Eat Like a Caveman

One of the most important ideas to me lately has been the concept of human design. I believed in intelligent design for some time, but ignored an obvious implication: If God created humans, then their design must be good. This is in direct conflict with the Christian notion that humans are screwed up, and while everything from a Madagascar hissing cockroach to an eagle is a marvel of creation and a testament to an awesome God, the human body is a hell-bent, self-destructive piece of crap.

One astute reader “Ψ” (I hope I got the symbol right.) mentioned the Christian notion of “the fall.” The basic idea is that humans were created perfect, but since Adam sinned we’re all jacked up. There is no natural explanation for the fall. If I am an extremely evil person (and any feminist reading this blog would agree to that) that doesn’t make my children genetically evil. If Adam’s sin somehow screwed up man’s genetic nature miraculously, then we’re right back to the notion of God intentionally creating humans who are less like Halle Berry or Steve Reeves, and more like the Hunchback of Notre Dame or John Merrick the Elephant Man.

What if design applies to diet? I’ve recently become interested in a low-carbohydrate diet, which is a diet low in carbohydrates like wheat, rice, potatoes, and corn, and high in proteins and fats. This was popularized as the Atkins diet, and although Atkins was scorned as a bloodletting quack with a bag full of leeches, scientific evidence has continued to amass in his favor.

If we look back far enough, man’s first diet was primarily meat and animal fat, supplemented by nuts, berries, and greens. This is called the "Paleolithic Diet," and represents the diet that many believe humans are intended to eat. If you look at diets of people like the Eskimo who at times lived on diets composed entirely of meat and fat, they should be dead, or at least resemble post-holocaust mutant zombies. They don’t. One explorer, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, lived among the Eskimo for five years and ate nothing but meat. He later subjected himself to an experiment that proved it was possible not only for a man to survive on a meat diet, but to thrive. The Masai offer similar evidence, as do scientific studies of early man’s diet, including the study of coprolites, or fossilized crap. Now you have a new word you can use, like “Barak Obama’s program for change is pure coprolite!” Or for my Christian readers, "The human body is a coprolite waiting to happen."

In research of the Egyptians, it was found that despite their “ideal” diet consisting of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and little meat, they were obese and prone to heart disease (See “Protein Power,” by Michael Eades.). In fact, the easy way to tell whether human remains are hunter-gathers, who were primarily meat eaters, is by looking at their skeletons, which are healthier than those of people who subsisted primarily on wheat, potatoes, and corn.

If we look at the Biblical account in Genesis, God accepts the meat offerings of Abel, but rejects the grain offerings of Cain. Is this evidence that humans are intended for a diet that primarily consists of meat?