Paleolithic diet, a hands on approach.

[Ripped Barbarian]

Sorry for another thread on this topic but i think this brings a new light to this dietary principle, it certainly opened my eyes somewhat and further strengthens my view that a lot of people have a misconception about what our ancestors ate and what a paleo diet for health should be.

Basically i had planned a survival camping experience with me and a good friend, 3 days in mixed forest (sessile oak, douglas fir, birch etc) partially natural forest, some was commercial planted, i wont reveal the location as i wasn't meant to be there.
The location was chosen for it's similarity to land sites through much of my european ancestors evolution, europe was heavily forested for millions of years (give or take for ice age/tundra type environments)

The idea behind the trip was to get a hands on experience of an ancestors diet using very limited equipment, i did make some compromises for various reasons as you will read about but i was largely missing conveniences of cooking utensils, stoves, tent etc.
3 days isn't a long time to 'survive' as after 3 days of even no food you're not going to be desperatley hungry but it was enough to give an insight and was eye opening to a certain degree.
I have a fair bit of survival knowledge, building fires shelters and what foods to collect nothing great but probably more than average and i have experienced several suvival camping trips but never had the intention of studying food availability.

An important aspect is that this was done in the hardest time of the year, i have camped in other seasons too and so have a view of the varying seasons and food availability.

Rather than give a mundane detail description of my activities i'll break my experiences into paleo lifestyle:

Physical activity
There's no doubt about it, our ancestors would have been much more active than us, the simple things most take for granted all take work, nothing comes on tap, nothing comes pre packaged or cooked and if you you're not active, you die, i estimate i was probably using 4000+ calories a day, and this wasn't doing anything especially extravagant, i saved energy where possible.
However, that said the activity is concentrated into short bursts of hard work or longer much lower pace work (walking) and there is plenty of time for rest without schedules for this and that, sitting down for a few hours just resting isn't an option in todays world.

My activities involved walking about 8 miles each day in search of food, water and firewood/materials etc, hunting, breaking wood, making tools etc.
You just seem to have to put much more effort into everything than you do today, if you want water you have to walk to the stream rather than to a tap, if you want food you might have to spend hours (or even a day) trying to get it.
Another 'activity', especially this time of year is actually keeping warm, it was no greater than 3 or 4 degrees C during the day and went down to -8 C on the coldest night.
Even with a ski jacket with animal fur hood, combat trousers, hat and gloves i was still doing a lot of thermogenic shivering, when working hard you're fine tho!

I utilised (not necc ate) a lot more calories than most people do in todays soceity, i'd estimate you'd have to do 2 short gym sessions and some walking each day for a modern equivalent, combined with a moderatley sedentry job.

'Hunting' - we make spears and decided to track some of the local red deer, we didn't intend to actually kill any deer as 1. it's illeagal, 2. we wouldn't stand a great chance with our lack of hunting experience, still we had a good couple of 'mock' hunting sessions, each would involve several hours or walking and short bursts of intense activity when chasing deer, they can really run and no doubt hunting would have required a joint effort from several individuals, you can however see it was a very viable method of food collection and the instincts were strong within me.

Food
The one thing that hits you going out into winter time forest is the lack of readily available food, i have no doubt that our ancestors would have seriously struggled to survive the winter months and certainly these hard months are a time for weight loss.

There is little edible plant foliage this time of year, i did consume a few edible buds and shoots (some more foliage comes about in coming months) and even had some douglas fir made into a tea for vitamins A and C.
Insects provided small snacking protein, there were grubs under bark and worms in the soil, no big meals here but little collections to keep you going.
We searched for live ants nests but no luck this time of year, normally you can collect the larvae as a small protein snack.

Another suprising source of food (and fibre) are tree barks, you can eat the inner live white bark on coniferous trees as a source of carbohydrate any time of year, i was wrong to suggest that our ancestors had practically no carbohydrate in the winter, there are always small 'famine' foods like this it seems, not particularly palatable but these sorts of foods would have been essential on hard times, what's interesting are vitamin C and mineral contents of these foods, which are very low in calories and thus a very high nutrient to calorie ratio is obtained.
Slightly later in the year, tree saps will provide carbohydrates too.

Meat,
studying available woodland animals, although not identical to all of our ancestors native animals (where wolved and bears roamed) it gives some idea of animal density of these areas, which is actually fairly high but often hidden.
We saw (and chased) Red deer and birds, the squirrels that normally fill the forest were not to be seen (hibernating i guess?)
I am pretty sure that hunting would have been a large occupation of our ancestors, however this does not mean you could come back with a deer over your shoulders every day, it is very hard to catch something that has evolved to be highly good at evading capture by fast predators, you don't stand a chance on your own or without serious tactics.....you can't chase a deer down in a forest and spear it.
What meat there is there is either a small protein snack such as a bird or you have enough meat for a week, in the form of a large herbivorous animal.
I didn't kill a thing (our ancestors had to and would have no doubt been brutally determined) but after a few hours of chasing them and then carrying some very large logs 400 meters at a time to make a wall i was totally out of energy and felt i should repay myself with a 'mock kill' for the experience, i had a 1.7kg leg of lamb i had taken along, which i roasted on our fire and ate the whole lot (after eating practically nothing for 2 days) all 4964 calories of it, bone marrow n all, i fell asleep nicely in front of the fire after that.

An interesting experiement was the fact i was fat adapted and eating higher fat/protein foods supplemented with smaller amounts of natural carbs and my mate was someone who eats a relatively 'normal' diet and had bought along mostly grain based foods with a little protein/fat
Now, we are pretty similar in physical ability, he's taller and thinner i'm slightyl shorter and heavily built but generally we have kept up with each other in the past, if anything i'd say he was usually slighltly 'fitter' simply due to lighter build, what was interesting was that after he had eaten a carb meal he had a fair amount of energy to expel in a short time but after even a half day of no food was struggling with energy levels, i however felt i had a continous supply of energy even after 24 hours of no food, i couldn't sprint for long but long enough for what would be needed, long term slow pace endurance was fantastic, able to walk for miles without 'running out of energy' ....like my mate and i have done on previous carb adapted living, on average i would say this metabolic difference was stacked in my favour, especially at this time of year.

So my experience on winter paleo foods is that there is a very low level tickover of low calorie but high nutrient foods for days on end but the bulk of calories can be consumed after a kill, generally a very hard time.
This is very different to late summer and autumn eating patterns where hunting is harder due to foliage but higher calorie foods are provided in the form of nuts, berries and plant material, i have visited this location and similar in the summer to form this viewpoint, you could still see beechnut casings on this trip, in huge quantities and no doubt in the autumn or ancestors could have really fattened up, but not to american standards of course.

[Ripped Barbarian]

cont....


Carbohydrates are somewhat suprising in that there is a source all year round even in very northern climates, basically until you reach far enough north until there are no trees, carbs certainly make up at least a small part of diet all year round, becoming much greater in summer, in the winter i would guess it would be hard to consume anymore than 10% of calories from carbohydrate but this could, from what i have experienced increase at least fourfold in the summer and autumn.
Carbohydrate type is another issue, you don't have fields of wheat in the natural envrionment, there are a few grains here and there to snack on, once cooked, but nothing you could form a staple on.
Winter carbs come in the form of barks, a few roots and scarcely evergreen plant materials, spring and summer carbs are much greater in the form of berries, foliage, and nutritious plant saps (we tapped a birch tree but got nothing as we were too early and the warm weather hasn't kick started them yet)

Water was easily available from streams in this environment, i'm sure most of my european ancestors had no problem collecting water.

Cooking was done on open fire, no cuttlery to eat, just used my hands and sticks to prod/hang meat.

Conclusion
It was a fantastic 3 days, we were blessed with good weather, although very cold at night, had plenty of physical activity and fresh air and learned a little bit more about survival skills and had an insight into paleo lifestyle and eating.
I came away with a slightly changed opinion of what a paleo diet/lifestyle would possibly have been like, eating and exerise seem very polarised, i.e 'exercising very heavily or resting for long periods' and 'Eating huge amounts of food or going for days on end with little food' rather than todays practices which tend to be a steady stream of activity and food....

I also learnt that douglas fir tea tastes lovely! with a bit of lemon and honey i imagine you'd have a very pleasant tea rich in vitamins and minerals!

[mxd]

Very interesting RC!
I would of loved to have done this, sounds like a real mission, bet you had fun mate.

[sendos]

sounds amazing, quite interesting to see it analysed from hands on experience and not just in the form of conjecture (which is equally as interesting). Very interested in practice of fasting like you described, might try and work it into my diet. planning fast days.

I've always wanted to winter in the outback in cananda, learn how to survive in the enviroment. Build shelter, forage for food etc. I plan on doing it after university, might have to give something like what you did a go at some point. I've always wanted to know what its like to be completely cut off from modern civ!

[MikeK]

Very cool RC.

As you said - paleo humans probably only had a 'massive' feed every couple of days (after a kill) and scavenged small foods inbetween. This is very different to the '5 or 6 meals a day every 2-3 hours' which we are told today.