The Paleo Manifesto
Ancient Wisdom for Lifelong Health
If you’re looking for a smart, grounded, funny and well-written introduction to the Paleo movement, this is the perfect place to start. Big Ideas we explore include the five ages of our origins (Animal + Paleolithic + Agricultural + Industrial + Information), poisons vs. fountains of youth, the importance of meaning (and how to dial it in) and alarm clocks for bed time.
Big Ideas
- Paleolithic= Old + stone.
- OriginsLook back to see now.
- Poisonsvs. Fountains of Youth.
- Death by Cereal GrainMore toxic than you may think.
- Processed vs. IndustrialSkip the Cheez Whiz.
- Stand, Walk, RunIt’s what humans are built for.
- Make It MeaningfulImmediate = good.
- Alarm ClocksFor when to GO to bed.
“Here’s the simple truth: genetically speaking, we’re all hunter-gatherers.
Of course, we’re not just hunter-gatherers. We also carry the genes of primates; herders and farmers; factory workers and explorers; office workers and computer programmers. But at our biological core we are still largely hunters and gatherers.
… This book contains three parts. Part One is a brief history of humanity through five stages of existence—Animal, Paleolithic, Agricultural, Industrial, Information—each containing lessons for how to be healthy today. Part Two applies these lessons to multiple areas of modern-day life: food, fasting, movement, bipedalism (standing, walking, running), temperature, sun, and sleep. Part Three is a more speculative vision of how those most ancient roles—hunter and gatherer—can instruct and inspire us to build healthy and ethical relationships to other living things. In short, to understand where we come from, to make the best of where we are, and to craft a better future.”
~ John Durant from The Paleo Manifesto
This book is a great, fun read.
John Durant is a young, brilliant writer and story teller. Reading this book reminded me of the equally brilliant Ryan Holiday and his great book The Obstacle Is the Way (see Notes).
If you’re looking for a smart, grounded, funny and well-written introduction to the Paleo movement, this is the perfect place to start. (Get a copy here.)
Of course, it’s packed with Big Ideas and I’m excited to share some of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!
Download MP3
Download PDFTo understand human health we have to study our own species, the human animal. We start by looking at how we lived as hunter-gatherers on the African savannah.
Get the Book
Listen to the PodcastPaleolithic = Old stone
“Paleo means ‘old,’ lithic means ‘stone,’ and the Paleolithic begins with the first known stone tools used by hominins about 2.6 million years ago. (The term ‘hominins’ refers to humans and our human-like ancestors such as Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Australopithecus.) The stone tools were found in a small area of Eastern Africa in northern Tanzania, near the Serengeti, in a place known as Olduvai Gorge. Paleoanthropologists refer to the area as the ‘Cradle of Mankind.’”
If we’re going to talk about Paleo and how to apply ancient wisdom to our lives, makes sense to start with the etymology of the word, eh?
Paleo = old.
Lithic = stone.
The first known stone tools used by hominins dates back 2.6 million years ago. And, that’s when our Paleolithic era began. (Note: That’s a long time ago. :)
Origins
“KNOW THY SPECIES – ANIMAL AGE – 530 million years ago to 2.6 million years ago
RISE AND FALL – PALEOLITHIC AGE – 2.6 million years ago to 10,000 years ago
MOSES THE MICROBIOLOGIST – AGRICULTURAL AGE – 8,000 B.C. to A.D. 1769
HOMO INVICTUS – INDUSTRIAL AGE – 1769 to 1946
BIOHACKERS – INFORMATION AGE – 1946 to present”
The first part of the book is focused on our origins.
Durant breaks it down into those five phases. Let’s do a quick recap.
The Animal Age (530 million years ago to 2.6 million years ago) represents when, you guessed it, animals showed up on the planet. (How they were able to tell that footprints of the first animals cruising around on sand dunes were 530 million years old is for another mind-boggling discussion!)
As discussed, the Paleolithic Age represents the appearance of the earliest stone tools used by our hominin ancestors. 2.6 million years ago to 10,000 years ago.
Now, before we go into the next few phases, I want to make sure something is VERY clear here.
We’re talking about MILLIONS of years of evolution leading up to the agricultural revolution.
MILLIONS.
As in: . M . I . L . L . I . O . N . S .
(Again: That’s a long time. :)
Ok. Back to the recap.
So, after millions of years of evolution, 10,000 years ago we entered the next phase: The Agricultural Age. At this stage, we went from being hunter-gatherers to herder-farmers. Then things sped up again during the Industrial Age from 1769 to 1946 before we entered our most recent phase with the Information Age from 1946 to now.
One of the basic ideas behind the Paleo philosophy is that we’d be wise to learn a little more about what things were like for millions of years before the Agricultural revolution when we were, essentially, wild.
With that, it’s time to look at some practical wisdom we can apply to our (530 million + 2.6 million + 8,000 +) 21st century lives!
Poisons and fountains of youth
“When you’re lost in the wild, eating a handful of unknown berries or a mysterious mushroom can kill you, but there’s nothing you can eat or drink that will dramatically or permanently improve your health. Poisons are real; the Fountain of Youth isn’t.
The same principle applies in the grocery store: what not to eat can be more important than what to eat. The single most important way for many people to quickly improve their health is to subtract unhealthy foods, not to add healthy foods. Eating broccoli does not ‘cancel out’ devouring three slices of pizza.
Top on this list are industrial foods (sugar, vegetable oils) as well as the seed-based crops they’re made out of (cereal grains, legumes). Think of these as slow-acting poisons when consumed in large quantities.”
After establishing our Origins, Durant moves into “Here and Now” and outlines how to use that ancient wisdom to optimize our modern lives. I love this particular idea for a lot of reasons.
First, note that the best way to optimize your health is to remove the poisons. To put it directly: If you’re smoking cigarettes, don’t start by adding broccoli. QUIT SMOKING. That’s an obvious poison.
Not so obvious poisons? The bulk of the standard American (/Western) diet. (Hah.)
Seriously.
First, sugars are unambiguously toxic. Our Paleolithic ancestors NEVER had the kind of sugar we now eat. EVER. Even in 1700 the average American had only 5 pounds of it. Now? Now the average American has 152 (!!) pounds of sugar every year. (<— That’s insane.)
Add vegetable oils and cereal grains into your slowly-poisoning-me bucket and remember we went from miniscule consumption of seed-based cereal grains like wheat to 133 pounds of it per year. Violating millions of years of evolution like that just isn’t smart. (More on that in a moment.)
Here’s the other thing to know: This idea of removing poison first applies to EVERY (!) aspect of our lives. If you have a habit that’s destroying your life, GET RID OF IT. Period.
Remember: Poisons KILL. There’s nothing you’re going to do today that will, once and for all, make you healthy forever. Fountains of Youth (/Awesome) don’t exist. Poisons do.
To optimize, start by systematically eliminating that which is killing you.
Let’s get real. What habits are killing you? Is now a good time to eliminate them?
Death by cereal grain
“Cereal grains are the seeds of grasses. The top four—wheat, corn, rice, and barley—account for nearly 70% of global agricultural crops by weight. Along with sorghum, oats, rye, and millet, these grains account for 56% of all calories eaten by humans.
The seeds of cereal grains contain toxic proteins. Many of these toxic proteins are intended to make it difficult for a grazing mammal to digest the seed. From a seed’s perspective it doesn’t ‘want’ to get digested—it wants to make a new plant. The goal is to exit a mammal’s digestive tract still intact, dispersed and covered in the manure that will fertilize the seed’s growth. The toxic proteins are more heavily concentrated in the outer shell (also known as the ‘bran’), but are found throughout the entire kernel. Grains that contain the heavily toxic bran are described as ‘whole grains,’ and are often mistakenly viewed as entirely healthy.”
Everyone agrees that sugar = poison.
However, cereal grains are viewed as unambiguously awesome. The base of the good ol’ food pyramid, baby!
Unfortunately, they are not unambiguously awesome.
Durant tells us: “In wheat, for example, gluten makes up the majority of wheat protein. Even though gluten is associated with the small percentage of people with celiac disease (about 0.4 to 0.8% in the United States), it causes gut inflammation in over 80% of people.”
If you’re already Paleo, you don’t need me to convince you that grains are sub-optimal.
If you’re a grain-feasting vegan or vegetarian or omnivore and your health couldn’t possibly be improved, then keep on rockin’ it. If your and/or your family’s health isn’t quite where you want it to be, you may want to dig a little deeper into this.
Check out our Notes on Grain Brain and Go Wild and other Paleo books for more.
P.S. As a former low fat, high grain vegan, it was fun to watch my energy levels and blood sugar stabilize (as my “grain belly” went down) when I removed all grains years ago. Alexandra had similar gains (she had chronic skin issues that went away). Our almost-three-year-old son Emerson has never had grains and has never been sick. (Whereas I was fed cereal-based formula from Day 1 and had constant ear infections, tubes in my ears, tonsils out, lymph nodes biopsied, antibiotics all the time, allergy shots, etc. Connection? Hmmmm…)
Processed foods vs. Industrial foods
“The advice to ‘Eat fewer processed foods’ actually means ‘Eat fewer industrial foods.’
Industrial foods are ones that couldn’t be made without the novel technologies of the Industrial Age, those made with industrial methods or ingredients. They are developed in laboratories and made in factories (or factory farms). In contrast, foods from the Agricultural Age are grown on a farm or herded on a ranch, and foods from the Paleolithic Age are hunted or gathered in the wild.”
Durant walks us through the conventional health wisdom and makes a really cool distinction between “processed” food and “industrial” food.
We’ve been “processing” our food for a long, long time. Using fire to cook is a million years old. And we were tenderizing meat by pounding muscle fibers for even longer.
So, processing isn’t the primary issue. It’s industrial quasi food-stuff like Cheez Whiz. We want to stay away from that. If all we did was remove all industrial food from our diets we’d take HUGE strides forward. So, let’s. :)
Humans are built to stand, walk and Run
“If there is a single form of movement that defines humanity, it is traveling upright on two feet. Bipedalism is over four million years old and long predates stone tools, fire, and large brains.
The demands of standing, walking, and running have literally shaped the entire human body from head to toe. The human head is stabilized by the nuchal ligament, a ligament in the back of the neck found in species that run long distances (horses, wolves) or have oversized heads (elephants). Since we use our toes for balance and not grasping, they are shorter than those of other primates. Though humans are quite slow sprinters, we are excellent endurance runners—the only primate with that capability—and we can run as far as animals that specialize in endurance running, such as horses and wolves. Under certain conditions we can run even further.
Humans are built to stand, walk, and run. We are not built to sit, however—even though sitting has become humanity’s preferred form of non-movement.”
I started typing that quote while sitting down. Then I cranked up my new standing desk and I’m now standing. (Laughing.)
Research is unequivocal: Sitting Kills, Moving Heals. In fact, NASA researcher Joan Vernikos wrote a book with that title (see Notes).
Are you sitting all day every day?
Know that a x minute workout isn’t going to compensate for sitting allllllll day long. Take regular breaks to move your body throughout the day. Think about getting a standing desk. Track your steps and see if you can get 10,000+ steps (~5 miles) every day.
Remember this: “Hunter-gatherers cover long distances on foot each day. A review of multiple tribes found that women traveled about 6 miles per day, on average, whereas men covered 9 miles. In contrast, the average American travels about 1.5 miles on foot each day.”
Make it meaningful
“Even if science eventually answers the tough questions—’What is a healthy diet?’ ‘Why am I so constipated?’—are people going to drink their prune juice?
Probably not.
That’s because leading a healthy lifestyle is a two-pronged problem: (1) knowing what’s healthy, and (2) doing what’s healthy.
Science has focused on the first—figuring out what’s healthy—while neglecting the second: motivating people to make healthy decisions. The prescriptions of our diet culture, based on reductionist science, just aren’t meaningful to most people. The B vitamins never got anyone out of bed in the morning. There’s something else missing from our diets, and it’s not a macronutrient or a vitamin. It’s something deeper: meaning. Meaning is the secret ingredient that turns a diet into a lifestyle. So find ways to care about what you eat.”
If we want to optimize and actualize, we need to KNOW and we need to DO.
Fact is, as we discuss throughout these Notes, most of us know the basic parameters of what we’d like to do. It’s the DOING part that could use some work. Moving from theory to practice.
Doing that is all about finding the right meaning that sustains motivation.
Michelle Segar is one of the world’s leading researchers studying the science of motivation for health-related behaviors. She’s awesome.
In her great book No Sweat (see Notes), Michelle tells us about research she and her team conducted in which they asked people why they worked out. 75% of people cited weight loss or “better health” (now and in the future). 25% said because they wanted to create a sense of well-being or feel centered—in short, because it made them feel great.
Guess what?
The group with the abstract “lose weight” + “better health” goals worked out 32% less than those with the feel great target. As Michelle says: “Human beings, it turns out, are hardwired to choose immediate gratification over long-term benefits.”
What’s YOUR motivation?
Know that one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself is to make a very clear connection between your lifestyle choices (nutrition + exercise + rest) and HOW YOU FEEL!
Not in some distant abstract future. RIGHT NOW.
How do you feel after you have a great workout? GREAT, right? How do you feel after a great night of sleep? GREAT, right? How do you feel after eating well for a week or three? If you’ve done it, you know: GREAT!
Let’s get motivated. And stay motivated. Make your meaning immediate.
Set your alarm—for when to *go* to bed
“Most people use electronic alarm clocks simply as a method to wake up in the morning. There are now a huge number of devices that improve upon the standard alarm clock to help people wake up more gently. Many measure sleep cycles and wake people up at the optimal time in their sleep cycle. Some wake people with a vibrating arm band, which doesn’t wake their partner. Some even shine UV on the skin. However, there is very little effort focused on the much harder problem of helping people get to sleep on time. Our biological clock helps us both wake up and go to sleep. Waking up is a lot easier after a good night’s rest.
A useful technique is setting an alarm clock—not to wake up, but to get ready for bed. Set an alarm for an hour before bedtime. When it goes off, finish up any work on the computer, turn off the TV, turn off any unnecessary lights, and start to wind down for the day.
It’s hard to wind down at the end of the day. But if getting a good night’s rest is sufficiently important for high priority missions in outer space, it should also be important for all of us here on Earth.”
Circadian rhythms.
Our Paleolithic ancestors were attuned. So were our Agricultural Age ancestors. In fact, the average American on the average night right before Edison introduced the first commercially viable light bulb were sleeping upwards of 10 hours per night. That dropped to 8 hours in the 20th century to ~7 today. Not good.
Want to get up earlier and feel great?
It’s not *that* hard.
The trick is to optimize your PM rituals the night before. And I just love this idea to set your alarm clock for when you want to GO TO BED rather than when you want to get up.
What time do you want to go to bed tonight?
How about setting your alarm clock for an hour before right now? :)
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