Hi People,
Most of the posts on here ask question about diet and disease and the "salesmen" try their best to make a dollar out of them, but what is the best diet for humans, a diet that optimises our chances of a healthy life?

For the answer to this question we have to take a stroll back through time, say about 25,000 years, back to our nuclear family living in a cave with waterside views, prime real estate.

Now this family had no health cover and the consequences of bad health would be horrific, think about this family for a moment, no gym membership, never heard of Mark Patrick or weightloss or even supplements, unbelievable how could they possibly manage?

This family had a body mass index of 22 and managed to stay like this for life without an exercise program.

Our ancestors had to hunt and gather for their food, non stop walking to find what they needed to meet daily requirements of nutrients, not a drive through a neighbourhood take-away. About 6 to 10%of their diet would be meat, either as redmeat or fish or crustaceans and the rest would be berries/fruit/roots and tubers.

Now I know this was 25,000 years ago, but our bodies have not changed in this time, what we needed then we still need now, for optimum health, forget average lifespan they had a lot more to contend with back then, neighbours like sabre toothed tigers, no central heating, running water etc.

The only race of people we can compare with them living today is the Okinawans and guess what, they are the healthiest, longest lived people on the planet.

Cheers

Awesome article! Thanks! But i have to ask... tubers?

Thanks for the nice comments never2lateforpizza,
Tubers are an assortment of plants that enlarge underground to store nutrients for regrowth, such as potatoes.





http://images.google.com.au/images?source=...=4&ct=title



Cheers

Yeah, with modern tools that human created these days, life is definitely getting more convenient day after days. BUt people are getting more lazy day after days about exercising so why there are lot of Gyms salesman selling gym memberships. weight loss companies are selling their programs etc.

Just because the we live is changed that create other problems in our lives than our ancestors.

Hi Everyone,
The latest research would indicate a low carb diet is the best diet for humans.
January 22, 2009 - 12:35PM
It's official, a low-carb diet is better at burning fat than just cutting calories.

Scientists who were working to find out how diet affects the operation of the liver put 14 overweight people on either a low carbohydrate or low calorie diet.

They found those eating fewer carbs lost almost double the weight over two weeks, and several changes in liver function were identified as part of the reason why.

"Energy production is expensive for the liver," says Dr Jeffrey Browning, assistant professor at the UT Southwestern Medical Centre, in Dallas, Texas.

"It appears that for the people on a low-carbohydrate diet, in order to meet that expense, their livers have to burn excess fat."

The average weight loss for the low-calorie dieters was about 2.2kg, while the low-carb dieters lost about 4.3kg on average.

Dr Browning said the study highlighted how diet could cause a "dramatic change" in where and how the liver was producing glucose - a form of sugar.

Glucose and fat are both sources of energy that are metabolised in the liver and used as energy in the body.

Test subjects on the low-calorie diets got about 40 per cent of their glucose from a substance called "glycogen" - which is made from ingested carbohydrates stored in the liver until needed.

Those on low-carb diets, however, sourced only 20 per cent of their glucose from glycogen as they burned more fat instead of dipping into their reserves.

Dr Browning said the findings offered new hope for targeted non drug-related treatments for obesity and also liver-related disorders such as diabetes, insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

"Instead of looking at drugs to combat obesity and the diseases that stem from it, maybe optimising diet can not only manage and treat these diseases, but also prevent them," says Dr Browning.

"Understanding how the liver makes glucose under different dietary conditions may help us better regulate metabolic disorders with diet."

The findings are published in the journal Hepatology.

Cheers