Sep 14, 2025 02:23 AM
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/no-...it-matters
EXCERPTS: Imagine doing your entire food shop at a butcher's. No vegetables, no bread, no fruit, no pasta, mil or biscuits – just a trolley full of meat, fish, eggs and lard. That’s the carnivore diet. Its gospel has been preached all over the internet...
[...] There’s no real science proving the diet is beneficial, but many meat munchers feel confident in their choice because they think our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate mainly (or only) animals.
The carnivore diet, they say, is a better fit for our biology than a modern diet of carbohydrates, processed foods and farmed plants. It’s what we evolved to eat. [...] What people imagine to be ‘ancestral’ eating is not only inaccurate, but often unhealthy. And any lessons we can learn from our Stone Age predecessors are nothing like what the podcast bros would have you believe.
The first thing to note is that our ancestors weren’t actually carnivores. That’s a misplaced narrative based on outdated archaeology.
Dr Emma Pomeroy is an Associate Professor in the Evolution of Health, Diet and Disease at the University of Cambridge. She says: “We have this idea of cavemen – and it usually is men – eating a very high meat diet and not relying on anything else. For most humans, that wasn’t the case.”
Why, then, do so many of us think it was? Well, animal bones and stone tools can survive for ages, so archaeologists have long had clear evidence that early humans hunted, butchered and ate animals. Plant matter, on the other hand, decomposes quickly.
So, the archaeological record has traditionally been “biased towards the hunting record,” as a result, explains Prof Dorian Fuller, an archaeobotanist at University College London.
We know better now. Archaeologists have amassed a wealth of evidence that our ancestors ate plants. Some of the strongest comes from isotope analysis. Isotopes are distinct versions of chemicals that can give us clues about what humans ingested during their lives... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: Imagine doing your entire food shop at a butcher's. No vegetables, no bread, no fruit, no pasta, mil or biscuits – just a trolley full of meat, fish, eggs and lard. That’s the carnivore diet. Its gospel has been preached all over the internet...
[...] There’s no real science proving the diet is beneficial, but many meat munchers feel confident in their choice because they think our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate mainly (or only) animals.
The carnivore diet, they say, is a better fit for our biology than a modern diet of carbohydrates, processed foods and farmed plants. It’s what we evolved to eat. [...] What people imagine to be ‘ancestral’ eating is not only inaccurate, but often unhealthy. And any lessons we can learn from our Stone Age predecessors are nothing like what the podcast bros would have you believe.
The first thing to note is that our ancestors weren’t actually carnivores. That’s a misplaced narrative based on outdated archaeology.
Dr Emma Pomeroy is an Associate Professor in the Evolution of Health, Diet and Disease at the University of Cambridge. She says: “We have this idea of cavemen – and it usually is men – eating a very high meat diet and not relying on anything else. For most humans, that wasn’t the case.”
Why, then, do so many of us think it was? Well, animal bones and stone tools can survive for ages, so archaeologists have long had clear evidence that early humans hunted, butchered and ate animals. Plant matter, on the other hand, decomposes quickly.
So, the archaeological record has traditionally been “biased towards the hunting record,” as a result, explains Prof Dorian Fuller, an archaeobotanist at University College London.
We know better now. Archaeologists have amassed a wealth of evidence that our ancestors ate plants. Some of the strongest comes from isotope analysis. Isotopes are distinct versions of chemicals that can give us clues about what humans ingested during their lives... (MORE - missing details)