What did our ancestors actually eat? Not the caveman clichés, but what the evidence actually shows about how humans fuelled themselves for hundreds of thousands of years.
I went down this rabbit hole recently and what I found was fascinating — and pretty confronting when you compare it to how we eat today.
The ancestral diet
For the vast majority of human history, our ancestors ate whole, unprocessed foods. Meat, fish, organs, marrow, insects, tubers, fruits, nuts, seeds, and whatever else they could hunt, fish, or forage.
There was no seed oil. No refined sugar. No ultra-processed food. No food colouring. No preservatives.
The idea that our ancestors were malnourished, sickly, and barely surviving is a myth. Archaeological and anthropological evidence tells a different story.
What the evidence shows
Studies of hunter-gatherer skeletal remains consistently show:
- Tall stature — comparable to or exceeding modern populations
- Strong bones and teeth — low rates of dental caries before the introduction of agriculture
- Well-developed musculature — evidence of active, physically demanding lifestyles
- Low rates of chronic disease — no evidence of the metabolic diseases that plague modern humans
Weston A. Price’s work in the 1930s is particularly illuminating. He travelled the world studying indigenous populations that still ate traditional diets. What he found was remarkable — broad dental arches, minimal dental decay, strong physical health, and low rates of degenerative disease. When these same populations adopted Western diets, their health deteriorated within a single generation.
The agricultural revolution
Things started to change around 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture. While farming allowed for population growth and civilisation, it came at a cost to individual health.
The archaeological record shows that early agricultural populations experienced:
- Reduced stature — by several inches on average
- Increased dental problems — cavities, abscesses, tooth loss
- Nutritional deficiencies — particularly iron deficiency anaemia
- New diseases — from living in close proximity to livestock
The shift from a diverse, nutrient-dense diet to one dominated by a few staple grains was a downgrade in nutritional terms.
The modern disaster
Fast forward to today and we’ve taken things to an entirely new level. The standard Western diet is dominated by:
- Ultra-processed foods (making up 50–60% of calories in countries like the US and Australia)
- Refined seed oils (canola, soybean, sunflower — introduced in the early 1900s)
- Refined sugar (average consumption: ~17 teaspoons per day in Australia)
- Grain-fed, factory-farmed meat
- Produce grown in depleted soil with declining nutrient content
We’ve gone from eating nutrient-dense whole foods to eating calorie-dense, nutrient-poor food-like products. And our health reflects it.
The numbers don’t lie
- Type 2 diabetes has increased by over 300% in the last 40 years
- Obesity rates in Australia have tripled since the 1980s
- Autoimmune diseases are rising across the board
- Mental health conditions — depression, anxiety — are at epidemic levels
- Cancer rates continue to climb despite “advances” in treatment
Correlation doesn’t equal causation, but when you look at the timeline of dietary changes alongside the timeline of disease, the pattern is hard to ignore.
What would I do?
Eat like your great-grandparents. Not perfectly, not obsessively, but as a general principle:
- Eat whole foods — if it doesn’t grow, run, swim, or fly, question it
- Prioritise animal protein — particularly organ meats, bone broth, and pasture-raised meat
- Eliminate seed oils — cook with butter, tallow, ghee, coconut oil, or olive oil
- Minimise sugar — your body doesn’t need it, your tastebuds are just addicted to it
- Eat seasonally and locally where possible
- Grow something — even a small herb garden reconnects you to real food
The food industry doesn’t want you to eat this way because whole foods don’t come in packages, don’t have barcodes, and don’t generate shareholder returns. But your body was designed for this. Millions of years of evolution can’t be wrong.
Michael Nuggin — Nuggins.life