Some nutrition writers and researchers say that everyone should eat the same diet, whatever type of diet they might be advocating. In one school of thought, Paleo, all humans are meant to eat a lot of meat because that’s what humans ate in prehistoric times. But in fact, studies of the remaining hunter-gatherer populations show that people can thrive on a wide variety of diets.

A fascinating article on this subject recently appeared in the journal Ars Technica. To quote the article, “Depending on circumstances, hunter-gatherer populations can eat diets ranging from heavily plant-based to heavily animal-based. The development of agriculture pushed diets more firmly toward plants for farmers and animal products for pastoralists.”

SOURCE: Effects of Evolution, Ecology, and Economy on Human Diet: Insights from Hunter-Gatherers and Other Small-Scale Societies; Annual Review of Nutrition; Vol. 41:363-385 (Volume publication date October 2021); https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-nutr-111120-105520

This gives support to the observations of Dr. Weston A. Price, who traveled the world in the early twentieth century, evaluating the health of indigenous peoples eating their traditional foods. As described in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, he found healthy people eating widely different diets, depending on what was available in their locations.

For more on my approach to diet, see this page on my website.