Jul 4, 2019
Alright we have a special
episode today. We’re lucky to hear all about Miki’s new paper
looking at the complete story of our dietary past and humans being
high-trophic level carnivores. He gave me a sneak peak at this
awesome 40 page paper he’s submitting for review.
Miki Ben-Dor got an
undergraduate and masters degree in economics and then went back to
school later in life to study paleoanthropology. He’s now Post
doctoral fellow at the department of archeology of Tel Aviv
University.
You can find some great
presentations on youtube and his paper “Man the Fat Hunter”
published in 2011.
Love the work he’s done - he’s
hit it from all angles and it all lines up. We ate meat for all of
human history. Ok here’s a bit of business to take care of - Let’s
see how concise we can make this. Get your own grass finished meat
at Nose to tail.org. Support the show on Patreon at patreon.com /
peak human. Preorder the film at FoodLies.org. Watch highlights
from the film on the Food Lies youtube. Get daily content on the
Food Lies instagram, twitter, and facebook. SIgn up for the
newsletter on Sapien.org. Get on the waiting list if your a health
coach, doctor, or other healthcare practitioner at sapien.org. I
think there’s too many things at this point. Maybe just pick 1 of
these and go for it.
I really appreciate it. At this
point we’re a community powered company. We’re scrambling around
here at SAPIEN trying to make this all happen without outside money
or influence. Really love this tribe. We can’t go back to the glory
days thrusting spears at wooly mammoth and gorging on fatty meat,
but we can still try to bring the community together and spread the
word and focus on our own health and people around
us. Now let’s hear from
Miki Ben-Dor
BUY THE MEAT http://NosetoTail.org
Support me on Patreon! http://patreon.com/peakhuman
Preorder the film here:
http://indiegogo.com/projects/food-lies-post
Film site: http://FoodLies.org
SHOW NOTES
- Miki
completed his undergrad and masters in economics and switched later
in life into paleo anthropology
- His
research is largely focused on the reconstruction of the human diet
and the relationship between plant vs animal foods and the
proportion of each as far back as 2 million years ago
- If we
want to understand human evolution we have to go much further back
than just modern hunter gatherers
- Gut
morphology similar to carnivores
- When
we compare humans to chimpanzees, Miki has calculated that to be
77% smaller colon and about 60% longer small intestine which is
exactly the direction of carnivores
- The
size of our stomachs is another cue
- Gut
pH is very convincing too since herbivores have a more basic
stomach pH whereas omnivores have more acidic and carnivores have
very acidic stomachs and scavengers have the most acidic, humans
are most similar to scavengers
- The
size and number of human adipocytes is closely related to
carnivores vs herbivores
- One
of the main differences between their diets and today’s diets is
bone marrow, Miki believes our ancestors ate a lot of bone marrow
and had the ability to break bones which appeared broken to get the
marrow
- Liver
is also the first thing that humans would go for when they killed
their prey
- The
evolution of the Savannah vs forest and how this changed the
diet
- It’s
easier to hunt larger animals than smaller
animals
- Humans ate plants for all of history, there is
no question that we ate them, the only question is how
much
- Hypercarnivore is defined as a carnivore that
eats 70-80% of energy from animals and the rest from
plants
- If
you want to be safe, eat 80% from fat and meat
- Using
the Hadza to reconstruct the human diet is completely
inaccurate
- You
also can’t use modern hunter gatherers to see what our ancestors
ate
- Everytime we find plant matter in human
remains, everyone celebrates but it doesn’t tell us anything about
how much they ate
- Isotopic discoveries are more reliable than
archeology and definitely shows that we are mostly
carnivorous
- Humans do not want to spend energy gathering
plants when they can spend that energy hunting animals
- Humans have higher fat reserves than other
animals which allowed us to get through periods of starvation and
we can afford to because we don’t chase or escape we don’t need to
be fast
- All
large carnivores eat large animals and are
hypercarnivores
- Miki
thinks we spread across the globe because we can hunt animals of
any size, with plants you have to use trial and error and adjust to
them
- Wherever humans went, these large animals
decreased and that humans could have been the reason for the
decrease in megafauna
- Domesticating plant foods and animals was about
10,000 years ago
- As we
approach agriculture revolution we started eating more plant foods
but our stature also decreased and our brain size
decreased
- Fat
was prized for all of history and plants are fallback
foods
- He
tried to find evidence for plants in the human diet and couldn’t,
all his evidence showed was that humans were
carnivores
- Papers showing mixed diets are misleading and
these scientists are not reporting proper
evidence
- http://paleostyle.com
- http://twitter.com/bendormiki
BUY THE MEAT http://NosetoTail.org
Support me on Patreon! http://patreon.com/peakhuman
Preorder the film here:
http://indiegogo.com/projects/food-lies-post
Film site: http://FoodLies.org
Follow along:
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http://instagram.com/food.lies
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Theme music by https://kylewardmusic.com/