
doi 10.1017/S0954422412000017

Evolutionary medicine acknowledges: many chronic degenerative diseases result from conflicts between our rapidly changing environment, our dietary habits included & our genome, which has remained virtually unchanged since the Palaeolithic.
Reconstruction of the diet before the Agricultural & Industrial Revolutions is therefore indicated, but hampered by the ongoing debate on our ancestors' ecological niche.
Arguments & their counterarguments re. evolutionary medicine are updated, and the evidence for the long-reigning hypothesis of human evolution on the arid savanna is weighed against the hypothesis that man evolved in the proximity of water.
Evidence from various disciplines is discussed: the study of palaeo-environments, comparative anatomy, bio-geochemistry, archaeology, anthropology, (patho)physiology, epidemiology.
Although our ancestors had much lower life expectancies, the current evidence does neither support the misconception that during the Palaeolithic there were no elderly, nor that they had poor health.
Rather than rejecting the possibility of 'healthy ageing', the default assumption should be that healthy ageing posed an evolutionary advantage for human survival.
There is ample evidence that our ancestors lived in a land-water eco-system, and extracted a substantial part of their diets from both terrestrial & aquatic resources.
Rather than rejecting this possibility by lack of evidence, the default assumption should be that hominins, living in coastal eco-systems with catchable aquatic resources, consumed these resources.
The composition & merits of so-called 'Palaeolithic diets' (based on different hominin niche-reconstructions) are evaluated,
the benefits of these diets illustrate:
it is time to incorporate this knowledge into dietary recommendations.