--- title: Food: How the Diets of Early Humans Explain Our Eating Habits description: Meat formed the crucial lean-season food for the Neanderthal people during successive winters canonical: https://time.com/4017785/diets-early-humans-eating-habits/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-08-31T19:43:32.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:41:33.756Z article:section: Health og:title: How the Diets of Early Humans Explain Our Eating Habits og:description: Meat formed the crucial lean-season food for the Neanderthal people during successive winters og:url: https://time.com/4017785/diets-early-humans-eating-habits/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta86e460a43599266/6987814df887dc6e49e8a57c/time-50-healthiest-foods-dark-meat-chicken-poultry.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: healthiest foods, health food, diet, nutrition, time.com stock, dark meat, poultry, chicken og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How the Diets of Early Humans Explain Our Eating Habits twitter:description: Meat formed the crucial lean-season food for the Neanderthal people during successive winters twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta86e460a43599266/6987814df887dc6e49e8a57c/time-50-healthiest-foods-dark-meat-chicken-poultry.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How the Diets of Early Humans Explain Our Eating Habits > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ## Video: Should I Eat Hot Dogs? [Watch (HLS stream): Should I Eat Hot Dogs?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uOVusUZu.m3u8) (2:06)  _Published 2015-08-05. Should I Eat Hot Dogs?_ by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Aug 31, 2015 7:43 PM UTC  Danny Kim for TIME by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Aug 31, 2015 7:43 PM UTC Much attention is being given to what people ate in the distant past as a guide to what we should eat today. Advocates of the claimed [palaeodiet](https://theconversation.com/the-other-red-meat-on-the-real-palaeodiet-41272) recommend that we should avoid carbohydrates and load our plates with red meat and fat. Its critics, on the other hand, argue that these are the same ingredients that would set us up for heart attacks. Moreover, these [animal-derived foods](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5967/812.short) require more space to produce on our crowded planet filled with starving humans. A factual foundation for the debate is provided by a [review](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/682587) of the eating patterns of early humans and how we adapted to digest starches softened by cooking. The researchers contend that it was digestible starches that provided extra energy needed to fuel the energy needs of bigger brains, rather than extra protein from meat to grow these brains. But the most striking thing about human diets is just how variable they have been and the adaptations that have taken place. Furthermore, the American evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk in her book [Paleofantasy](http://www.amazon.com/Paleofantasy-Evolution-Really-Tells-about-ebook/dp/B007Q6XM1A) contends that these dietary adaptations are not fixed on what our ancestors ate in caves at some time in the past. So are our energy, or protein, needs much different from other mammals of similar size? Brains demand a lot of energy but so does the liver and the digestive tract. The extra nutrition that we need for brain work may be counterbalanced, at least partially, by a lesser need for: * a long gut to process poor quality foods, or * a large liver to handle nasty chemicals in these [plant parts](http://www.jstor.org/stable/2744104?seq=1#page%5Fscan%5Ftab%5Fcontents). Once built, a large brain does not require extra sources of protein to maintain its activities. [My studies](http://www.cambridge.org/za/academic/subjects/life-sciences/ecology-and-conservation/adaptive-herbivore-ecology-resources-populations-variable-environments?format=PB) on the dietary requirements of savanna-inhabiting herbivores highlight how these animals must cope with the dry season when most herbage is brown and indigestible even with the aid of microbial symbionts in the gut. But carnivores do not have this problem because the dry season is when weakened herbivores are most readily killed, especially when they concentrate around scarce waterholes. ## The role of carbs among early humans Meat has long been part of human diets, along with carbohydrates provided by fruits, tubers and grains. We can get by without it, obtaining protein from milk or, with some planning, from legumes. The early humans that consumed most meat were the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe many thousand years ago, but were not our ancestors. Meat formed the crucial lean-season food for the Neanderthal people during successive winters when plants were seasonally buried under deep snow, but later also for the modern humans who spread through Eurasia and displaced them around 40 000 years ago. Unlike tropical Africa, meat could be stored during the freezing winters of the far north to provide a reliable food source, especially in the form of large carcasses of elephant-like [proboscideans](http://www.pnas.org/content/102/17/6231.abstract?sid=3a571572-e40d-49da-a4c6-fcf833d6b939). This led to a wave of large mammal extinctions as humans spread rapidly into Australia and entered the Americas towards the end of the last Ice [Age](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618209004236). By that time hunting technology had been honed and meat routinely supplemented plant food, but the latter remained the dietary staple for African hunter-gatherers like the Bushmen or San people into [modern times](http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674430600). ## The food journey within evolution Coping with the intensifying dry season in the expanding African savanna was a critical issue for human ancestors during the evolutionary transition from ape-men to the first humans between three and two million years ago. How did our ape-men ancestors gather sufficient to eat during this time of the year when nutritious fruits and leaves were scarce? This was when meat, or at least the marrow left within bones, could have become a nutritional fallback, probably acquired by scavenging from animal carcasses not completely consumed by big [fierce carnivores](http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743480), along with underground storage [organs of plants](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004724840500093X). Obtaining this meat required more walking and hence longer limbs, hands freed to carry, security in numbers and stone weapons to throw at threatening carnivore fangs, but not much expansion in cranial capacity. These were features of the early [Australopithicines](http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/society/australopithecus.html). At this early time, another branch of ape-men, placed in the [genus Paranthropus](http://www.maropeng.co.za/content/page/paranthropus), took a different adaptive route. They developed huge jaws to chew on tough plant foods extracted from underground storage organs to get them through [the dry season](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6053/190.abstract?sid=f1ff6230-daef-45c5-9f1e-75fd522df577). The last representative of this genus faded out nearly a million years ago when this strategy eventually became unviable. About that time the lineage leading to early humans discovered cooking, or at least how to use it effectively to make starches stored by plants more readily digestible, according to the article in The Quarterly Review of [Biology](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/682587). Adding this reliably found source of energy to the proteins acquired more opportunistically by hunting animals or gathering shellfish provided the means to survive through seasonal bottlenecks in food availability and build even bigger brains and the adaptations that followed. A supporting adaptation was to store more body fat to get through the lean periods, especially among women supporting dependent offspring. This works against us now that foods supplying carbohydrates are plentiful. ## The modern day dilemma The problems we currently face are that we retain a craving for sugar, which was scarce the past, while most of the starchy carbohydrates we eat are highly refined. This means losing out on the other nutrients in plant parts like minerals and vitamins, and most basically fibre. A meat-based diet could have a role to play for people who have a propensity to store fat by filling the gut for longer and alleviating desires to snack on sweets [between meals](http://realmealrevolution.com/the-facts). More important generally is the need to exercise so that we are hungry enough to consume sufficient food to provide the scarce micronutrients that we also require for healthy bodies. The best advice is to eat lots of things: meat if you can afford it and justify its planetary [costs to produce](http://nature/journal/v515/n7528/full/nature13959), but also all kinds of good food, as least refined and processed as you can obtain (apart from wines). [Norman Owen-Smith](http://theconversation.com/profiles/norman-owen-smith-182103) is Emeritus Research Professor of African Ecology at [University of the Witwatersrand](http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-the-witwatersrand). _This article was originally published on_ [_The Conversation_](http://theconversation.com)_. Read the_ [_original article_](http://theconversation.com/how-the-diets-of-early-humans-explain-our-eating-habits-46481)_._ ### You Asked: Your Top 10 Health Questions Answered  You Asked: Are Cleanses Healthy? Potions that claim to clear your body of toxins might sound alluring, but do they deliver? Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: Is Eating Dessert Really That Bad For Me? Bad news for sweet-eaters—except if you end your meals with this kind of treat. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: What’s the Best Way to Whiten My Teeth? Yes, teeth whitening actually works—but here's why you have to dish out major bucks to see results. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: Is Meditation Really Worth It? From easing stress to lowering heart disease risk, focusing your mind can do some amazing things for your body. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: What’s the Healthiest Sweetener? Take a taste of the unsettled science of sweeteners. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: Should I Go Paleo? The pros and cons of eating like a caveman. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: Is Cracking Your Knuckles Bad? Here's what really happens to your joints when you snap, crackle and pop. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: Is Running on a Treadmill as Good as Running Outside? You'll fool your body into thinking it's outside with this one small treadmill tweak. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: Does Laughing Have Real Health Benefits? Here's proof that everybody could use a belly laugh. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME  You Asked: What Is My Poo Telling Me? If you listen hard enough, you'll hear all kinds of health stories from #2. Illustration by Peter Oumanski for TIME ## Transcript Ballgame or no ballgame, hotdogs aren't hot in the health world. According to 4 of our 5 experts. Hotdogs deliver a nutritional assault in so many ways One typical fast food dog with ketchup and mustard, contains 290 calories, and 910 mg of sodium. The problem with hot dogs, is how much they're processed. Hot dogs fall into a category of process meats that have been consistently associated with adverse health effects, according to Dr. David Katz. Diet Heinz process meats have been linked with cancer. Especially colorectal cancer. Peter Clifton says that processed meats can also lead to diabetes, higher mortality, and more cardiovascular disease. The saturated fats, salt, and nitrates in processed meats are likely culprits. Nitrates are the main concern with cured meats like hotdogs, says Mariana Stern. Nitrates are salts added from synthetic chemicals or natural sources, such as celery juice, which you may find on the labels of so called uncured or nitrate free hot dogs. Regardless of where the nitrates come from, they can be converted by oral bacteria into cancer causing agents, she says. But Marianne Sodring notes that more research on this topic is needed. As other factors might have to be present for nitrate- processed meat to have a cancer- causing effect. There might be an easier way to lower the risks associated with hot dogs, according to Denis Corpet. His study on rats showed that adding calcium to diets high in hot dogs lowered the potential risk for cancer. If you want to indulge in the occasional dog, Sodring, the lone hot dog defender, has some parting words of encouragement. As a bonus, from an environmental standpoint, one might say that hot dogs contribute. To sustainable food production because a much larger part of the animal, not just the prime cuts, is utilized. 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