It was accurately described by the authors as a “pilot study”, in other words, good for generating hypotheses but not a rigorous test of the idea. I skipped all that because I didn't really expect any of it, and because I was looking at a copy to judge the recipes, although I did like that it requests we interrogate the source of our meats as they're going to be so dominant in our diet, which is never a bad thing for any of us to be doing. Studies of current and historical hunter-gatherer cultures suggest that they eat a variety of plant foods, usually as a major part of the diet, and that strict carnivory is uncommon.

Written by a medical doctor who has suffered with chronic illness and has discovered the combative secret lies within our grasp in the carnivorous lifestyle, this book is much more than a cookbook. This is because the areas where they live, and where our human ancestors did most of their evolving, do not experience the same type of seasonality that temperate regions experience.

Analysis of the oldest identified feces from some of our ancestors– Neanderthals living about 50,000 years ago in what is now Spain– suggests that they “predominantly consumed meat… but also had significant plant intake”.

The reference discusses the benefits of sulforaphane as an anti-cancer agent and antioxidant, as stated in The Carnivore Code.This is a large increase, and the paper describes LDL cholesterol on the carnivore diet as “markedly elevated”. It’s a paper reporting that in biopsies of breast tissue, calcium oxalate crystals are associated with lobular carcinoma in situ, a pre-cancerous lesion. Heck, you can even doubt all this meaty goodness and still pluck a decent home-made pear chutney from these pages, or a minty sauce/dip using kiwi fruit.

We think this is logical, and it’s consistent with other evidence that our ancestors began hunting and eating animals more regularly sometime around 2. However, the participants’ zinc status appeared to be fine, probably because zinc bioavailability in the diet was sufficient: “The estimated average zinc absorption of the participants in the present study (30% of 12 mg/day) may be considered sufficient to meet total endogenous zinc losses.

Some evidence supports the claim that dietary fiber is not helpful for constipation, but the weight of evidence weakly suggests that it’s helpful, at least for adults. If anyone is wanting to learn more about this way of eating, this is definitely the best place to start. The evidence is sparse, but overall it suggests that most of our distant ancestors probably ate plants regularly, although some groups probably did have meat-heavy diets.