days. Which is not a good situation given the alarming scale of
obesity and chronic illness in the US and UK.
Can eating like an ape improve your health? Can natural nutrition
reverse the effects of modern diets?
BBC2 decided to find out and got some volunteers to go 'back to
nature'...
The 'Evo Diet' Experiment
Take one zoo enclosure in Devon, England - only metres away from
the great apes. Put in some huts and tents. Add 9 people with
dangerously high blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Add a
dietician prepared ape diet and then simmer for 12 days.
High blood pressure and cholesterol are high risk factors for
heart disease and strokes. The program pointed the finger at too
much saturated fat in modern diets which increase bad
cholesterol. This sticks to the walls of arteries and eventually
causes blockages, leading to heart attacks and strokes. Was 12
days enough to make any difference to this risky state of
affairs?
The Diet
The diet goes back 6 million years - to when the evolution of man
and the great apes diverged. At that time, it's well accepted
that we ate a largely vegetarian diet, pretty much as the great
apes do today. 5Kg (11lb) / 2,300 calories per person of raw
fruits, vegetables, and nuts / seeds were delivered in cool
boxes. A single olive soaked in brine provided the salt allowance
for each day.
In the second week, there was a nod to more recent changes in
humans diets - from 3.5 million years ago to 350,000 years ago
due to stone tools, hunting and fire. Some paleontologists
believe that it was meat eating that increased our brain size and
gave us the evolutionary edge. The volunteers got to go fishing
and had a meal of fresh grilled mackerel - just the one meal then
it was back to veggies. To put these time-scales in perspective,
we saw that farming only occurred within the last 10,000 years
and processed foods mainly within the last 100 years.
The beauty of a diet plan like this is that you eat it as it
comes... no packaging, no preparation, no cooking and all the
left-overs are biodegradable. But do we have all day to munch on
raw food? How practical is it in the modern world?
The Results
What really surprised me was that there were no symptoms of
detoxification, once the initial caffeine withdrawal was over. No
moodiness or sickness at all, just lots of giggling going on.
They seemed to be in very high spirits.
An unexpected side effect of the diet was weight loss. But then
they didn't finish their food, so you'd expect weight loss. By
bedtime on the first day they were still munching away! Other
side effects were lots of trips to the loo and lots of farting!
:)
The results - staggering - an average of 23% reduction in
cholesterol. Blood pressure returned to normal in everybody. And
all this without any serious exercise, although we did see them
kicking a ball about on one occasion.
One guy - the most worrying case of the group reported "lots of
energy" and "sleeping well". His insulin level went from 20.7
to 8!
The response in camp to the mackerel was very interesting - they
were gagging for it! "Heaven", "Delicious", "I'm glad it
was cooked, but if it wasn't I probably would have gone for the
raw method".
Life and Death Stuff
It's interesting to note that the volunteers looked healthy
enough at the start and yet "their diet could be killing them".
It always pays to look beneath the surface of things where health
is concerned.
The program showed how quickly health can change for the better
given the right conditions. But make no mistake - this is life
and death stuff we're talking about. If these folks hadn't
changed, all the signs showed they were likely to develop life
threatening conditions. Why wait 'til you have high blood
pressure and cholesterol?
Conclusions
The program explained...
"Scientists believe that many of our modern health problems stem
from a mismatch between what we ate as we evolved and the food we
eat now"
I think it's fair to say that many do. But this information also
eludes many scientists and health professionals who don't really
consider the evolutionary picture when giving out health advice.
This is a really under-studied area of nutrition.
This was a very light hearted look at our ape ancestry with a
serious message. I think many people will have dismissed the
program as a stunt and the diet as impractical but there are many
folks following raw vegan 'ape' diets such as this. I'd like
to see the actual list of food they ate. And I'd like to see
longer term studies - over years, decades, exploring the whole
evolutionary idea properly. I'd like studies adding animal foods
into a diet like this to see the health impact. This is important
stuff!
It's a shame there wasn't a real-life application of the ideas
behind the diet, we weren't left with much we could take away
apart from 'eat lots more fruit and veg' :)
The most important thing about this program is the mainstream
exposure. The idea of eating a diet of natural, healthy food, in
a way that we evolved to eat, is now in the minds of a lot of
people. Hoorah! :)
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Mike Kinnaird has studied health and nutrition for over 20
years, to overcome long-term chronic illness. Discover the
7 sure-fire steps to beating bad habits and kickstarting
your health... Receive your free email mini-course at
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