Health Philosphy

In his book The New Evolution Diet Arthur De Vany, who used to work as a professor at the University of California, argues if we really want to be healthy, we should follow Paleolithic humans' lifestyle. He thinks we should eat low-carb food and exercise intensely in order to control insulin.

De Vany has become the grandfather of the growing Paleo movement, a health philosophy. Their slogan could be reduced to “modern life is simply alien to our genes”. We should return to eat wild animals, fresh produce, eliminate grains and milk, and exercising in intense bursts.

There's no doubt that obesity, heart disease and diabetes are a big problem. And there's no doubt that this is a direct result of our sedentary lives. But there was no Paleolithic "lifestyle." Life in Ice Age Europe was different from life on the African savanna, requiring different diets, behaviors and genetic adaptations. Human DNA evolution didn't stop then. In fact, we're still evolving.

Human genetic adaptations actually increased around 40,000 years ago when we developed technology and became more sophisticated, cooperative thinkers. At least 3,000 significant genetic adaptations have occurred since, including the ability of some Africans, central Asians and northern Europeans to tolerate lactose as adults.

The problem, of course, is that even if De Vany and the other paleo believers are right, there's no going back to the world that existed 40,000 years ago. There's not enough wild animals to feed us all, and our genes don't care how healthy we are, but whether we reproduce or not. From an adaptation perspective, people today are doing really well: there are several billion of us.

From TIME Magazine, by Jennifer Pinkowski. Picture: North Wind Picture Archives / AP Images.