Google search results say that the paleo diet must exclude grains, but the internet is once again wrong. Wikipedia says additional citation(s) are needed on the grain topic, so it’s at least better than Google. The idea of the paleo diet is to eat like prehistoric people, and pretty much everyone has their own concept of how prehistoric people ate. Wikipedia states that the paleo diet is derived from evolutionary medicine, which sounds right, but most adherents simply see it as a way to avoid modern processed foods. It’s clear that people aren’t fully adapted to eat McDonald’s and drink soda.
SciShow For whatever reason you are ignoring scientific research that has been done on low-carb diets. Avoiding processed food like Pringles should be common sense TBH. DFTBA
@intempify You are right. I made my comment because i hope they will make a video about the scientific research that has been done on the subject of low carb eating. It's an interesting field of research.
maybe there´s s lot of ¨paleo diets¨. People then maybe were like us, their diets depended on the what kind of food was available and the cultural difference.
Saying that humans have been eating starchy carb filled food for a long time does not really mean it was a huge part of their diet. If anything seeing someone from 8k years back having only half of those genes kind of show that. Humans would eat whatever they could get their hand on, so thats where the gatherer in the "hunter gatherer" comes from.
@@andyb2028 the Maori in New Zealand were exactly that - they literally ate the Moa bird to extinction in the first 100 years of their occupation of those islands. There's also no reason to believe that we weren't a contributing factor to, if not the cause of, many of the mega fauna extinctions in other places of the world . Its really only in the last century or so have their been a few voices saying, "hang on a minute - we keep going like this (insert species name) wont be around"
Since has been demonstrated to to largely ideological not science ! Two men all meat diet for one year 1930 by Walter S McLean and Eugene F Du Bois www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf zerocarbzen.com/2015/04/19/eskimos-prove-an-all-meat-diet-provides-excellent-health-by-vilhjalmur-stefansson/ Why all humans need to eat meat for Health breakingmuscle.com/healthy-eating/why-all-humans-need-to-eat-meat-for-health
@@thalesnemo2841 meat has fat, cholesterol and red meat for example can cause cardiovascular disease and cancer, how can be that healthy?? makes no sense.
Carbs and starches were a rare but easy energy source, often with a very limited life span (see fruit), so it makes sense that we would eat them, and when available eat whatever was available (also explains why carbs shut off the satiety hormone and make you hungrier) and store most of it as fat for when we can't successfully hunt.
The problem with consuming carbs in modern diet is that we EAT TOO MANY OF THEM. Our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors ate what they could, when they could, and sometimes they could go days without eating anything. Meat was preferred, but when that wasn't available, they would need to find something to keep them from starving to death, and unhealthful food is better than no food at all. We adapted the amylase genes out of necessity, but we also developed genes that help us digest and detoxify alcohol. Just because we can process these toxins doesn't mean we should be consuming them in mass quantities.
Two points: First, nothing in the picture of multiple carb sources you show ever existed in those forms 100,000 years ago. In fact, while people reasonably evolved omnivorous eating habits during changes such as the ice ages and migration, the starchy foods they consumed were much smaller and more difficult to gather in large amounts, and had a higher fiber content than starch content, which slowed the digestion of starches. Second, your description of genes' ability to maintain a system of checks and balances on mutations is the prime argument against GMOs: If one artificially manipulates a gene, it is just possible that it creates an anomaly that might otherwise be stopped by an oversight sequence were it to occur naturally.
Makes sense! Time and time again, all the successful diets have one thing in common: Eliminating processed foods and added sugars. I think as far as the rest goes, it depends on what you like and what your body responds well to. Also, there are still so many traditional diets in the world based on things like yams; they're relatively easy to grow, spoil more slowly than meat, and are calorie-dense.
I eat whatever I want and work extremely hard physically. I'm healthy outside and inside. Just get a system that's good for YOUR body. Also, I saw that thing you did, I saw it.
SURE, but... we didn't have twinkies 100,000 years ago. We didn't even have the grains to make regular old flour! I think that's more the idea than a 100% literal meaning :P
That's not what the paleo diet says though. 100% No grains, no potatoes, no legumes, no dairy, no sugars - at all. It's good to cut out super refined carbs, of course, but they aren't following anything even close to an actual paleo diet - but saying they are. We didn't eat mostly meat, we ate mostly berries, fruits, leaves, roots, legumes, and vegetables, with some fish and small to medium sized game if it could be caught. Paleo dieters are very strict and serious about what they're eating and swear it's "paleo" for real. Which is actually impossible. So it's not just "the spirit of the thing." If they want to say it's some other kind of diet, fine. But it's not even based on any paleo reality, it's made up.
humans were eating starches and not neccesarily farming but still means they werent just hunter gatherers either which helps support an ancient human culture that may have built all those megalithic structures....
Objection, plants back in the day had a much higher fiber content than is known currently. So yes while you may call them carbs humans get less calories out of such a food and more dietary benefits when mixing said fiber containers with meat which they primarily were eating. I hate when science wants to prove something so badly that it forgets that along with humans so did plants evolve. There is another obvious reason for those carbs and that's that humans ate wild fruit which would be easy to find while trying to hunt. Fruit has probably been in the human diet for a long time, but not likely have 'regular starches' with no real gains besides carbs unless they have fiber and protein to make up for those carbs [our modern food has so many carbs and sugars that fiber and protein does not balance them any longer.] And yes fruit also had a higher fiber content back in the day and certainly had better flavor than 'starchy carbs' since things like sugar and salt weren't really even well grasped back then. You can tell sweetness is important in history because even ancient rome and greece flavored their food with lead [for it's sweetness]. That isn't 120000 years ago but about 3000.
Based on my consumption of Pringles, I can only solidly infer that early humans ate the hell out of carbs only when they had them; not because it was the basis of their diet.
Glucose is gained from consuming carbs. It's what we use to form ATP. Carbs also happen to be extremely widespread, and there were likely few shortages. Pringles contain lots of fat & salt, which were hard to find on the African plains. This is why humans are so addicted to them nowadays.
It may be true that we ate carbs in the paleolithic, but carbs then were completely different to carbs today. They were far more fibrous and were not available in supermarkets, so no, you don't have a licence to eat wonder bread and cake.
Still gotta put in a word for low carbing as long as you don't go too extreme. Sometimes just changing how and what you eat can be a reasonable way to restrict calories without resorting to calorie counting or specialized processed foods. Meat and greens, with some fruit, while avoiding starchy grains and tubers, can provide a very balanced diet for a human with very little thought. It also will result in a lower calorie diet in most cases. And all without counting calories. But sure, proto humans ate whatever they could. Digging sticks allowed mama proto human to uproot plants mama gorilla only ate the shoots of and get at the fleshy tubers.
But how many carbs made up the human diet before agriculture could produce large quantities of starches? Even if humans figured out that grains could be cooked and eaten, they couldn’t have had too many before figuring out to grow them.
DUUUUH... It's sort of a no-brainer that early humans have to have eaten the plants looong loooooooooong before they ended up cultivating them. Why and how the hell else would they come up with the idea to do so otherwise?
Do you guys have something against Paleo/ Keto diets? Potatoes were only eaten in South America until after Columbus. And modern wheat and corn have very little in common with ancient wild and ancient versions. Many paleo folks eat sweet potatoes but not wheat. Please get your facts right before you rant against what you consider a fad diet. And no, I am not taking diet advice from someone who eats Pringles. Do you even read the labels on stuff you eat?
Of course, but the main argument for and against the paleo diet is precisely when we started eating it. The assumption is that grains are a relatively modern thing, something we aren't evolved to eat so much as something we like and/or are told we need. To be fair, there are paleo advocates that advocate a low-carb diet, but misinformed purists would argue that isn't a "real" paleo diet even though its closer to the real thing.
@@defeqel6537 Yes. Yes he is. Paleo is usually low carb (rarely as low as keto though), but you can add plenty of starchy and carb filled foods, as long as you don't abuse the fructose of fruits, sucrose of table sugar, or refined/processed foods. It is in essence eating as naturally as possible while reducing simple carbs.
Hey, some people like their toast burnt. Also, controlling the temperature of a fire is kind of an iffy process and most people back then would probably eat the burnt bits anyways, there's still some nutritional value in them.
@@starvalkyrie ok, glad to hear we agree. Many of the Paleo benefits come from cutting out bs. The specific diet of cavemen is not the most important thing. Think of Paleo as the process of finding an evolutionary adapted diet. Not a stone tablet list of commandments
If you think about it, it kinda makes sense for we to learn to make a bread like thingys, before we came up with agriculture, like, why would you go to all of that trouble that farming is, if you arent sure of how usefull it will be, but if we knew that with farming we could make our breads more often and reably them the effort that it's needed it's justified
4000 damn years... Anyway, I still am shocked to think about all our anatomically human ancestors lived for like 100000 years in those conditions without knowing anything other than surviving in that environment...so many generations to be able to get to the point where we actually learned to really use our brain and build more sophisticated things and civilizations.
That's a good point. Before that, people probably gathered wild grains and roots, but obviously, only when they could find them. Agriculture gave them a consistent and regular supply, so agriculture is still an important development in early human societies.
Agriculture makes access to carbs easier, but that's not necessarily such a good thing. Of course, we do need carbohydrates, but not nearly as much of the simpler ones as are consumed in the S.A.D. (Standard American Diet). Agriculture can also give us easier access to proteins and fats. "Must-a have bowrance, Daniel-san." -- Mr. Miyagi
The book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond talks quite a bit about human evolution and how agriculture became a thing that humans did. I highly recommend anyone interested in this stuff to look into it. EDIT: fixed the title. Had it way wrong.
Just a quick reminder that bread can be made without raising agents (such as yeast, sour dough or baking powder) Many traditional bread types are unleavened: Matzo, tortilla, flatbröd, and many more
@@alexwang982 Flatbrød means flat bread and is like huge flakes of flour and water (I think). It's usually eaten as a supplement to soups and stuff like that. It's popular in Norway Sweden and probably some other countries
@@TheTazzietiger Very true. Ever eaten a raw slice of home grown potato? Or even a batch of freshly mashed taters with no seasonings yet? No cream, salt or butter? It's good :)
*No SciShow, you got Paleo wrong.* Completely. I don't follow the diet, but a quick google tells me that not only do they eat carbs, but even some types starches (including root vegetables). I even found a 7-year old reddit post talking positively about "good" starches so it is nothing new. So you're attacking a strawman which, ironically, still is something they won't eat.
@@epsi Why would the sugar give you a crash? I don't see the relation. Unless you actually use it, sugar just turns into fat for storage. Could it just be psychosomatic?
Forget harnessing the seeming endless energy of children, just attach some motion generators to Hank's hands. I think I could light my shack if Hank was around. (BEG!)
It's fun to watch people present when they're trying really hard to force themselves to use hand motions even though it's completely unnatural for them. I think I first noticed it when watching some of the engineers from Google present. Obviously they were coached to use hand motions to avoid selling stiff and boring, but it just doesn't come off right coming from some people.
Dustin Boyd shared consciousness sounds amazing. I always wished I could fuse to get even closer to my girlfriend, kinda like how fusion in Steven Universe works. Snuggling each other really hard while naked feels close, but not good enough 😂
It's true they ate what was around and their diet was probably varied by location. But you're wrong that humans were all over the world in prehistory. Humans hadn't migrated everywhere on earth at the points in time they're talking about. 65,000 years ago, the timeline described for the charred remains of oats, peas, and root vegetables discovered, humans were only in Africa, Asia, and Europe. They had yet to reach Australia, or North or South America. At the point they found the charred remains of starches dating back to 210,000 years ago, humans had only *just* started migrating into southern Europe.
There are different kinds of carbs predominantly eaten in parts of the world even now too, BUT THEY'RE STILL STARCHES. In my country we grow wheat and make it into bread. It's carbs. In Japan they grow and eat rice. Again, carbs. Just different forms of it.
This is a misleading clickbait title. A reasonable title would be"Humans have been genetically adapted to eat carbs for at least 100000 years" which is not very surprising at all. However, it's also clear that, especially in nordic climates, carbs have been unavailable for big parts of the year.
@@keedt I said"Especially in nordic climates. Anthropoligical studies have shown that fish has been a dominant part of the diet for most of our history. It's easily available, while agriculture is hard, unrewarding and unreliable.
Paleo may have got it wrong, but their approach is still great for one simple reason: we eat waaaay too many processed carbs. So cutting down, wvwn totally for a while and completely removing processed sugars is a great idea. Paleo is great to give your body a break from all the sugars. We shoild be eating a iet that is closest to nature as possible. Try it and you will feel great.
I think there's some mixing up between Paleo and Atkins/Keto diets here (probably because there's a lot of overlap, but if you're going for the" historical" angle associated with the Paleo diet then the differences matter). The Paleo diet is all about eating as close to whole foods as possible and stepping away from overly processed foods, which yes, includes a lot of our favorite modern high carb treats and baked goods. Potatoes and vegetables of all kinds are fine. In the strictest versions of the diet you avoid dairy, grains and (for some reason) white potatoes, but that's certainly not universal. It isn't a diet about eating all meat. Lots of people who follow the Paleo diet do choose to also minimise their carbs even further to go into keto for weight loss, but the basis of the actual Paleo diet is about simplification, and the aversion to processed carbs in relation to human history is far more about quantity, availability and ideals than it is about literally trying to eat exactly what ancient humans did (more taking inspiration from what kinds of things they likely had most access to). Their "agriculture is a very new development that we aren't built for" ideology is about scale and ubiquity and how the proportion and sources of carbs in our diets has changed relatively recently and why they think that's not good for health. I personally don't follow any diets but this is my understanding from doing quite a bit of reading out of interest in the past. I'm not a nutritionist or a historian and can't personally say whether or not humans are any better off cutting out any category of foods, and agriculture is definitely equally to thank for me having fresh vegetables as it is for me being able to buy spongy loaves of white bread. I personally don't know what ancient people ate or did, and I make no value judgements on anyone for their diet or lifestyle choices. This comment is just to say that it seems the Paleo diet has been misunderstood and misrepresented in relation to otherwise very cool discoveries about the diets of past humans, and the choice to centre a lot of weight on the "Paleo got it wrong!" angle sits uncomfortably with me. It is of course possible that the claims in this video about how the Paleo diet works were also researched, and that the general ideology has changed since my reading into it a few years ago, making my understanding outdated, or that I'm the one misunderstanding or misremembering the claims of the diet, or that there are differing versions of the diet out there and I only came across the looser interpretations. In any of those cases, also providing a source for the claims made about the Paleo diet in a video of this scale by a channel as deeply trusted as SciShow would not be out of place and would go a long way. As it is, its hard not to feel a little like the Paleo diet was pulled in and tied to the story for the sake of public appeal and doesn't play much of a role except for the fun and satisfying narrative of debunking claims widely believed to be made by a silly and restrictive dogma of the fad diet industry. If that is a real part of the story then its worthy of citation, if it isn't, it looks like you've thrown Paleo under the bus for the click value of briefly mentioning, it without much attention put into making sure the common belief you'll be repeating is factual or fairly represented. (Serious props to anyone who read this entire comment.)
Just one thing.. meat, even raw (which is as unprocessed as meat can be) is highly concentrated food. There’s nothing to suggest that it was freely available, or even eaten three times a day, as it is eaten today.
Thanks for this info!! The first half was super interesting. But im not sure why you were taking about yeast at the end. It felt like it was not tied to the main subject very well. What does yeast have to do with our ancestors consuming starches? I needed something that brought those two ideas together. Thx
Hey, so as a follower of the paleo diet, this was very interesting. However, this does not speak to whether or not starches are - in a nutritional sense - good at the levels that we currently find today. From my experience, eating extremely limited starches and focusing on proteins, fruits and veggies, and natural fats has done wonders for my fitness and overall wellness. Does that mean starches are inherently bad? No. I just find myself more satiated when I eat starches in a reasonable quantity and in ways that aren't overly processed
A lot of starchy foods nowadays are often devoid of any fiber, protein, fats and micronutrients. So your diet change is healthy because you eat more fruit and vegetables. And mostlikely not processed fruits and vegetables. And you also most likely eat less sugar (glucose and fructose). Starches/carbs are fine. But most people eat way too much of them and become unhealthy.
@@TheHadesShadeI don't disagree. I believe very firmly in whole foods as much as possible and avoiding processed foods to the maximum. While humans adapted to process starches, and there certainly are good benefits from good starches (rices, whole grains, tubers, etc), I still believe that it needs to be in moderation with the rest of a diet.
Keto a year and I feel better than I have in over 20 years! I eat carbs but mostly it's from veggies. Processed carbs just aren't healthy in my opinion.
oh and just as a final note from me: I certainly don't buy all the "stories" from Paleo about how we didn't eat starches in our distant past. For me paleo is about eating simple and healthy, little to no processed foods. Whole foods and simple eating.
I'm disappointed in the title of this video, Hank. Paleo doesn't argue that humans didn't eat starches/carbs, it argues that the kinds of grains that make up a significant portion of our diet today (corn/wheat/rice/rye/barley) have been selectively bred through agriculture to be nothing like those that were available to our Paleolithic ancestors (Scishow itself has episodes about this). That doesn't make Paleo right, it's a sophisticated form of the naturalistic fallacy, but we gain nothing by misrepresenting its arguments.
I've been years following the paleo diet, and it definitely says humans didn't eat carbs before agriculture, that's why it's called paleo in the first place, and it is a stupid diet, because we didn't have problems until refined sugars, that's the enemy, not carbs itself
@@ColinStuckert I think the confusion is in using the words starch and grain interchangeable. Grasses (or grains, corn, wheat, barleys, oats, etc.) are starches. While tubers are starches, they are not grains. If I remember correctly, Paleo diets cut out grasses (grains) but not all starches (in the sense of tubers like sweet potato/yam, etc). Similarly, all grains are seeds (if you plant a corn kernel, you get more corn) but not all seeds are grains (a sunflower seed will produce a sunflower, not a grass). And per a Paleo diet, you can eat seeds, but not grasses (grains, even though they are seeds). Also, further confusing, beans (legumes) are seeds but Paleo diets cut those out too. It seems the answer lies in the botanical definition of the plant source. Not in the modern words we apply. But yeah, the title is a little misleading as evidence that humans ate starches (yams) doesn't mean that they consumed grasses (grains) at the time. But it looks like they did eat grains in some way earlier than previously thought (with the charred oats).
The FDA at one point pushed 6 to 11 servings of grains a day. Not a serving once or twice a week when your group finds it growing wild and then likley ferments it.
No, no, no... anybody who says that paleo is the same as low carb, doesn't know what they're talking about. Serious people in paleo eat plenty of tubers and fruits and nuts and other vegetables. What's different and is very clear from the isotope data is that we did not eat very much grain or beans. That's the big change in paleo. This is a straw man argument.
You don't get to choose the definition of what constitutes a paleo diet anymore than they do though. If you ask 100 people on a "paleo diet", what defines said diet, you'll get many different answers.
@@rdizzy1 If you ask that average person the street what evolution, vaccination, climate change, relativity, or quantum mechanics is you'' get lots of different answers. that does not mean its arbitrary; there are right and wrong answers. I don't choose, the science does and to a lesser extent the history decides . The anthropology has been around a long time and those that bothered to study it. This is a probably accidental strawman attack but probably originates with the not so accidental ill will of the Vegan lobby, people like Christina Warinner who is vegan for ideological reasons not scientific ones and who hate the idea that meat might be normal and beneficial for health. Though I don't agree with everything he says, particularly with regard to fermented foods. Dr Loren Cordrain is the main person that popularized the Paleo approach, and he was correctly never low carbs except for the fact that we probably did cycle in and out of a ketosis due to environmental fluctuation and the availability of certain food stuffs. I don't see much disagreement among st the people who study paleo and folow both paleo and the literature. I doubt you can find any adherent of paleo that reads the primary scientific literature that thinks humans were primarily or exclusively low carb. If you find one let me know and i'll happily show him he is wrong. (note there are combination paleo and ketogenic diets but those are for specific medical conditions like type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome). Note, not low carb thepaleodiet.com/recipes/ here is are rebuttal to Christan Warinner facepalm of a ted talk that preyed on peoples ignorance. thepaleodiet.com/christina-warinner-debunking-the-paleo-diet-rebuttal/
@@michalchik The paleo diet referenced in anthropological studies is not the same paleo diet referenced in popular culture, similar to the difference between a scientific theory, and common place theory. At this point in time, using the term is akin to saying that you are a christian, every single christian on earth will give a different definition of what it means to be part of the group labelled "christian", thus it might as well not even be a group, or a label, for that matter, as it has lost all of its well defined and stated requirements, or overall tenets. Anyone, with any beliefs can state they are a christian, and thus they are christian. (Same with the paleo diet, or the keto diet, at this point)
True, but the keto diet was mostly used for epileptic children (like me/adult now) and people base it on that fact. But the paleo diet main claim is that our ancestors didn’t eat much carbs
@@Panther888 that's not correct. The Paleo diet's main claim is that our ancestors did not eat grains and to a lesser extent, beans. Sprouted beans are accepted in some Paleo circles. Sprouted ancient grains are even accepted in some Paleo circles as well. One could eat nothing but sweet potatoes, blueberries and bananas all day and be 100 percent Paleo.
The paleo diet can adapt to evidence and stay relevant. Just minimize ultra processed food, including paleo nutritional bars and paleo chocolate, and animal products.
With paleo eating small quantities of carbs, especially that found in root vegetables, etc is fine. The issue is the quantity and quality of sugary and/or processed carbs we eat nowadays.
Prehistoric man certainly had carbohydrates but they were starchy wild vegetables and roots with lots of fiber, not ultra processed white bread and high fructose corn syrup infused soft drinks. None of the sensible paleo diets recommend no carbs.
Paleo doesn't say no carbs, it says no carbs from refined grains and sugars. Sweet potatoes and squash are excellent sources of paleo diet friendly carbohydrates.
It also doesn't allow whole grains, which is fine for my dad as he has learned his gut problems are caused by celiac disease. If a package says it is paleo, it is gluten free. I also love vegans as it makes my life so much easier finding foods for my son who has serious milk allergies. If a package says it is vegan, my son is more likely safe to eat it. (He has other exciting allergies, as in emergency room exciting)
@Eye Sees You What you're describing is a ketogenic diet. Paleo allows as many carbs as you want although the options of "healthy" carbs is fairly limited.
backcountry164 thanks, yeah people get them mixed up because a lot of people combine the two diets. From what I’ve read, the recommendations for paleo are to eat mostly vegetables (including starchy root veggies but also a ton of green leafy), some fruit, and a little meat.
The question was never whether we've loved carbs and for how long. Of course we love them they're very tasty. The question was whether carbs, and especially modern ultra-processed carbs are good to eat for all humans for their ultimate health. And the answer is obviously "NO!" Missing the point, Sci channel, as usual.
Well usually processed carbs aren't Even the real trap. Yeah they can cause insulin spikes but usually processed carbs come with bunch of fat which makes people obese and causes a huge amount of health issues as our bodies don't really like to convert carbs to fat as it's ineffient.
Sugars, starches, and fibers are different kinds of carbs. Chemically, simple sugars -- those with the simplest and smallest molecules -- polymerize (link together) to form more complex sugars and starches, and starches polymerize to form fibers. The more complex the carbohydrate molecule (the bigger and more complicated the molecule), the healthier it is to eat, generally. That doesn't mean we should avoid simple carbs and starches altogether and eat only sticks and sawdust. It just means we should shift our balance away from the simplest carbs (like glucose and fructose) and toward the more complex carbohydrates (especially water-soluble fibers which ARE good prebiotics that promote healthy gut flora). There's no need for absolutes when it comes to carbohydrate consumption, just a sensible shift in balance. There are many good, well-researched books about carbohydrates that explain all of this in detail. And don't forget that we also need health-promoting fats and proteins in our diet.
@@TerofiedBeats Some people can eat starches and feel fine, some people get a huge insulin spike from starches because they're genetically not built to tolerate carbs the same way. Those people will thrive on a diet very low in carbs, and even devoid of carbs altogether. Innuits and Chukchi are just two examples of indigenous tribes that live and thrive on no carbs at all. So, no, carbs are not vital to everyone, but some people can eat them and stay healthy and so they should. What all these videos miss is nuance. We're not all built the same way, and we shouldn't all eat the same way. With the exception of processed junk food - nobody should be eating that crap.
@@penguin87904 Actually, fat doesn't make people fat: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12566139 Only when fat is combined with sugar is it bad for humans. And also when it's industrial man-made vegetable oils like canola, corn and such. Animal fats have been consumed by humans and our ancestors for millions of years without any problems.
No one in paleo says carbs are bad. That's keto... in paleo they avoid eating refined carbs, but anything that can be found in nature, including all starches, can be eaten
My problem with this "in X year we did this" is that they wanna pass it a global. Maybe some areas had people on the mostly/only meat regions that didn't provide much anything else. And in some other areas they eat vegies cause it was available. Don't get why when some scientist discover something they want to erase previews assumptions, as if the two couldn't live together. Because people eat the same everywhere. I don't even ha a similar diet to my family, and we lived together for decades. We now are the ones putting names to this things. I'm pretty sure they eat what they had at hand on their location, without wondering how many carbs it had or if it was a starch or a fruit. As long as it was edible. >.>
I don't think it's as much the scientists as it is the general population being unable to accept the "we don't know" answer and instantly jumping to conclusions.
@@AG-ig8uf Yeah, I was thinking about them when I wrote that. Like the "new keto diet" you know, the one people up north have had for centuries, before we even know what "ketone bodies" were. Scientist, for such genious, they miss simple things. "What was our diet X-years ago? Varies by region." there.
The science is good but your "scientific analysis" is weak. Yes we clearly could and therefore sought starches because we were generally at hunger risk but realistically sought food as vegetables or meat. The Paleo Community never denies this despite your oversimplified description and assertions. Another big stumble of yours is not attempting to determine the likely percentage of starches. Certainly at different times more abundant but unlikely perhaps over the year to average more than what we today call "low carb" - of course depends on environment so impossible to vastly generalize except to say we ate whatever available and if times of abundance likely feasted like today. In short you are little more than "headline" blurting "science" journalist who can't dig more than an inch deep. Tone down your high energy and go for some depth.
You need to tone down your harsh treatment of other people. The level of hostility you're showing for the SciShow team is quite frankly disgusting, and does nothing to help your points. While I agree that the writers could include more specific information, an attempt was made to generalize the details for the sake of making the information more accessible. There will always be a limit to how in-depth a news video can be. What's far more important is for people to take an interest in the science and do the extra reading on their own time, otherwise they're looking for a quick summary of the details.
Googling Paleo diet and... yeah... Paleo's claim is that the "caveman" or "hunter-gatherer" diet did not include starches because they came about when agriculture was began, a mere 10,000 years ago. The point the video makes is this claim is fallacious; just wrong. (I have not followed up on any sources). The "Paleo Diet" implies (regardless of what the community claims to understand) that starches, carbs and basically anything "agriculture" based should be eliminated. That's their generalization and it is fair for this video analysis to critique it.
Why "unsurprisingly"? It is surprising. This is why we needed a paper to show otherwise. By the way, not sure if the claim was that we used to "never" eat starch before agriculture. Of course we knew these foods, since we used them in our first farms, but the point is how much we ate them before agriculture. Because, y' know, nowadays we eat A LOT LOT of them. Btw2: 25 AMY copies today 2 AMY copies in basal lines 13 AMY copies 8k.y. ago (agriculture already in place) Are you sure this isn't evidence of how carbo rich diet is recent? Like fast adaptation after 10k or 15k years ago. Btw3 The point about "4k before agriculture" is mute. We're not that sure of the exact date of agriculture. Could be 10k, could be 15k or even earlier
Well put. In any case to me it's clear that the video is very manipulative and biased: one thing is tubers, which are absolutely Paleo, and a very different thing is grains, which are not. Mixing both is all kinds of wrong: potatoes are OK, cereals are dubious at best, almost certainly bad for your health in several ways.
@@AndrewBlucher not sure what you meant about the surprising part. My point is that it goes against current knowledge, so it is not "unsurprising" as he mentioned in the video. He said as if it was something we all expect, but we didn't, since previous research pointed otherwise. More worrisome was, however, his tone. Felt a bit like a "duh we all knew paleodiet is wrong all along", which is a bit presumptuous. Btw I do not follow the paleodiet or need it to be "true", I'm just pointing some blatant biases in the video.
I’m a big fan, but this whole thing is a giant straw man argument since the paleo diet does not preclude starches or carbs or claim they’re modern. I recommend reading the work of Loren Cordain & Rob Wolf who provide the foundational reasoning behind Paleo, and not just the elevator pitch you heard from a reality tv star or something.
It's incredibly separate from the high carb processed foods of today but would be similar to the high carb whole foods. The plants would have evolved so wouldn't be exactly the same but would be similar in composition. Most of the processed carb foods of today are also high fat foods too. The example Hank gave of the chips is quite heavy in oil, so are cookies, cakes, and pastries. Not that fat is bad but processed oil is not really a health food.
You’d have to eat about 3 pints of Strawberries (a natural source of carbs) to equate ONE 20oz bottle of Mountain Dew. Naturally occurring carbs do not equal man made/refined carbs.
Paleo do eat carbs, quite a bit of it, and safe starches. Not sure why you think they dont. It's not too hard to look at their food pyramid and identify starches/high carb sources.
@SciShow , I am not pro Paleo. But the video is misleading, I am against proscessed carbs (sugars) not starches, this video is misleading also in a another way as to how much starches did we consume on daily basis. Grains and roots vs the mac and cheese we finish in one sitting. Please recommend balance diets instead of pushing one over other
@@gl15col agree but my point not in the current form. Starch are much complex than the carbs we consume is our sugary drinks and burger buns. It can mislead a common person from eating healthy carbs over processed junk. That is my point. I wish the video was clearer
i kinda doubt that paleo says that there was no starch eating going on. im pretty sure its more like: starches where pretty rare to even find. and the things that contained starches had only a fraction of them compared to modern crops. we did a lot of selective breeding in the last 10k. the dose makes the poison.
tom duke Why would you think starches were hard to find? Today's crops are enormous, but a few hours of search back then on the African plains could likely yield a lot of food
@@chloro8306 other factors including refined sugar isn't really a "diet" XD annoys me when people say high carb diet means you eat a lot of sugar. No thats just unhealthy.
I don't think anyone has ever said we are not well adapted to eat carbs. What low carb diets posit is that carbs are a major factor for overweight and metabolic diseases as they produce metabolic adaptations.
It's very simple. Carbs contain a lot more calories than most other foods. Calories make you fat. Therefore, if you eat too much carbs, you'll put on weight (i.e. fat). Solution: eat less (and exercise more). It's not the carbs' fault, it's yours.
@@DieFlabbergast What you said is plain wrong. Carbs trigger insulin release, which makes you store fat and feel tired and hungry. Exercise is great to keep yourself in good physical and mental shape, but does nothing for weight loss. That's just plain physics.
I'm not sure this really changes much. I don't think very many people were saying humans hardly ever or never ate carbs, just that they weren't the central pillar of our diet like they are now, and they couldn't really have been given how much you'd have to eat to meet your macro-nutrient needs and how much starches and grains were available before agriculture. Our ancestors ate carbs, potentially more than we thought, but they still primarily ate animals.
We only started eating more animals as we moved into colder climates. In the tropics of Africa where our guys evolved it was mainly plants and some insects. We were largely gatherers and started hunting as colder weather made plant food more scarce for half the year. Doesn't mean it was healthy. Ice men have been found with a belly full of meat but also evidence of heart disease. Usually people died in their 30's well before heart disease was an issue though and heart disease doesn't stop people from passing on their genes so evolutionarily it never hindered us from surviving but today, lifespans are longer so it's better to thrive rather than just survive. Heart disease is a concern now that infectious diseases are under better control.
@@brianmerkosky9243 The current available evidence indicates that we likely evolved as persistence predators. The majority of our caloric intake would've been from animals. People typically underestimate just how much plant material is required from non-domesticated plants to sustain humans, even in ideal climates and locales, and insects are good, but the volume you'd actually need to eat is impractical. We were hunters from the beginning, and we do have unique adaptations that are suited to a omnivorous diet skewed heavily toward meat consumption. Doesn't mean we didn't eat other stuff, the evidence just suggests that we evolved as predators and couldn't really survive without prey.
Seems like the fact that we enjoy sweet food disproves Paleo altogether. Like if you see a growth of bananas or mangoes or raspberries you're gonna quickly gobble them up.
And meat every single day. Most of the world only ate meat infrequently on special occasions throughout most of civilization and prior the evidence suggests we were probably opportunistic scavengers when we ate meat or bone. I've had chats with various anthropologists at my uni who actually work in the field and the consensus was reached a while ago that the idea that humans were some kind of proto hunter is just childish fantasy. There was never hard evidence for it but until about 5 years ago there was no hard evidence against it. Well now we have that. With that said humans definitely tried to eat anything they could and scrap for every calorie they could get. That is a distinctive feature of humans that we could call an omnivore trait. Although I kind of hate the word omnivore because everyone just uses it mean something it really doesn't. A cow is an omnivore if you cooked and processed meat for it to consume. (and we do that to)
@@Furiends well I am in a corner since I don't back up my comments with scientists or experts but they can be wrong although rare. Farming never took place till 10k years ago(6th grade world history) for the other 90k years humans ate meat only even so the ones who ate carbs in the 10k years are only a negligible part and the food from carbs we ate isn't even vegetables or fruits those had to be selectively breeded those says humans ate something vastly different. POINT: modern humans have lived for 100k yrs they only start growing crops 10k years ago also the more northern genes or more southern genes from equator the better you are equipped for keto or carnivore Lastly babies have blood sugar levels far lower than adult humans, they used ketones to live carbs, there is no essential carbs in fact fat is not a secondary source of nutrition it is carbs your because everyone was a baby(no not a crying loser a little person)
@@Tales41 A cooked starch diet doesn't necessarily require widespread agriculture. Humans were always on the move. well before agriculture though humans would tend to the sites they'd stay before moving on. We know that humans migrated in such a pattern as to return to sites they had been previously thoughout the year and migrated seasonally. Well before agriculture humans were planting food ahead of time.
@@Furiends even so humans primarily ate meat and the patterns you speak of well the food from that would not be much our bodies made the guts smaller so our brains could be bigger for same amount of food needed, they eat meat cause of that.
of course hunter gathering indians used to gather grass seeds. I've seen the baskets they used at museums. They also dug up roots that had were high in starches.
Native Americans were well in the Neolithic Era (or in many cases in the Chalcolithic one, even one group was transitioning towards Bronze) when Columbus arrived. American Neolithic had not fully extended to every corner of the double continent, so some groups can still be considered almost purely hunter-gatherer. But in Eastern North America everybody cultivated maize at the very least, just as in the Amazon jungle everybody grows yams.
@@nautilusshell6092 Non ones saying that is not true but the way people have worked to understand hunter gatherer societies way back then is to understand the more modern hunter gatherer societies.
So what you're saying is that people who are terrified to eat "unnatural" GMO-containing food are sipping wine made by the undead. This pleases me tremendously.
Bruh, ancient humans didn't have "diets". That's not a concept that even existed before 1860. Ancient humans ate anything and everything they possibly could, because they literally had to to survive.
Before watching. The problem has never been Carbs outright. Whoever is saying that is just plain wrong. The problem is and has always been refined carbs with little to no fiber. We need fiber. I seriously get triggered when people say carbs with no stipulation as to which kind of carbs. They are using the term as a blanket statement. Edit: one minute in. Slightly over simplified, leaving out some important info. I'll keep watching. Edit2: The facts given are mostly good. Pringles is not a good carb. No fiber, processed refined carb.
Also it's almost definite that these ancient 'carbs' are examples of 'starvation foods', things early hominids ate when they couldn't get a nice fresh kill. As our bodies evolved to process them more efficiently and the humans-to-game animals ratios went up we learned to 'like' things that were previously only eaten in extremis. So much so we learned to farm them, as game animals got scarcer and scarcer relative to the hungry mouths to feed.
@Nate Dorego Yeah there weren't many scientific papers being published 100,000 years ago... As a biologist the only citation I need is the short human large intestine that isn't really suited to processing large amounts of fibre-filled seeds and roots (as in the previous ~3.5 million years it had adapted to processing primarily meat). Of course in the last few hundred years we have created machines to pre-process these 'foodstuffs' so that our unsuited gut can then use them.
Not surprised that we’ve been eating carbs for a really long time. My question is: were we able to eat carbs year-round? Seasonally? A few months out of the year? Also, did all humans around the globe eat carbs in the same way?
Get your facts right. Paleo isn't carb or starch-free, it's grain-free. And just because people ate some grains before the agricultural revolution, does not mean that eating tons of refined grains nowadays is healthy or historically accurate. Stop encouraging sloppy thinking, especially if you're claiming some sort of epistemic high-ground for being "scientific."
Claire Tabera But what is the basis for cutting out grains? Whole grains are incredibly nutritious and, as a part of a balanced diet, are totally healthy. Sure cut out the masses of white rice and white flour but just replace it with an balanced amount of brown rice and wholemeal flour.
Fair enough, I agree. A reason for cutting out grains and legumes is because they contain anti-nutrients, meaning much of their minerals are bound up and will even prevent the absorption of other nutrients you eat with that meal. If someone wants to get as much nutrition as possible that’s definitely not ideal. There are ways to minimize the anti-nutrients though, such as soaking, sprouting and fermenting. That’s why other diets just say you should eat “properly prepared” grains and legumes rather than completely avoiding them.
Carbs are your friends as long as you dont consume processed sugars.Cooked starches with enough veggies will lower the glycemic index and hence will not lead you to over eating and sudden spike in blood sugar levels.
@Jake S On average? How on earth would you figure that out? Everyone ate what they could find, it was always changing. They were eating fruits and vegetables, you figure it out.
Almost everyone who suggest paleo suggest starches. I feel like you guys have been having a weird bias when it comes to diet lately, which is sad cause it makes you guys seem dishonest
I caught that too! I wish they would stay off the nutritional stuff because it shows how shallow their research is - and it makes me suspect how deep they dive into other topics.
It's not just the diet stuff. I've noticed some of their other recent videos are more superficial and click-baity. It's probably for profitability reasons.
TheAltruismActivist Everyone has insulin sensitivity to sugary foods and highly processed grains. Stick to grains that are high quality and less processed.
@@Michael-lc8yl you said it. Processed carbs, especially when mixed with fat like pizza, pie and cake, are the problem. Focus on healthy carbs instead.
You realize most vegetables and fruits are carbs, right? What did you think the average person ate in a day? Fruits, vegetables and legumes would have made up the most of the typical diet.
Well no. I had survival training in a variety of environs and learned how to forage. It was possible to satisfy hunger in most places in most seasons. But I can't speak to a balanced died. What makes you think experienced hunter/gatherers could not put us to shame?
That makes sense about the carbs. When farming and horticulture was invented, ancient humans likely grew foods they liked and were probably already used to eating.
Well. Paleo isn’t meaning carbohydrate is not included our ancestor’s meal As much as I known of. The thing is crops and fruits contain more richer carbs and sugar than paleo period by breeding. In paleo, apples and strawberries were not even sweet for modren human taste. So I think eating starchs long long before doesn’t break down paleo diet at all.
@@brunolimon1790 - That's still debated: some proto-Sapiens were found in Morocco, most would not classify them as fully Sapiens but certainly much closer than Neanderthals, etc. The first unmistakable Homo sapiens specimen is still Omo 1 (Ethiopia some 200,000 years ago), which was found along wit Omo 2, who is not Sapiens. Afterwards we only find Sapiens in Africa: Idaltu and Irhoud, c. 160,000 years ago.
white bread is meant to be linked to the damage of the gut biome and supposedly can link to metabolic disorders like IBS and chrons diseases in worse cases.
I don't deny that humans have been eating carbohydrate, when available, for eons. However, the modern carbohydrates, even the majority of those unprocessed, are quite different from those in our evolutionary history. Since the dawn of agriculture, humans have been breeding plants to increase their carloic content, while decreasing their nutrient density. Fast forward to the modern era, and you have the absurd situation where a human can be obese and simultaneously malnourished. The carbohydrates that humans evolved eating do not resemble Pringles or any of those plant foods in the images shown. Furthermore the modern carbohydrates can be highly addictive, due to their high glycemic index, leading to overeating and uncontrollable weight gain.
Same thing applies to meat... there's going to be a lot less fat marbling in a gazelle you just chased for 18 hours vs. whatever is at the butcher shop, from the farm where it was raised. People nowadays also choose less organ meat and don't spend much time or energy acquiring it, so if all you eat is steak wrapped in bacon and then lie on the couch it's not great either.
I would argue that modern carbohydrate sources are equally or more nutritious than it's wild counterparts. A lot of plant breeding is done to make foods more edible and less dangerous to eat. For example, modern corn came from teosinte. Modern corn is very easily eaten with its soft kernels compared to the rock solid and small kernels of teosinte. Also many wild potatoes have higher glycoalkaloids than domestic potatoes, which makes a more wild potato more toxic to consume than a more domesticated one. Breeding does not decrease nutritional value for the most part because breeding is actually highly regulated to ensure at least equivalent nutritional value. What makes modern "carb" foods less nutritious is the amount of added salt, sugar, and fat of highly processed foods (not the plant itself).
Paleo isn't low-carb, that's keto. Paleo does avoid excessive carbs, by avoiding excessive grains and such, but you can still eat your seeds, nuts, fruits and vegetables.
And why have we had such a love affair with carbs? Because they provide an incredible amount of store-able energy in a neat little package. That was very useful and necessary when the average lifestyle was filled with very active days. But for a less active lifestyle those same carbs become a burden. The low carb diet doesn't have it wrong...It understands the relationship with an active life and the food we eat.
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So they require you to pin an ad now?
Google search results say that the paleo diet must exclude grains, but the internet is once again wrong. Wikipedia says additional citation(s) are needed on the grain topic, so it’s at least better than Google. The idea of the paleo diet is to eat like prehistoric people, and pretty much everyone has their own concept of how prehistoric people ate. Wikipedia states that the paleo diet is derived from evolutionary medicine, which sounds right, but most adherents simply see it as a way to avoid modern processed foods. It’s clear that people aren’t fully adapted to eat McDonald’s and drink soda.
SciShow For whatever reason you are ignoring scientific research that has been done on low-carb diets. Avoiding processed food like Pringles should be common sense TBH.
DFTBA
@intempify You are right. I made my comment because i hope they will make a video about the scientific research that has been done on the subject of low carb eating. It's an interesting field of research.
Yeah of course the paleo diet is a farce. But still low carb works out for me. I am healthier and have less allergic symptoms.
I liek to say I'm on the "Legit Paleo Diet", if it's edible and available I'll eat it.
Eating like I don't know when my next meal is gonna be.
You might eat poison doing that...
@@MrYTGuy1 That would negate the 'edible' part.
maybe there´s s lot of ¨paleo diets¨. People then maybe were like us, their diets depended on the what kind of food was available and the cultural difference.
Paleo Diet ----> First World Problems...
Saying that humans have been eating starchy carb filled food for a long time does not really mean it was a huge part of their diet. If anything seeing someone from 8k years back having only half of those genes kind of show that. Humans would eat whatever they could get their hand on, so thats where the gatherer in the "hunter gatherer" comes from.
"Humans would eat whatever they can get their hands on"
The way this sounds like we're species-devouring extinction machines just cracks me up
@@andyb2028 We kind of are.
@@andyb2028 the Maori in New Zealand were exactly that - they literally ate the Moa bird to extinction in the first 100 years of their occupation of those islands. There's also no reason to believe that we weren't a contributing factor to, if not the cause of, many of the mega fauna extinctions in other places of the world .
Its really only in the last century or so have their been a few voices saying, "hang on a minute - we keep going like this (insert species name) wont be around"
Humans have allways been omnivores, like we were taught in school in the 80's. Since when did people start believing otherwise?
That one puzzles me too.
Since has been demonstrated to to largely ideological not science !
Two men all meat diet for one year 1930 by Walter S McLean and Eugene F Du Bois
www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf
zerocarbzen.com/2015/04/19/eskimos-prove-an-all-meat-diet-provides-excellent-health-by-vilhjalmur-stefansson/
Why all humans need to eat meat for Health
breakingmuscle.com/healthy-eating/why-all-humans-need-to-eat-meat-for-health
@@thalesnemo2841 meat has fat, cholesterol and red meat for example can cause cardiovascular disease and cancer, how can be that healthy?? makes no sense.
@Can you hear me Major Tom?
A laughable comment only a zealot vegan would or could make since it is without any basis in science
@@thalesnemo2841 so red meat has no fat, cholesterol, doesn't cause cancer? i just stated facts.
I always thought it odd that whenever I saw some of these meals they had pancakes... these cavemen were brilliant
Crabs have a lot of carbs crab carbs for carb crabs
Crusty crustaceans can be carbolicious.
Carbs and starches were a rare but easy energy source, often with a very limited life span (see fruit), so it makes sense that we would eat them, and when available eat whatever was available (also explains why carbs shut off the satiety hormone and make you hungrier) and store most of it as fat for when we can't successfully hunt.
The problem with consuming carbs in modern diet is that we EAT TOO MANY OF THEM. Our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors ate what they could, when they could, and sometimes they could go days without eating anything. Meat was preferred, but when that wasn't available, they would need to find something to keep them from starving to death, and unhealthful food is better than no food at all. We adapted the amylase genes out of necessity, but we also developed genes that help us digest and detoxify alcohol. Just because we can process these toxins doesn't mean we should be consuming them in mass quantities.
I think you've confused keto w paleo.
Bread is just a baked porrige
You do not know bread.
We didn’t put a ring on agriculture for that many tens of thousands of years?!! We like carbs for a long time!!
Two points: First, nothing in the picture of multiple carb sources you show ever existed in those forms 100,000 years ago. In fact, while people reasonably evolved omnivorous eating habits during changes such as the ice ages and migration, the starchy foods they consumed were much smaller and more difficult to gather in large amounts, and had a higher fiber content than starch content, which slowed the digestion of starches.
Second, your description of genes' ability to maintain a system of checks and balances on mutations is the prime argument against GMOs: If one artificially manipulates a gene, it is just possible that it creates an anomaly that might otherwise be stopped by an oversight sequence were it to occur naturally.
As potatoes are native to South America, I doubt if they found 120,000 year old charred taters in South Africa.
Makes sense! Time and time again, all the successful diets have one thing in common: Eliminating processed foods and added sugars. I think as far as the rest goes, it depends on what you like and what your body responds well to. Also, there are still so many traditional diets in the world based on things like yams; they're relatively easy to grow, spoil more slowly than meat, and are calorie-dense.
That was super interesting, thanks!
I eat whatever I want and work extremely hard physically. I'm healthy outside and inside. Just get a system that's good for YOUR body.
Also, I saw that thing you did, I saw it.
You can't eat moderate to large amounts of fat and have healthy arteries though.
Yeah we have this thing called science...
Just wait, my uncle was like that, when he retired he blew up to land whale status.
DrummerDucky Except fat is not inflammatory so the arteries don't develop plaque.
@@DrummerDucky yes you can
SURE, but... we didn't have twinkies 100,000 years ago. We didn't even have the grains to make regular old flour! I think that's more the idea than a 100% literal meaning :P
That's not what the paleo diet says though. 100% No grains, no potatoes, no legumes, no dairy, no sugars - at all. It's good to cut out super refined carbs, of course, but they aren't following anything even close to an actual paleo diet - but saying they are. We didn't eat mostly meat, we ate mostly berries, fruits, leaves, roots, legumes, and vegetables, with some fish and small to medium sized game if it could be caught. Paleo dieters are very strict and serious about what they're eating and swear it's "paleo" for real. Which is actually impossible. So it's not just "the spirit of the thing." If they want to say it's some other kind of diet, fine. But it's not even based on any paleo reality, it's made up.
@@shariwelch8760 pretty sure you can have seeds, nuts, berries, vegetables and most fruits on Paleo
@@defeqel6537 Did I say you couldn't? Look again at what I said.
@@shariwelch8760 "no sugars - at all", plenty of sugars in what I listed
@@defeqel6537 🙄
humans were eating starches and not neccesarily farming but still means they werent just hunter gatherers either which helps support an ancient human culture that may have built all those megalithic structures....
Objection, plants back in the day had a much higher fiber content than is known currently. So yes while you may call them carbs humans get less calories out of such a food and more dietary benefits when mixing said fiber containers with meat which they primarily were eating. I hate when science wants to prove something so badly that it forgets that along with humans so did plants evolve. There is another obvious reason for those carbs and that's that humans ate wild fruit which would be easy to find while trying to hunt. Fruit has probably been in the human diet for a long time, but not likely have 'regular starches' with no real gains besides carbs unless they have fiber and protein to make up for those carbs [our modern food has so many carbs and sugars that fiber and protein does not balance them any longer.] And yes fruit also had a higher fiber content back in the day and certainly had better flavor than 'starchy carbs' since things like sugar and salt weren't really even well grasped back then. You can tell sweetness is important in history because even ancient rome and greece flavored their food with lead [for it's sweetness]. That isn't 120000 years ago but about 3000.
2:27 Me: Man, Hank is right! That cave is Classy!
Me 20 minutes later: Oh wait, that’s the name!?
Based on my consumption of Pringles, I can only solidly infer that early humans ate the hell out of carbs only when they had them; not because it was the basis of their diet.
Glucose is gained from consuming carbs. It's what we use to form ATP. Carbs also happen to be extremely widespread, and there were likely few shortages. Pringles contain lots of fat & salt, which were hard to find on the African plains. This is why humans are so addicted to them nowadays.
It may be true that we ate carbs in the paleolithic, but carbs then were completely different to carbs today. They were far more fibrous and were not available in supermarkets, so no, you don't have a licence to eat wonder bread and cake.
So humans have always loved our carbs. (And honestly anything we can get our hands and cooking spoons on)
Still gotta put in a word for low carbing as long as you don't go too extreme. Sometimes just changing how and what you eat can be a reasonable way to restrict calories without resorting to calorie counting or specialized processed foods. Meat and greens, with some fruit, while avoiding starchy grains and tubers, can provide a very balanced diet for a human with very little thought. It also will result in a lower calorie diet in most cases. And all without counting calories.
But sure, proto humans ate whatever they could. Digging sticks allowed mama proto human to uproot plants mama gorilla only ate the shoots of and get at the fleshy tubers.
@Jake S carnivore dieters, doctors included, argue that there is no reason to include plants.. personally I think both extremes are too..extreme
But how many carbs made up the human diet before agriculture could produce large quantities of starches? Even if humans figured out that grains could be cooked and eaten, they couldn’t have had too many before figuring out to grow them.
DUUUUH... It's sort of a no-brainer that early humans have to have eaten the plants looong loooooooooong before they ended up cultivating them. Why and how the hell else would they come up with the idea to do so otherwise?
Zombie mutant yeast. One more thing I've got to worry about...
Baruch Ben-David We are all on watch out for human zombies. But it’s all that zombie bread you have to watch out for .
Do you guys have something against Paleo/ Keto diets? Potatoes were only eaten in South America until after Columbus. And modern wheat and corn have very little in common with ancient wild and ancient versions. Many paleo folks eat sweet potatoes but not wheat. Please get your facts right before you rant against what you consider a fad diet. And no, I am not taking diet advice from someone who eats Pringles. Do you even read the labels on stuff you eat?
Keto is fake news low carb that industries and pharmaceuticals push to make people sick. Keto people are the next smokers
Didnt adam and eve eat bread. I'm pretty sure starches were always available
Uhh...no? Fruits, yes, but I don't recall the Bible mention bread until much later.
@@AkaiAzul I'm pretty sure they did. Read genesis 3:19
@@blackspiderman1887 Ah, after they expelled from the garden Eden. That makes sense.
Don't tell me that Fruity Pebbles, and Cocoa Pebbles aren't paleo. They have a picture of a caveman right on the packaging.
_Part of a prehistoric breakfast!_
In related news, as a child, I was disappointed that "Cap'n Crunch" wasn't hardtack and rum.
@@bcubed72 How long ago was your childhood? I know some people who WISH the Cap'n was as soft and non-mouth-cutting as hardtack.
It’s all been a lie? Does that mean Kellogg’s corn flakes aren’t great?
Me who grew up as a poor Russian child on buckwheat porridge for breakfast be like, How do you fellow kids yes, I like fruity rocks for breakfast.
This seems obvious to me, why would we develop agriculture if we didn't eat the food in the first place? Why would you grow something you don't eat?
ah but then there jab at paleo dieting doznt work so u ignore that fact so hank feels smart lol
Of course, but the main argument for and against the paleo diet is precisely when we started eating it. The assumption is that grains are a relatively modern thing, something we aren't evolved to eat so much as something we like and/or are told we need.
To be fair, there are paleo advocates that advocate a low-carb diet, but misinformed purists would argue that isn't a "real" paleo diet even though its closer to the real thing.
@@ZombieBarioth are you mixing paleo and keto?
@@defeqel6537 Yes. Yes he is. Paleo is usually low carb (rarely as low as keto though), but you can add plenty of starchy and carb filled foods, as long as you don't abuse the fructose of fruits, sucrose of table sugar, or refined/processed foods. It is in essence eating as naturally as possible while reducing simple carbs.
Or use in your daily life, like gourds and vines.
Charred foods huh? So 100K years later and people still don’t know how to cook oatmeal?
can you blame em?
Charred? My mother probably cooked that. I was a teenager before I tasted meat that wasn't burnt leather.
@@kevinking7991 I know the feeling my friend. I know all too well.
Hey, some people like their toast burnt. Also, controlling the temperature of a fire is kind of an iffy process and most people back then would probably eat the burnt bits anyways, there's still some nutritional value in them.
lol
No kidding we've always loved carbs, we just haven't had access to an infinite quantity of simple sugars
👍
ah ah ah. You leave that goalpost right where it is. No modern view of nutrition advocates the benefits of sucking down sugars.
True! If you want to go paleo just eat as many real, unprocessed foods as possible.
@@lelexoxo303 yep, I don't have the discipline to go Paleo/primal but it's a good guideline and most arguments against it strawman it
@@starvalkyrie ok, glad to hear we agree. Many of the Paleo benefits come from cutting out bs. The specific diet of cavemen is not the most important thing. Think of Paleo as the process of finding an evolutionary adapted diet. Not a stone tablet list of commandments
If you think about it, it kinda makes sense for we to learn to make a bread like thingys, before we came up with agriculture, like, why would you go to all of that trouble that farming is, if you arent sure of how usefull it will be, but if we knew that with farming we could make our breads more often and reably them the effort that it's needed it's justified
You are smart
4000 damn years...
Anyway, I still am shocked to think about all our anatomically human ancestors lived for like 100000 years in those conditions without knowing anything other than surviving in that environment...so many generations to be able to get to the point where we actually learned to really use our brain and build more sophisticated things and civilizations.
That's a good point. Before that, people probably gathered wild grains and roots, but obviously, only when they could find them. Agriculture gave them a consistent and regular supply, so agriculture is still an important development in early human societies.
Agriculture makes access to carbs easier, but that's not necessarily such a good thing. Of course, we do need carbohydrates, but not nearly as much of the simpler ones as are consumed in the S.A.D. (Standard American Diet). Agriculture can also give us easier access to proteins and fats.
"Must-a have bowrance, Daniel-san." -- Mr. Miyagi
The book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond talks quite a bit about human evolution and how agriculture became a thing that humans did. I highly recommend anyone interested in this stuff to look into it. EDIT: fixed the title. Had it way wrong.
Just a quick reminder that bread can be made without raising agents (such as yeast, sour dough or baking powder) Many traditional bread types are unleavened: Matzo, tortilla, flatbröd, and many more
you can catch yeast from the air
Shall we spend Passover together.
Flatbrod?
@@alexwang982 Flatbrød means flat bread and is like huge flakes of flour and water (I think). It's usually eaten as a supplement to soups and stuff like that. It's popular in Norway Sweden and probably some other countries
@@viljargjerde6703 Germoney as well, at least in Schleswig-Holstein
"These genes are essential for life"
Hanseniaspora: *hold this wine I made*
No idea what you mean, but I support your right to babble on.
Lance Baker
Yeast is the stuff that creates alcohol. It’s a waste product they produce when they are deprived of oxygen.
Never met a tater I didn't like...
Felt this in my soul
Pour my tater in a cup Thank you very much for the potatoes...
@@TheTazzietiger Very true. Ever eaten a raw slice of home grown potato? Or even a batch of freshly mashed taters with no seasonings yet? No cream, salt or butter? It's good :)
I don't like when they disintegrate during boiling. I still eat them though.
@@dontalkt2meboutheros Depends on why or what you're boiling them for. :)
*No SciShow, you got Paleo wrong.* Completely. I don't follow the diet, but a quick google tells me that not only do they eat carbs, but even some types starches (including root vegetables). I even found a 7-year old reddit post talking positively about "good" starches so it is nothing new. So you're attacking a strawman which, ironically, still is something they won't eat.
@Jake S The title of the video is "Paleo Got It Wrong: We've Loved Carbs for Over 100,000 Years"
"We've Loved Carbs for Over 100,000 Years, but now we have fuel injection"
Bravo!
Aka, Red Bull
i laughed at this way harder than I should have hahah
@@epsi Why would the sugar give you a crash? I don't see the relation. Unless you actually use it, sugar just turns into fat for storage. Could it just be psychosomatic?
@Jake plowing sweeteners into the body especially aspartame ain't a better alternative.
Forget harnessing the seeming endless energy of children, just attach some motion generators to Hank's hands. I think I could light my shack if Hank was around. (BEG!)
The Butterfly effect of those hands probably could raze cities.
You ever watch Mitchel & Webb? There a documentary host skit where they try to stop him moving his hands.
Maybe he's part Italian. The day i found out, it all made sense. It's a genetic condition, really.
It's fun to watch people present when they're trying really hard to force themselves to use hand motions even though it's completely unnatural for them. I think I first noticed it when watching some of the engineers from Google present. Obviously they were coached to use hand motions to avoid selling stiff and boring, but it just doesn't come off right coming from some people.
Dustin Boyd shared consciousness sounds amazing. I always wished I could fuse to get even closer to my girlfriend, kinda like how fusion in Steven Universe works. Snuggling each other really hard while naked feels close, but not good enough 😂
I love how no one takes into consideration that ancent people lived ALL OVER THE WORLD and they didn't ALL EAT THE SAME THINGS.
It's true they ate what was around and their diet was probably varied by location. But you're wrong that humans were all over the world in prehistory. Humans hadn't migrated everywhere on earth at the points in time they're talking about.
65,000 years ago, the timeline described for the charred remains of oats, peas, and root vegetables discovered, humans were only in Africa, Asia, and Europe. They had yet to reach Australia, or North or South America.
At the point they found the charred remains of starches dating back to 210,000 years ago, humans had only *just* started migrating into southern Europe.
Tser but they were in Africa and Europe and the americas already. Which is pretty much all over the world if not Antarctica.
@@nikkij4873 not the americas
There are different kinds of carbs predominantly eaten in parts of the world even now too, BUT THEY'RE STILL STARCHES. In my country we grow wheat and make it into bread. It's carbs. In Japan they grow and eat rice. Again, carbs. Just different forms of it.
I love ice cream now, but that doesn't mean I have access to it every single day, multiple times a day.
Precisely
Shhhhh you might trigger someones confirmation bias
I'll take this as an admission that you've been hoarding ice cream
@@xxasifxx So what? My family has been hoarding ice cream for generations.
Uhh. The same with meat, or chicken, or just about any rich and concentrated food.
I HAVE been eating carbs for 100,000 years straight
Abbieq11 amen to that
my boy here knows what's up
More like you got crabs
Same
@@bonbon2235 lol n herpes
Wait, we legit named a gene "WHIskey 5"? Did scientists assign a really cool name again?
This is a yeast gene we're talking about, the stuff that help us make alcohol's like whiskey. So I'm not surprised.
Geneticists seem to hide away so many of the cool names to keep them for themselves.
Sonic hedgehog gene
Robotnikinin
@@alexwang982 Pikachurin. A defect in the Sonichedgehog gene can result in having literally two faces like Frankenlouie.
Dustin Boyd Just a guess, but 22 could refer to what chromosome the gene is found on.
This is a misleading clickbait title. A reasonable title would be"Humans have been genetically adapted to eat carbs for at least 100000 years" which is not very surprising at all. However, it's also clear that, especially in nordic climates, carbs have been unavailable for big parts of the year.
not clear at all. both tubers/roots and (proto)grains are some of the most storable foods.
@@keedt I said"Especially in nordic climates. Anthropoligical studies have shown that fish has been a dominant part of the diet for most of our history. It's easily available, while agriculture is hard, unrewarding and unreliable.
Paleo may have got it wrong, but their approach is still great for one simple reason: we eat waaaay too many processed carbs. So cutting down, wvwn totally for a while and completely removing processed sugars is a great idea. Paleo is great to give your body a break from all the sugars. We shoild be eating a iet that is closest to nature as possible. Try it and you will feel great.
There's sugars in fruits too. Not processed white sugar, but sugar nonetheless.
I think there's some mixing up between Paleo and Atkins/Keto diets here (probably because there's a lot of overlap, but if you're going for the" historical" angle associated with the Paleo diet then the differences matter). The Paleo diet is all about eating as close to whole foods as possible and stepping away from overly processed foods, which yes, includes a lot of our favorite modern high carb treats and baked goods.
Potatoes and vegetables of all kinds are fine. In the strictest versions of the diet you avoid dairy, grains and (for some reason) white potatoes, but that's certainly not universal. It isn't a diet about eating all meat.
Lots of people who follow the Paleo diet do choose to also minimise their carbs even further to go into keto for weight loss, but the basis of the actual Paleo diet is about simplification, and the aversion to processed carbs in relation to human history is far more about quantity, availability and ideals than it is about literally trying to eat exactly what ancient humans did (more taking inspiration from what kinds of things they likely had most access to). Their "agriculture is a very new development that we aren't built for" ideology is about scale and ubiquity and how the proportion and sources of carbs in our diets has changed relatively recently and why they think that's not good for health.
I personally don't follow any diets but this is my understanding from doing quite a bit of reading out of interest in the past. I'm not a nutritionist or a historian and can't personally say whether or not humans are any better off cutting out any category of foods, and agriculture is definitely equally to thank for me having fresh vegetables as it is for me being able to buy spongy loaves of white bread. I personally don't know what ancient people ate or did, and I make no value judgements on anyone for their diet or lifestyle choices.
This comment is just to say that it seems the Paleo diet has been misunderstood and misrepresented in relation to otherwise very cool discoveries about the diets of past humans, and the choice to centre a lot of weight on the "Paleo got it wrong!" angle sits uncomfortably with me.
It is of course possible that the claims in this video about how the Paleo diet works were also researched, and that the general ideology has changed since my reading into it a few years ago, making my understanding outdated, or that I'm the one misunderstanding or misremembering the claims of the diet, or that there are differing versions of the diet out there and I only came across the looser interpretations. In any of those cases, also providing a source for the claims made about the Paleo diet in a video of this scale by a channel as deeply trusted as SciShow would not be out of place and would go a long way.
As it is, its hard not to feel a little like the Paleo diet was pulled in and tied to the story for the sake of public appeal and doesn't play much of a role except for the fun and satisfying narrative of debunking claims widely believed to be made by a silly and restrictive dogma of the fad diet industry. If that is a real part of the story then its worthy of citation, if it isn't, it looks like you've thrown Paleo under the bus for the click value of briefly mentioning, it without much attention put into making sure the common belief you'll be repeating is factual or fairly represented.
(Serious props to anyone who read this entire comment.)
I read and enjoyed your perspective. Thank you.
Lexi, I didn't read past the first paragraph. PULLLLEEEEEAASSS stop the multiple returns.
Just one thing.. meat, even raw (which is as unprocessed as meat can be) is highly concentrated food. There’s nothing to suggest that it was freely available, or even eaten three times a day, as it is eaten today.
I read it and I'm glad you said it so I don't have to.
Lexi Lightfoot you rock!
Thanks for this info!! The first half was super interesting. But im not sure why you were taking about yeast at the end. It felt like it was not tied to the main subject very well. What does yeast have to do with our ancestors consuming starches? I needed something that brought those two ideas together. Thx
Theis is a sci show news episode, so it's just reporting on two (or more, depending on the episode) recent knowledge/studies :)
Hey, so as a follower of the paleo diet, this was very interesting. However, this does not speak to whether or not starches are - in a nutritional sense - good at the levels that we currently find today. From my experience, eating extremely limited starches and focusing on proteins, fruits and veggies, and natural fats has done wonders for my fitness and overall wellness. Does that mean starches are inherently bad? No. I just find myself more satiated when I eat starches in a reasonable quantity and in ways that aren't overly processed
A lot of starchy foods nowadays are often devoid of any fiber, protein, fats and micronutrients. So your diet change is healthy because you eat more fruit and vegetables. And mostlikely not processed fruits and vegetables. And you also most likely eat less sugar (glucose and fructose).
Starches/carbs are fine. But most people eat way too much of them and become unhealthy.
@@TheHadesShadeI don't disagree. I believe very firmly in whole foods as much as possible and avoiding processed foods to the maximum. While humans adapted to process starches, and there certainly are good benefits from good starches (rices, whole grains, tubers, etc), I still believe that it needs to be in moderation with the rest of a diet.
Keto a year and I feel better than I have in over 20 years! I eat carbs but mostly it's from veggies. Processed carbs just aren't healthy in my opinion.
oh and just as a final note from me: I certainly don't buy all the "stories" from Paleo about how we didn't eat starches in our distant past. For me paleo is about eating simple and healthy, little to no processed foods. Whole foods and simple eating.
@Jake S I'm not attempting to change people's minds about their eating habits, what they believe they should eat. You do you
I'm disappointed in the title of this video, Hank. Paleo doesn't argue that humans didn't eat starches/carbs, it argues that the kinds of grains that make up a significant portion of our diet today (corn/wheat/rice/rye/barley) have been selectively bred through agriculture to be nothing like those that were available to our Paleolithic ancestors (Scishow itself has episodes about this). That doesn't make Paleo right, it's a sophisticated form of the naturalistic fallacy, but we gain nothing by misrepresenting its arguments.
I've been years following the paleo diet, and it definitely says humans didn't eat carbs before agriculture, that's why it's called paleo in the first place, and it is a stupid diet, because we didn't have problems until refined sugars, that's the enemy, not carbs itself
@@alfonsoparrado3112 Where does any proponent of diet claim it's a zero-strach eating plan? Plz cite your sources.
@@alfonsoparrado3112 exactly!
@@ColinStuckert I think the confusion is in using the words starch and grain interchangeable. Grasses (or grains, corn, wheat, barleys, oats, etc.) are starches. While tubers are starches, they are not grains. If I remember correctly, Paleo diets cut out grasses (grains) but not all starches (in the sense of tubers like sweet potato/yam, etc). Similarly, all grains are seeds (if you plant a corn kernel, you get more corn) but not all seeds are grains (a sunflower seed will produce a sunflower, not a grass). And per a Paleo diet, you can eat seeds, but not grasses (grains, even though they are seeds). Also, further confusing, beans (legumes) are seeds but Paleo diets cut those out too. It seems the answer lies in the botanical definition of the plant source. Not in the modern words we apply. But yeah, the title is a little misleading as evidence that humans ate starches (yams) doesn't mean that they consumed grasses (grains) at the time. But it looks like they did eat grains in some way earlier than previously thought (with the charred oats).
The FDA at one point pushed 6 to 11 servings of grains a day. Not a serving once or twice a week when your group finds it growing wild and then likley ferments it.
No, no, no... anybody who says that paleo is the same as low carb, doesn't know what they're talking about. Serious people in paleo eat plenty of tubers and fruits and nuts and other vegetables. What's different and is very clear from the isotope data is that we did not eat very much grain or beans. That's the big change in paleo.
This is a straw man argument.
You don't get to choose the definition of what constitutes a paleo diet anymore than they do though. If you ask 100 people on a "paleo diet", what defines said diet, you'll get many different answers.
@@rdizzy1
If you ask that average person the street what evolution, vaccination, climate change, relativity, or quantum mechanics is you'' get lots of different answers. that does not mean its arbitrary; there are right and wrong answers.
I don't choose, the science does and to a lesser extent the history decides . The anthropology has been around a long time and those that bothered to study it. This is a probably accidental strawman attack but probably originates with the not so accidental ill will of the Vegan lobby, people like Christina Warinner who is vegan for ideological reasons not scientific ones and who hate the idea that meat might be normal and beneficial for health.
Though I don't agree with everything he says, particularly with regard to fermented foods. Dr Loren Cordrain is the main person that popularized the Paleo approach, and he was correctly never low carbs except for the fact that we probably did cycle in and out of a ketosis due to environmental fluctuation and the availability of certain food stuffs. I don't see much disagreement among st the people who study paleo and folow both paleo and the literature.
I doubt you can find any adherent of paleo that reads the primary scientific literature that thinks humans were primarily or exclusively low carb. If you find one let me know and i'll happily show him he is wrong. (note there are combination paleo and ketogenic diets but those are for specific medical conditions like type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome).
Note, not low carb
thepaleodiet.com/recipes/
here is are rebuttal to Christan Warinner facepalm of a ted talk that preyed on peoples ignorance.
thepaleodiet.com/christina-warinner-debunking-the-paleo-diet-rebuttal/
Yes, bad beans!!!! Especially BLACK BEANS!!!!! Black is bad!!!!
@@michalchik The paleo diet referenced in anthropological studies is not the same paleo diet referenced in popular culture, similar to the difference between a scientific theory, and common place theory. At this point in time, using the term is akin to saying that you are a christian, every single christian on earth will give a different definition of what it means to be part of the group labelled "christian", thus it might as well not even be a group, or a label, for that matter, as it has lost all of its well defined and stated requirements, or overall tenets. Anyone, with any beliefs can state they are a christian, and thus they are christian. (Same with the paleo diet, or the keto diet, at this point)
Paleo diets do not inherently limit carbs. Keto diets do.
Primal Example thanks! I was scrolling for this comment like “paleo doesn’t mean low carb”.
True, but the keto diet was mostly used for epileptic children (like me/adult now) and people base it on that fact. But the paleo diet main claim is that our ancestors didn’t eat much carbs
@@Panther888 that's not correct. The Paleo diet's main claim is that our ancestors did not eat grains and to a lesser extent, beans. Sprouted beans are accepted in some Paleo circles. Sprouted ancient grains are even accepted in some Paleo circles as well.
One could eat nothing but sweet potatoes, blueberries and bananas all day and be 100 percent Paleo.
The paleo diet can adapt to evidence and stay relevant. Just minimize ultra processed food, including paleo nutritional bars and paleo chocolate, and animal products.
nustada It's pop science what do you expect.
With paleo eating small quantities of carbs, especially that found in root vegetables, etc is fine. The issue is the quantity and quality of sugary and/or processed carbs we eat nowadays.
Prehistoric man certainly had carbohydrates but they were starchy wild vegetables and roots with lots of fiber, not ultra processed white bread and high fructose corn syrup infused soft drinks. None of the sensible paleo diets recommend no carbs.
People love novelty and therefore fad diets. It’s important to know that whole grains are fine carb sources.
Paleo doesn't say that people didn't eat carbs
Yeah, Hank often misses the basics of specialized diets. I think he confused paleo with keto this time.
Paleo doesn't say no carbs, it says no carbs from refined grains and sugars. Sweet potatoes and squash are excellent sources of paleo diet friendly carbohydrates.
It also doesn't allow whole grains, which is fine for my dad as he has learned his gut problems are caused by celiac disease. If a package says it is paleo, it is gluten free. I also love vegans as it makes my life so much easier finding foods for my son who has serious milk allergies. If a package says it is vegan, my son is more likely safe to eat it. (He has other exciting allergies, as in emergency room exciting)
@Eye Sees You What you're describing is a ketogenic diet. Paleo allows as many carbs as you want although the options of "healthy" carbs is fairly limited.
backcountry164 thanks, yeah people get them mixed up because a lot of people combine the two diets. From what I’ve read, the recommendations for paleo are to eat mostly vegetables (including starchy root veggies but also a ton of green leafy), some fruit, and a little meat.
backcountry164 finally
@@backcountry164 I came here to say just this. I think this whole video is a little confused as to what constitutes a Paleo diet v a Ketogenic diet.
No the prehistoric humans were just trying the new fangled modern diet.
The one where you eat way too many simple sugars and processed additives, then claim that it all works out because you had a Diet Soda with it? :)
obviously ripped jeans are the most important
clever you
Hahaha, jeans-nome
@@irmawatifebriani8459
Gene Gnome
Omgosh this comment section is so clever.
The question was never whether we've loved carbs and for how long. Of course we love them they're very tasty. The question was whether carbs, and especially modern ultra-processed carbs are good to eat for all humans for their ultimate health. And the answer is obviously "NO!"
Missing the point, Sci channel, as usual.
Processed crap is not good, but that doesn't mean all carbs are bad. Starches, which have lots of fiber, are vital for good gut bacteria.
Well usually processed carbs aren't Even the real trap. Yeah they can cause insulin spikes but usually processed carbs come with bunch of fat which makes people obese and causes a huge amount of health issues as our bodies don't really like to convert carbs to fat as it's ineffient.
Sugars, starches, and fibers are different kinds of carbs. Chemically, simple sugars -- those with the simplest and smallest molecules -- polymerize (link together) to form more complex sugars and starches, and starches polymerize to form fibers. The more complex the carbohydrate molecule (the bigger and more complicated the molecule), the healthier it is to eat, generally. That doesn't mean we should avoid simple carbs and starches altogether and eat only sticks and sawdust. It just means we should shift our balance away from the simplest carbs (like glucose and fructose) and toward the more complex carbohydrates (especially water-soluble fibers which ARE good prebiotics that promote healthy gut flora). There's no need for absolutes when it comes to carbohydrate consumption, just a sensible shift in balance. There are many good, well-researched books about carbohydrates that explain all of this in detail. And don't forget that we also need health-promoting fats and proteins in our diet.
@@TerofiedBeats Some people can eat starches and feel fine, some people get a huge insulin spike from starches because they're genetically not built to tolerate carbs the same way. Those people will thrive on a diet very low in carbs, and even devoid of carbs altogether. Innuits and Chukchi are just two examples of indigenous tribes that live and thrive on no carbs at all. So, no, carbs are not vital to everyone, but some people can eat them and stay healthy and so they should. What all these videos miss is nuance. We're not all built the same way, and we shouldn't all eat the same way. With the exception of processed junk food - nobody should be eating that crap.
@@penguin87904 Actually, fat doesn't make people fat: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12566139
Only when fat is combined with sugar is it bad for humans. And also when it's industrial man-made vegetable oils like canola, corn and such. Animal fats have been consumed by humans and our ancestors for millions of years without any problems.
It is processed sugar and carbs that should be avoided.
No one in paleo says carbs are bad. That's keto... in paleo they avoid eating refined carbs, but anything that can be found in nature, including all starches, can be eaten
Starch is carbohydrate.
@@JackR772 thank you for stating the obvious?
Maria Teresa You’re welcome 👌
It is the keto diet that should be avoided.
My problem with this "in X year we did this" is that they wanna pass it a global. Maybe some areas had people on the mostly/only meat regions that didn't provide much anything else. And in some other areas they eat vegies cause it was available. Don't get why when some scientist discover something they want to erase previews assumptions, as if the two couldn't live together. Because people eat the same everywhere. I don't even ha a similar diet to my family, and we lived together for decades.
We now are the ones putting names to this things. I'm pretty sure they eat what they had at hand on their location, without wondering how many carbs it had or if it was a starch or a fruit. As long as it was edible. >.>
Indeed, I doubt Inuit people had much carbs in their diet, if any at all.
I don't think it's as much the scientists as it is the general population being unable to accept the "we don't know" answer and instantly jumping to conclusions.
@@AG-ig8uf Yeah, I was thinking about them when I wrote that. Like the "new keto diet" you know, the one people up north have had for centuries, before we even know what "ketone bodies" were. Scientist, for such genious, they miss simple things. "What was our diet X-years ago? Varies by region." there.
The science is good but your "scientific analysis" is weak. Yes we clearly could and therefore sought starches because we were generally at hunger risk but realistically sought food as vegetables or meat. The Paleo Community never denies this despite your oversimplified description and assertions. Another big stumble of yours is not attempting to determine the likely percentage of starches. Certainly at different times more abundant but unlikely perhaps over the year to average more than what we today call "low carb" - of course depends on environment so impossible to vastly generalize except to say we ate whatever available and if times of abundance likely feasted like today. In short you are little more than "headline" blurting "science" journalist who can't dig more than an inch deep. Tone down your high energy and go for some depth.
Actually going in-depth is not welcome here sorry everyone's a simpleton.
You need to tone down your harsh treatment of other people. The level of hostility you're showing for the SciShow team is quite frankly disgusting, and does nothing to help your points. While I agree that the writers could include more specific information, an attempt was made to generalize the details for the sake of making the information more accessible. There will always be a limit to how in-depth a news video can be. What's far more important is for people to take an interest in the science and do the extra reading on their own time, otherwise they're looking for a quick summary of the details.
Googling Paleo diet and... yeah... Paleo's claim is that the "caveman" or "hunter-gatherer" diet did not include starches because they came about when agriculture was began, a mere 10,000 years ago. The point the video makes is this claim is fallacious; just wrong. (I have not followed up on any sources). The "Paleo Diet" implies (regardless of what the community claims to understand) that starches, carbs and basically anything "agriculture" based should be eliminated. That's their generalization and it is fair for this video analysis to critique it.
@@ZakTheFallen SciShow are a bunch of know it all losers.
So even before agriculture humans ate "agricultural" food that was available in the forest. That makes perfect sense to me.
Yes. And paleo has never contradicts this.
They just went to the supermarket to buy bread! 😀
Agriculture and wild in the forest are unrelated. Buy a dictionary.
@@lancebaker1374 Learn the meaning of quotation marks.
Why "unsurprisingly"? It is surprising. This is why we needed a paper to show otherwise.
By the way, not sure if the claim was that we used to "never" eat starch before agriculture. Of course we knew these foods, since we used them in our first farms, but the point is how much we ate them before agriculture. Because, y' know, nowadays we eat A LOT LOT of them.
Btw2:
25 AMY copies today
2 AMY copies in basal lines
13 AMY copies 8k.y. ago (agriculture already in place)
Are you sure this isn't evidence of how carbo rich diet is recent? Like fast adaptation after 10k or 15k years ago.
Btw3
The point about "4k before agriculture" is mute. We're not that sure of the exact date of agriculture. Could be 10k, could be 15k or even earlier
Also, Paleo isn't really a low carb diet.
the standard American diet is just such a high carb diet that the contrast looks crazy.
Well put. In any case to me it's clear that the video is very manipulative and biased: one thing is tubers, which are absolutely Paleo, and a very different thing is grains, which are not. Mixing both is all kinds of wrong: potatoes are OK, cereals are dubious at best, almost certainly bad for your health in several ways.
Surprising is having something you didn't imagine happen, and shows a lack of imagination. And a mute is someone who doesn't speak. Check out "moot".
@@AndrewBlucher I meant "mute" figurativelly, since that point doesn't says anything meaningful.
@@AndrewBlucher not sure what you meant about the surprising part. My point is that it goes against current knowledge, so it is not "unsurprising" as he mentioned in the video. He said as if it was something we all expect, but we didn't, since previous research pointed otherwise. More worrisome was, however, his tone. Felt a bit like a "duh we all knew paleodiet is wrong all along", which is a bit presumptuous.
Btw I do not follow the paleodiet or need it to be "true", I'm just pointing some blatant biases in the video.
I just realized the blueprint with the topics, the edge falls down.
There used to be a progress bar too but they got rid of it a year or two ago
Good eye .
Consider researching your terms before you start developing your opinions.
Crazy talk.
I’m a big fan, but this whole thing is a giant straw man argument since the paleo diet does not preclude starches or carbs or claim they’re modern. I recommend reading the work of Loren Cordain & Rob Wolf who provide the foundational reasoning behind Paleo, and not just the elevator pitch you heard from a reality tv star or something.
Their presentation of the keto diet was also very misleading. Definitely an area for growth for Scishow.
2 Fast 2 Fungus
He is quite the fungui at parties! 😀
The types of carbohydrates Paleolithic and Neolithic peoples ate are incredibly separated from the high-carbohydrate foods we have today.
Whole plant food carbs vs processed refined carbs, basically.
Yup!
It's incredibly separate from the high carb processed foods of today but would be similar to the high carb whole foods. The plants would have evolved so wouldn't be exactly the same but would be similar in composition.
Most of the processed carb foods of today are also high fat foods too. The example Hank gave of the chips is quite heavy in oil, so are cookies, cakes, and pastries. Not that fat is bad but processed oil is not really a health food.
You’d have to eat about 3 pints of Strawberries (a natural source of carbs) to equate ONE 20oz bottle of Mountain Dew. Naturally occurring carbs do not equal man made/refined carbs.
"Incredibly separated" How so? And to what effect? Yes processed grains may not be good for you but whole grains are a different story.
100,000....that’s over nine thousand
Paleo do eat carbs, quite a bit of it, and safe starches. Not sure why you think they dont. It's not too hard to look at their food pyramid and identify starches/high carb sources.
@SciShow , I am not pro Paleo. But the video is misleading, I am against proscessed carbs (sugars) not starches, this video is misleading also in a another way as to how much starches did we consume on daily basis. Grains and roots vs the mac and cheese we finish in one sitting. Please recommend balance diets instead of pushing one over other
@@gl15col agree but my point not in the current form. Starch are much complex than the carbs we consume is our sugary drinks and burger buns. It can mislead a common person from eating healthy carbs over processed junk. That is my point. I wish the video was clearer
i kinda doubt that paleo says that there was no starch eating going on. im pretty sure its more like: starches where pretty rare to even find. and the things that contained starches had only a fraction of them compared to modern crops. we did a lot of selective breeding in the last 10k.
the dose makes the poison.
Agreed
I mean it's objectively true that high carb diets produce the longest living and healthiest populations, controlling for other factors.
tom duke Why would you think starches were hard to find? Today's crops are enormous, but a few hours of search back then on the African plains could likely yield a lot of food
@@asapbrooks743 It depends on the location and the season. Early humans were hunter-gatherers, this information is not new.
@@chloro8306 other factors including refined sugar isn't really a "diet" XD annoys me when people say high carb diet means you eat a lot of sugar. No thats just unhealthy.
I don't think anyone has ever said we are not well adapted to eat carbs.
What low carb diets posit is that carbs are a major factor for overweight and metabolic diseases as they produce metabolic adaptations.
It's very simple. Carbs contain a lot more calories than most other foods. Calories make you fat. Therefore, if you eat too much carbs, you'll put on weight (i.e. fat). Solution: eat less (and exercise more). It's not the carbs' fault, it's yours.
@@DieFlabbergast What you said is plain wrong.
Carbs trigger insulin release, which makes you store fat and feel tired and hungry.
Exercise is great to keep yourself in good physical and mental shape, but does nothing for weight loss. That's just plain physics.
I'm not sure this really changes much. I don't think very many people were saying humans hardly ever or never ate carbs, just that they weren't the central pillar of our diet like they are now, and they couldn't really have been given how much you'd have to eat to meet your macro-nutrient needs and how much starches and grains were available before agriculture. Our ancestors ate carbs, potentially more than we thought, but they still primarily ate animals.
We only started eating more animals as we moved into colder climates. In the tropics of Africa where our guys evolved it was mainly plants and some insects. We were largely gatherers and started hunting as colder weather made plant food more scarce for half the year. Doesn't mean it was healthy.
Ice men have been found with a belly full of meat but also evidence of heart disease. Usually people died in their 30's well before heart disease was an issue though and heart disease doesn't stop people from passing on their genes so evolutionarily it never hindered us from surviving but today, lifespans are longer so it's better to thrive rather than just survive. Heart disease is a concern now that infectious diseases are under better control.
@@brianmerkosky9243 The current available evidence indicates that we likely evolved as persistence predators. The majority of our caloric intake would've been from animals. People typically underestimate just how much plant material is required from non-domesticated plants to sustain humans, even in ideal climates and locales, and insects are good, but the volume you'd actually need to eat is impractical. We were hunters from the beginning, and we do have unique adaptations that are suited to a omnivorous diet skewed heavily toward meat consumption. Doesn't mean we didn't eat other stuff, the evidence just suggests that we evolved as predators and couldn't really survive without prey.
Don´t fruits have a lot of carbs? Well does paleo diet really suggest we ate little fruits/berries? So no paleo is not keto diet.
Seems like the fact that we enjoy sweet food disproves Paleo altogether. Like if you see a growth of bananas or mangoes or raspberries you're gonna quickly gobble them up.
There are carbs and there are carbs. They're not all the same. Some we need, others not so much.
Bob Conway We don't need any carbs to survive, but right, high fructose corn syrup is not a raspberry.
Modern fruits are nothing like what they used to be... Look up what corn and strawberries used to look like
Jake S Guess the Inuit are all extinct, then.
Sure, but back then they only had wheat for part of the year. Not like today, with people eating refined and simple carbs every day.
A part of the year more like one day per year not to mention humans evolved to eat meat
And meat every single day. Most of the world only ate meat infrequently on special occasions throughout most of civilization and prior the evidence suggests we were probably opportunistic scavengers when we ate meat or bone. I've had chats with various anthropologists at my uni who actually work in the field and the consensus was reached a while ago that the idea that humans were some kind of proto hunter is just childish fantasy. There was never hard evidence for it but until about 5 years ago there was no hard evidence against it. Well now we have that. With that said humans definitely tried to eat anything they could and scrap for every calorie they could get. That is a distinctive feature of humans that we could call an omnivore trait. Although I kind of hate the word omnivore because everyone just uses it mean something it really doesn't. A cow is an omnivore if you cooked and processed meat for it to consume. (and we do that to)
@@Furiends well I am in a corner since I don't back up my comments with scientists or experts but they can be wrong although rare. Farming never took place till 10k years ago(6th grade world history) for the other 90k years humans ate meat only even so the ones who ate carbs in the 10k years are only a negligible part and the food from carbs we ate isn't even vegetables or fruits those had to be selectively breeded those says humans ate something vastly different.
POINT: modern humans have lived for 100k yrs they only start growing crops 10k years ago also the more northern genes or more southern genes from equator the better you are equipped for keto or carnivore
Lastly babies have blood sugar levels far lower than adult humans, they used ketones to live carbs, there is no essential carbs in fact fat is not a secondary source of nutrition it is carbs your because everyone was a baby(no not a crying loser a little person)
@@Tales41 A cooked starch diet doesn't necessarily require widespread agriculture. Humans were always on the move. well before agriculture though humans would tend to the sites they'd stay before moving on. We know that humans migrated in such a pattern as to return to sites they had been previously thoughout the year and migrated seasonally. Well before agriculture humans were planting food ahead of time.
@@Furiends even so humans primarily ate meat and the patterns you speak of well the food from that would not be much our bodies made the guts smaller so our brains could be bigger for same amount of food needed, they eat meat cause of that.
of course hunter gathering indians used to gather grass seeds. I've seen the baskets they used at museums. They also dug up roots that had were high in starches.
flibbertygibbet
We are talking about much much older humans.
Native Americans were well in the Neolithic Era (or in many cases in the Chalcolithic one, even one group was transitioning towards Bronze) when Columbus arrived. American Neolithic had not fully extended to every corner of the double continent, so some groups can still be considered almost purely hunter-gatherer. But in Eastern North America everybody cultivated maize at the very least, just as in the Amazon jungle everybody grows yams.
@@nautilusshell6092 We?
What I’m saying is that the humans in the video are much older then native Americans or the first humans to arrive in the Americas.
@@nautilusshell6092 Non ones saying that is not true but the way people have worked to understand hunter gatherer societies way back then is to understand the more modern hunter gatherer societies.
So what you're saying is that people who are terrified to eat "unnatural" GMO-containing food are sipping wine made by the undead. This pleases me tremendously.
TaiChiKnees 😂🤣😂😂
😁😁
Bruh, ancient humans didn't have "diets". That's not a concept that even existed before 1860. Ancient humans ate anything and everything they possibly could, because they literally had to to survive.
Before watching. The problem has never been Carbs outright. Whoever is saying that is just plain wrong. The problem is and has always been refined carbs with little to no fiber. We need fiber.
I seriously get triggered when people say carbs with no stipulation as to which kind of carbs. They are using the term as a blanket statement.
Edit: one minute in. Slightly over simplified, leaving out some important info. I'll keep watching.
Edit2: The facts given are mostly good. Pringles is not a good carb. No fiber, processed refined carb.
Hellcat! Took me way too long to find this comment
Let me enjoy my damn Pringles please 😭😭
Also it's almost definite that these ancient 'carbs' are examples of 'starvation foods', things early hominids ate when they couldn't get a nice fresh kill. As our bodies evolved to process them more efficiently and the humans-to-game animals ratios went up we learned to 'like' things that were previously only eaten in extremis. So much so we learned to farm them, as game animals got scarcer and scarcer relative to the hungry mouths to feed.
@Nate Dorego Yeah there weren't many scientific papers being published 100,000 years ago... As a biologist the only citation I need is the short human large intestine that isn't really suited to processing large amounts of fibre-filled seeds and roots (as in the previous ~3.5 million years it had adapted to processing primarily meat). Of course in the last few hundred years we have created machines to pre-process these 'foodstuffs' so that our unsuited gut can then use them.
Using it as a blanket.... I hate that.
Not surprised that we’ve been eating carbs for a really long time. My question is: were we able to eat carbs year-round? Seasonally? A few months out of the year? Also, did all humans around the globe eat carbs in the same way?
Get your facts right. Paleo isn't carb or starch-free, it's grain-free. And just because people ate some grains before the agricultural revolution, does not mean that eating tons of refined grains nowadays is healthy or historically accurate. Stop encouraging sloppy thinking, especially if you're claiming some sort of epistemic high-ground for being "scientific."
Claire Tabera But what is the basis for cutting out grains? Whole grains are incredibly nutritious and, as a part of a balanced diet, are totally healthy. Sure cut out the masses of white rice and white flour but just replace it with an balanced amount of brown rice and wholemeal flour.
Fair enough, I agree. A reason for cutting out grains and legumes is because they contain anti-nutrients, meaning much of their minerals are bound up and will even prevent the absorption of other nutrients you eat with that meal. If someone wants to get as much nutrition as possible that’s definitely not ideal. There are ways to minimize the anti-nutrients though, such as soaking, sprouting and fermenting. That’s why other diets just say you should eat “properly prepared” grains and legumes rather than completely avoiding them.
and i will continue to love carbs for a very very long time
no one is ever going to stop you loving them.. except maybe diabetes 2, alzheimers or a sudden heart attack 😂
CupofKona dont listen to him, I have a degree in microbiology and (complex) carbs are very good for you.
Carbs are your friends as long as you dont consume processed sugars.Cooked starches with enough veggies will lower the glycemic index and hence will not lead you to over eating and sudden spike in blood sugar levels.
Eat whatever you want
@@DodoDodo-eo2su nope high carbohydrates plus low fat reversed diabetes
Carbs are the best
And how much fiber was in these carbs?
Depends on the plant, doesn't it. Thanks for missing the point, please have a seat.
@Jake S On average? How on earth would you figure that out? Everyone ate what they could find, it was always changing. They were eating fruits and vegetables, you figure it out.
Almost everyone who suggest paleo suggest starches. I feel like you guys have been having a weird bias when it comes to diet lately, which is sad cause it makes you guys seem dishonest
I caught that too! I wish they would stay off the nutritional stuff because it shows how shallow their research is - and it makes me suspect how deep they dive into other topics.
It's not just the diet stuff. I've noticed some of their other recent videos are more superficial and click-baity. It's probably for profitability reasons.
But it’s true that carbs cause an energy crash when fats and proteins do not.
IF you have poor insulin sensitivity.
TheAltruismActivist Everyone has insulin sensitivity to sugary foods and highly processed grains. Stick to grains that are high quality and less processed.
@@Michael-lc8yl you said it. Processed carbs, especially when mixed with fat like pizza, pie and cake, are the problem. Focus on healthy carbs instead.
Michael Do you mean insulin resistance? Healthy individuals can handle high glycemic foods without experiencing hypoglycemia.
We were, but not at the rate we can today. Today you can consume in one the day the carbs you could find in a week in the wild.
Agreed. Even if they could, none would have been refined carbohydrates either
You realize most vegetables and fruits are carbs, right? What did you think the average person ate in a day? Fruits, vegetables and legumes would have made up the most of the typical diet.
Well no. I had survival training in a variety of environs and learned how to forage. It was possible to satisfy hunger in most places in most seasons. But I can't speak to a balanced died. What makes you think experienced hunter/gatherers could not put us to shame?
@@brittanygidonable not insects and small animals?
Mint You're going to find a heck of a lot more leafy greens and fibrous roots than modern vegetables and high fructose corn syrup.
That was a good Ian Malcolm impression Hank. I lol'ed
_"Uh.. Life, uh.. finds a way."_
That makes sense about the carbs. When farming and horticulture was invented, ancient humans likely grew foods they liked and were probably already used to eating.
Well. Paleo isn’t meaning carbohydrate is not included our ancestor’s meal As much as I known of. The thing is crops and fruits contain more richer carbs and sugar than paleo period by breeding. In paleo, apples and strawberries were not even sweet for modren human taste. So I think eating starchs long long before doesn’t break down paleo diet at all.
100,000 years means "older than written memory, but biologically 2 seconds ago."
It's half of humanities entire existence.
So? earlier than that were eating lots of carb-rich foods.
@@merlinthelemurian3197
A third, in 2017 scientists found Homo Sapiens remains dating more than 300,000 years ago
About 200.000 years ago the first homosapiens were a thing.
@@brunolimon1790 - That's still debated: some proto-Sapiens were found in Morocco, most would not classify them as fully Sapiens but certainly much closer than Neanderthals, etc. The first unmistakable Homo sapiens specimen is still Omo 1 (Ethiopia some 200,000 years ago), which was found along wit Omo 2, who is not Sapiens. Afterwards we only find Sapiens in Africa: Idaltu and Irhoud, c. 160,000 years ago.
It was only ~15 years ago people changed their mind about "bread is the most important food group" you know.
white bread is meant to be linked to the damage of the gut biome and supposedly can link to metabolic disorders like IBS and chrons diseases in worse cases.
I don't deny that humans have been eating carbohydrate, when available, for eons. However, the modern carbohydrates, even the majority of those unprocessed, are quite different from those in our evolutionary history. Since the dawn of agriculture, humans have been breeding plants to increase their carloic content, while decreasing their nutrient density. Fast forward to the modern era, and you have the absurd situation where a human can be obese and simultaneously malnourished. The carbohydrates that humans evolved eating do not resemble Pringles or any of those plant foods in the images shown. Furthermore the modern carbohydrates can be highly addictive, due to their high glycemic index, leading to overeating and uncontrollable weight gain.
Yes. Hank should've said what you did. This may be the most misleading Scishow yet
Nuance is unwelcome here.
Same thing applies to meat... there's going to be a lot less fat marbling in a gazelle you just chased for 18 hours vs. whatever is at the butcher shop, from the farm where it was raised. People nowadays also choose less organ meat and don't spend much time or energy acquiring it, so if all you eat is steak wrapped in bacon and then lie on the couch it's not great either.
I would argue that modern carbohydrate sources are equally or more nutritious than it's wild counterparts. A lot of plant breeding is done to make foods more edible and less dangerous to eat. For example, modern corn came from teosinte. Modern corn is very easily eaten with its soft kernels compared to the rock solid and small kernels of teosinte. Also many wild potatoes have higher glycoalkaloids than domestic potatoes, which makes a more wild potato more toxic to consume than a more domesticated one. Breeding does not decrease nutritional value for the most part because breeding is actually highly regulated to ensure at least equivalent nutritional value. What makes modern "carb" foods less nutritious is the amount of added salt, sugar, and fat of highly processed foods (not the plant itself).
I've lost a lot of respect for these guys for skimming over the facts again and again.
Paleo isn't low-carb, that's keto. Paleo does avoid excessive carbs, by avoiding excessive grains and such, but you can still eat your seeds, nuts, fruits and vegetables.
The yams are the power that be
Hmm winemaking yeast lost the WHISKEY gene?
And why have we had such a love affair with carbs?
Because they provide an incredible amount of store-able energy in a neat little package.
That was very useful and necessary when the average lifestyle was filled with very active days.
But for a less active lifestyle those same carbs become a burden.
The low carb diet doesn't have it wrong...It understands the relationship with an active life and the food we eat.