After spending a week with the Hadza community in northern Tanzania, it was time for the last supper. Not wanting to place any extra burden on the hunter-gatherers, Daniel Lieberman and his colleagues had come prepared with a cook and rations. But upon realising there was plenty of food to spare, they decided to throw a dinner party for their hosts.
The menu consisted of the traditional East African cornmeal porridge ugali, along with rice, beans, cabbage and some freshly hunted meat courtesy of the Hadza. But what stands out in Lieberman’s memory was watching their hosts devour the carbs and multiple helpings of cake smothered in a jam frosting. The paleo diet is just one of several fad diets that hark back to our evolutionary past as a way to eat better today.
But as a palaeoanthropologist at Harvard University, Lieberman has long been bothered by the misinformation that underpins these ideas. True, we didn’t evolve for the plethora of culinary choices many of us have now, or for ultra-processed, shelf-stable treats. But as Lieberman knows only too well, these oversimplified diets aren’t the answer.
He has lived this firsthand. For his new book, _Fed Up: What evolution reveals about food, diet and eating well__,_ Lieberman and his very supportive wife, Tonia, tucked into various diets – from raw food and meal-replacement shakes to the Mediterranean diet – all while serving up evolutionary evidence for better eating. Lieberman spoke to _New Scientist_ about his hands-on approach to book research, what he discovered to be the optimal diet and whether we will ever adapt to the ultra-processed diets that are so prevalent today. (This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
You can watch the full video interview below). **Sophie Berdugo: You have spent time with some hunter-gatherer populations – what have you learned from them about diet and nutrition?** Daniel Lieberman: Part of the problem [for my work] is that the hunter-gatherers today are, well, they’re contemporary. None of them are completely isolated from the modern world. I’ve gone to visit the Hadza, which are a group in Tanzania, and they have cell phones and they send their kids to school.
So, it’s not like getting in a time machine and going back a million years. But it does give you some sense of the challenges and the way of life of people before farming. You get up in the morning every day and there’s usually no food in camp.
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