Cookbook talk:Paleo Diet

The Paleo diet is based on assumptions at a fixed point in time (1975) regarding a hunter-gatherer diet. Notably, it seems to assume a high animal-protein intake. Given the current understanding of the prehistoric human diet, does that still ring true? Personally, I think the more natural diet for the human animal is plant-based, and that early mankind occasionally supplemented its diet with meat or eggs as the opportunity arose.

It also might be worth differentiating between climates: e.g. subtropical, with high availability of vegetable-based foods but rapid decomposition, versus ice-age man "hefting spears at woolly mammoths" and possibly being able to keep the meat fresh for some period provided they could defend it from scavengers. In cold climates, humans need a much higher energy intake, and animal fat is a convenient way to get it, but that doesn't make it healthy in the long term. Mankind may have been pushed into consuming animals under duress. Peter Riches (talk) 13:07, 14 September 2010 (UTC)