Real Paleo Diet Plan Recipes Have Carbohydrate-Rich Foods

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Contrary to popular belief, the modern-day Paleo diet is quite different compared to what our ancestors feasted on back in the day.

An article published in the September issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology reveals that our caveman ancestors ate a lot of carbohydrates in their diet.

The trendy Paleo Diet is based on foods that were assumed to have been eaten by early humans. According to The Paleo Diet website, it is hailed as the "world's healthiest diet" and is based on the consumption of meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables only. The Paleolithic diet excludes legumes, dairy, potatoes, cereal grains, salt, and other processed foods.

The researchers found out that our ancestors got their carbohydrates from tubers and other starchy foods. They believe that carbohydrates contributed to their brain development and human evolution.

"Without carbohydrates the pre-modern evolutionary species would have been unlikely to thrive," co-author Dr. Karen Hardy, told Yahoo! Health. "Starchy food - carbs - is the main energy source for the brain and the body."

The evidence of early humans consuming carbohydrates as part of their diets comes from the body's natural enzyme, amylase, which helps convert nutrients from starches, noted Business Insider.

Carl Zimmer of The New York Times reports that a DNA analyses of early hunter-gatherers revealed that our amylase genes showed up as early as during that time period. It was previously thought these genes only evolved during the start of the agriculture age. This suggests that we have been eating tubers and other starchy crops before we even knew how to farm.

The researchers also believed that our consumption of carbohydrates started around the time we first learned how to cook our food. During that time period, more amylase would have been needed by our ancestors in order to digest glucose from starchy crops. Zimmer writes, "Humans were definitely making fires by 300,000 years ago, but some researchers claim to have found campfires dating back as far as 1.8 million years."

Experts acknowledged that the new study placed the possibility that carbohydrates played a role in human evolution, adds the Times. However, they were not keen to accept all scenarios as facts. Lead author Dr. Mark Thomas, an evolutionary geneticist from University College London, did not immediately endorse the findings as a solid theory of evolution.

"I think evolutionary biology can have a lot to say about food and health," Dr. Thomas said. "But nutrition is so incredibly complex, and we've only scratched the surface."