First principles of human nutrition
Humans have forgotten what to eat.
Our modern nutrition guidelines are as clear as mud.
That’s the price we pay for prioritising minutiae over first principles.
This is our attempt at summarising some fundamental truths on the topic of what humans should be eating and why.
Humans have a lot in common.
We are not so different, you and I.
We share a common history, biology, physiology, anatomy and anthropology.
From these areas of scientific enquiry, we can construct some nutritional first principles that apply to all humans, regardless of our race, ethnicity, ideology, or geographical location.
Humans are omnivores.
Homo sapiens, and our earlier hominid ancestors, have consumed a mixed diet for millions of years.
We may consume foods from the animal, plant and fungi kingdoms.
However, all food options are not equal.
Some foods are of higher quality (rich in energy and nutrients), and only minimal preparation is necessary.
Other foods are of lower-quality, and can be mildly-indigestible, or even deadly, particularly when improperly prepared.
Fortunately, our ancestors have done the heavy lifting here — they documented essential food preparation methods long ago.
Unfortunately, most modern humans—and the corporations to whom we outsource our food preparation—have forgotten the need for them.
Moral of the story: we can eat a bit of everything if we do it right.
Humans need animal foods.
Humans are omnivores, but our anatomy indicates that we are specialised towards eating animal foods—especially meat.
History tells us that humans evolved away from the diet and lifestyle of our chimpanzee cousins—who live in the trees, and mostly eat plants—towards a lifestyle of scavenging, and later hunting, the meat of large game animals.
Access to high-quality animal foods enabled our guts to shrink, and our brains to develop—helping early humans evolve from primitive apes into our modern-day form.
As our species has now spent millions of years depending on a high intake of animal foods, our physiology has evolved to expect them in certain amounts, and actually, to need little else.
In animal foods, we find all of the nutrients that human physiology needs in order to thrive.
The same is not true for plants and fungi.
Many modern-day human cultures follow animal-based diets.
The Inuit / Eskimo, and North American Indians, have both been observed to live robust lives, maintain healthy reproduction, and remain free of chronic disease, yet they almost exclusively eat meat!
The Hadza, some of the last hunter-gatherers in the world, who live in modern-day Tanzania, prefer animal foods, and barely eat vegetables.
There are countless such examples we could point to.
We’ve been sold a lot of untruths about meat. Pound-for-pound, animal foods, like red meats, are far more satiating, nutrient-rich, and the nutrients are significantly more bioavailable when compared to plants and fungi.
Keeping this all in mind, it seems clear that, like most of our human ancestors, the majority of our daily energy and nutrient requirements should come from animal foods.
This is the way our (much healthier) ancestors ate for an extremely long time and we are well-adapted to it.
Side note 1: Saturated fat and cholesterol are essential nutrients. Human breast milk—the gold standard for human nutrition—is a rich source of both. The Lipid Hypothesis, popularised in the 1950s/60s by Ancel Keys, was nothing more than a hypothesis. Swapping out butter for margarine and vegetable oils, just dug the modern disease hole even deeper.
Side note 2: If you get your animal foods from the right sources, it’s far more ethical and sustainable than your plant-based friends have been telling you.
Humans enjoy eating plants and fungi.
While we don’t absolutely need to eat plants and fungi, eating only animal foods seems rather boring.
After all, we do enjoy variety—novel tastes, textures, mouth pleasure.
And if you’ve ever been hunting, you’ll know that sometimes you come back empty-handed — which, for our ancestors, meant that it was time to forage for other foods… maybe pick some fruit, or dig up some tubers!
Fruit is evolutionarily-appropriate, and when in-season, absolutely delicious. Note that many modern fruits are much sweeter than those our ancestors ate.
Fungi seem to get on reasonably well with humans. The culinary varieties add great earthy flavours to dishes. Others are medicinal or psychedelic, and some are deadly, so choose your mushrooms wisely.
Many vegetables offer us a way to diversify our diets, but be aware that they can become problematic if we over-eat them.
As in the case with grains, seeds and nuts, many vegetables cause digestive issues, especially when improperly prepared. This is important because chronic damage to the gut leads to things like autoimmune disease.
Proper, ancestral food preparation methods can help to reduce the risk of digestive upset and improve the nutritional profile, but it doesn’t completely eliminate these problems.
There’s no free lunch. Plants and fungi, like animals, don’t necessarily want to end up on your dinner plate—they have their own ways of dealing with predation—and giving you a belly-ache is just the beginning.
For humans, plants and fungi are lower-quality, higher-risk food options.
We can’t eat any old plant or mushroom we come across—most are poisonous in some way.
They also require more preparation, and they lack the energy and nutrients (like bioavailable vitamins and minerals) that animal foods offer.
One last thing—plant fibre does not seem that important for humans—there are many healthy cultures (Inuit, Native American Indian, Maasai etc.) who barely ate vegetables their entire lives. There are many foods for the microbes in your gut.
Moral of the story: Eat well-prepared and well-tolerated plants and fungi for pleasure and variety, but don’t become ‘plant-based’—that doesn’t usually end well unless you’re a herbivore.
Humans do not fare well with modern, highly-processed ‘foods’.
So far, the food we have been talking about is the kind that comes from the land or ocean.
It does not come from factories.
From factories, we get ‘food-like substances’, as Michael Pollan describes them.
Modern factory ‘foods’ are one of the primary causes of global ill-health
These are hyper-palatable, highly-processed, oft-highly-toxic, and are devoid of the complex biological structures found in real foods.
Avoid them at all costs.
Summary
Humans are omnivores.
Humans need animal foods.
Humans can enjoy a variety of plants and fungi (if tolerated and prepared properly).
Humans do not fare well on modern, highly-processed ‘food-like substances’.
Adopt these principles, and you shall discover an enjoyable, reliable way to eat in order to build robust health and vitality.
It’s also a simpler way to think about food.
Leave the bickering over minutiae behind you.
Follow in your ancestors’ footsteps.
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References
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Astrup, A, Magkos, F, Bier, DM, Brenna, JT, de Oliveira Otto, MC, Hill, JO, … Krauss, RM 2020, ‘Saturated Fats and Health: A Reassessment and Proposal for Food-based Recommendations: JACC State-of -the-Art Review’, Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Ben‐Dor, M, Sirtoli, R & Barkai, R 2021, ‘The evolution of the human trophic level during the Pleistocene’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, p. ajpa.24247.
Malhotra, A, Redberg, RF & Meier, P 2017, ‘Saturated fat does not clog the arteries: coronary heart disease is a chronic inflammatory condition, the risk of which can be effectively reduced from healthy lifestyle interventions’, British Journal of Sports Medicine, vol. 51, no. 15, pp. 1111–1112.
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