Over-thinking Nutrition?

I'm curious as to everyone's thoughts on modern society's tendency to over-think diet (and exercise! thats another discussion all together though ).

From a very basic perspective, and my knowledge on the subject is very vague, I believe there is some evidence suggesting cro-magnon man and neanderthals lived generally about 70 or 80 years old, with some reaching up to 120. Their diets were omnivorous and included game meat as well as plenty of vegetables, nuts and berries.

I highly doubt cro-magnon man stopped to have a protein shake after his hunt, nor did he think about calories, proteins or carb balance. He simply ate a varied diet of fresh meats, and plant produce.

Given that this seems to have worked pretty well for a couple of hundred thousand years, why is it now we feel the need to control our diets so much, with little change in life expectancy, and a giant change in live quality? From discussions with some nutritionist friends of mine, there also seems to be lots of different styles of diet that have worked very well for that society, eg. some high in meats, others high in grains and carbs (of the natural variety of course) and so on. In Okinawa, which has the highest ratio of centenarians anywhere in the world by a long shot, they do not count calories or worry about carb or protein free diets. They eat lots of natural foods, plenty of seafood, and work very hard until the end of life. The centenarians themselves are out and about every day eating fresh food and exercising.

For me, I approach my diet in this manner:

- Eat as natural as possible, i.e. least amount of processing or chemical altering.

- Eat as fresh as possible, i.e. vegetables that were picked today or yesterday, meat that hasnt been stored for weeks, no preservatives.

- Eat as varied as possible.

- Eat seafood regularly.

- Eat when I feel hungry, rather than when people tell me I should eat.

This is not an easy way of eating in today's society and I find myself straying, but at the same time I do not understand people's obsession with protein shakes, supplements, calorie counting and so on. It seems that when I don't stray from this is when I feel best and when I perform best.

What do you guys think about this approach? Please note that I'm not looking at this from the perspective of an athlete looking for peak performance in a specialized field (and I don't consider that to be the pinnacle of fitness either). This is an approach for people who want to live quality, healthy lives.

Craig said:

(...) From a very basic perspective, and my knowledge on the subject is very vague, I believe there is some evidence suggesting cro-magnon man and neanderthals lived generally about 70 or 80 years old, with some reaching up to 120. (...)

Really?

What are your sources for this fantastically surprising assertion? :?:

I can't remember all of them, just scooting around the net recently to check the life expectancy of various cultures/species. Just did a quick google search again then, this is one of the first things that popped up. Most of the other things I read I remember being pretty similar to this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/f ... /460.shtml

EDIT: Sorry I thought I would just add that the terminology might be incorrect. The average life of cro-magnon man was something around 30 years, but this average took into account both the elderly population, and the population that died early such as at birth or early from disease or untreated injury (which i believe was at a much greater rate than current society). So the average life was about 30 years, but the possible lifespan was just the same as ours is today. At least that is my current understanding, might be wrong I find this subject pretty fascinating so i might do some more research and get some more solid evidence.

My point about diet still holds.

Thank you Craig.

Craig said:

(...) My point about diet still holds.

The point that (I corrected it for the 30 years average) you mentioned:

(...) there is some evidence suggesting cro-magnon man and neanderthals lived on average to 30 years old. Their diets were omnivorous and included game meat as well as plenty of vegetables, nuts and berries.

Modern man lives to an average over 70 years old in most countries, on a diet of corn syrup and excessive salt laden industrially prepared microwave TV dinners and sandwiches + fries...

What was your point again? :roll:

don't listen to FIC, follow those guidelines and you'll be fine.

Modern man also deals with diabetes obesity. It's not just the years but the quality of those years. Good guidelines to follow.

FredInChina said:

Modern man lives to an average over 70 years old in most countries, on a diet of corn syrup and excessive salt laden industrially prepared microwave TV dinners and sandwiches + fries...

What was your point again? :roll:

My point was that I think for the most part we are over thinking our diets. Perhaps I worded my example incorrectly. :oops: I'll try and elaborate and rephrase a bit: Today there is a huge problem with diet. We try to understand the millions of chemicals in foods, separate them, give them values, tell people how many grams of this and that they should eat. Food is over processed and the same is applied, we think we know that this particular extract is good for you so we take it out of its natural source and try to feed it to ourselves directly. Why bother? Why not just leave it in its natural form and soak up all the other goodies that come with it? Previously we were capable of living to quite an old age without all this. In recent history, we were able to work hard on farms or elsewhere doing physical labour all day, and do it late into old age, a feat I doubt even olympic athletes today are capable of. With no *special* diet. Even the Okinawans mentioned earlier have no special diet, they just eat very naturally and keep their exercise going. Going further back in time it would seem we were much stronger and had more physically demanding lifestyles, would have to hunt all day, often walking for miles and miles, and still with no special diet. The evidence I mentioned suggests we were capable of living lives that were still quite long, assuming we werent mauled to death, starved to death, or died by disease or at birth. Given that some of the worst diseases today are "lifestyle" diseases, caused by deficient diet and exercise, why do we not go back to the way before and enjoy the fact that we don't have to worry about being mauled by our dinner, starving or dying by infection from a simple cut.

What I'm trying to say is for everyone but the extreme athlete requiring a specific specialization, that thinking about diet in terms of % of protein, carbs, calorie counting etc is massively over thinking diet. Why not keep it more simple?

Not trying to prove someone right or wrong, just more trying to encourage intelligent discussion on the topic. Why do you think that we (being the average person) are now so concerned with doing all this counting of food instead of keeping it simple like we have for so long before this century. Do you disagree with the approach to diet?

I was also hinting at quality of life, especially in the late years, not just length.

@John Sapinoso: I agree... my remark was a little bit "tongue in cheek"

@Craig:

I think you are assuming that people selling us food have our best health in mind... I believe that the main drivers to the industry are:

(1) profit (what a surprise)

(2) compliance with regulation (which they are curbing to fit their first priority)

(3) streamlining of standardized crops all the way to standardized meals.

The main drivers for processed food are:

(1) convenience - nobody wants to or has time to cook any longer.

(2) low price

(3) tasty.

The main drivers for regulation are:

(1) public health (prevent a massive e-coli or salmonella infection, etc... that would overwhelm the sanitary structures, and endanger order.)

(2) prevent people from selling meat from animal cadavers, or water your milk and cover it up with melamine!

(3) avoid a famine (which is the ubiquitous trigger of revolutions)

(there are other factors, priorities and drivers for all 3 actors listed above, but let's keep things simple)

You, and most people that frequent this forum have very specific health and performance drivers in their choice of foods; "we" are not the average person that you describe... Until this becomes the general case, the industry and the regulators have no incentive to change.

You mention that a little bit in your post, but people in the past, people had to deal with illness, parasites, infections, without modern medicine, and on a diet of chestnuts and roots... I certainly do not think that they had healthier lifestyles than what we have now in this regards... I also do not abide by the idea that people were stronger/healthier on average in the past!

I am guessing from the ailments you are mentioning that you are living in the United States... Obesity, sugar addictions and diabetes are mostly first world problems... I can assure you that I do not see so many obese people around here, and even if the stats show that obesity is on the rise, it is certainly not a major issue... That goes for most of the 2nd and third world...

In fact, there are, according to the FAO, 968,000,000 people underfed in the world - that is about 15% of the world population that are starving, and we accept it as normal!

If your quality of life is high enough, and you have enough free time, you will question EVERY stupid thing society allows you to.

@bill

I had an interesting discussion about exactly this with a friend of mine who was living in China. Most people in the world are fighting just to have somewhere warm to sleep and something to eat, basic survival is all that is on their mind. Once you have all that you have the luxury of being able to start questioning other things. I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that we have time to think about building crazy strength and fitness

@fred

I agree with almost all of your points. For the record I'm in Australia, but we like to follow the United States trends. It seems even China is not far behind. When I went there in 2004 there were almost no obese people, even in the cities. When I visited last year, there were noticeably more, mostly in the younger generations. Starbucks and McDonalds had popped up everywhere. This doesnt seem to have spread to the more rural places yet but certainly it is becoming an issue as China gets more and more modern. For the population as a whole, it seems that the way forward is proper education. But should we be educating them to eat certain portions and calorie count (in Australia it seems that this has been prominent for 10 or 20 years, and all you see on the shelves is processed TV dinners that advertise how low in fat they are and how few calories they have).

General population aside, you made a point that "we" here on the forum or who are fitness enthusiasts have different performance drivers. Do you think its necessary for us to be over-thinking our diets because we exercise a little more and want to lead healthy and fit lifestyles?

So Craig, I think you just came up with a back to basics dietary approach based on the eating habits of early humans.

When did you come up with this idea?