Transformetics nutritional principles is founded upon evolutionary science. The question being asked is this: what did the human body EVOLVE to eat? It seems obvious and intuitive to ask this question doesn’t it? Let’s take a look at an example of WHY we should be asking this question. We all remember the mad cow disease epidemic right? What was found to be the CAUSE of all these cows going bonkers?

British inquiry into BSE concluded that the epidemic was caused by cattle, who are normally herbivores, being fed the remains of other cattle in the form of meat and bone meal (MBM), which caused the infectious agent to spread.

The bottom line is this: the cows weren’t eating what they EVOLVED TO EAT. Cows evolved to graze on ranges of grass. As a side note, it makes sense that grass fed beef has been found to be significally more healthy then grain/feed-lot fed beef.

In other words: feed a cow what it evolved to eat and you get a healthy robust cow. Feed a cow what it DID NOT evolve to eat, you get a sickly cow that just might go ‘mad.’

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The point is this: to optimize our health, fitness, and well-being levels, we MUST eat what we were meant to eat. In other words what we EVOLVED to eat. This is intuitive and simple to understand. So back to the original question: what did the human body EVOLVE to eat?

The point is this: to optimize our health, fitness, and well-being levels, we MUST eat what we were meant to eat. In other words what we EVOLVED to eat. So back to the original question: what did the human body EVOLVE to eat? Well let’s go WAAAY back and meet human’s ancestors:

Kinda creepy picture I know (especially the little hobbit dude). Here’s a chart showing the break off of man with the other ‘homos.’

In this article by Stephen Guyenet PhD, he goes over what these ancient ancestors ate:

Homo erectus diverged from our lineage about 1.5 million years ago. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a Homo erectus skull, but 1.5 million years is clearly enough time to do some evolving. Homo erectus hunted and ate animals as a significant portion of its diet.

If you look at the chart above, Homo rhodesiensis (typically considered a variant of Homo heidelbergensis) is our closest ancestor, and our point of divergence with neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis). Some archaeologists believe H. heidelbergensis was the same species as modern Homo sapiens. I haven’t been able to find any direct evidence of the diet of H. heidelbergensis from bone isotope ratios, but the indirect evidence indicates that they were capable hunters who probably got a large proportion of their calories from meat. In Europe, they hunted now-extinct megafauna such as wooly rhinos. These things make modern cows look like chicken nuggets, and you can bet their fat was highly saturated.

H. heidelbergensis was a skilled hunter and very athletic. They were top predators in their ecosystems, judged by the fact that they took their time with carcasses, butchering them thoroughly and extracting marrow from bones. No predator or scavenger was capable of driving them away from a kill.

Our closest recent relative was Homo neanderthalensis, the neanderthal. They died out around 30,000 years ago. There have been several good studies on the isotope ratios of neanderthal bones, all indicating that neanderthals were basically carnivores. They relied both on land and marine animals, depending on what was available. Needless to say, neanderthals are much more closely related to humans than chimpanzees, having diverged from us less than 500,000 years ago. That’s less than one-tenth the time between humans and chimpanzees.

I don’t think this necessarily means humans are built to be carnivores, but it certainly blows away the argument that we’re built to be vegetarians. It also argues against the idea that we’re poorly adapted to eating animal fat. Historical human hunter-gatherers had very diverse diets, but on average were meat-heavy omnivores. This fits well with the apparent diet of our ancestor H. heidelbergensis, except that we’ve killed most of the megafauna so modern hunter-gatherers have to eat frogs, bugs and seeds.

What’s the bottom line? The closest human ancestors hunted and gathered their food. The closest human ancestors ate meat, and probably lots of it. Modern humans share genetics with these ancient ancestors. This should start to give us a clue, a base, for optimizing our diets.

So let’s fast forward a million years or so: in comes the homo sapiens (humans….us).

Research shows that early humans hunted, and gathered their food. They hunted for meat, they gathered for nuts, seeds, insects, fruits, vegetables. It wasn’t up until around 10,000 years ago that humans began to farm and consume large amounts of grains. It was less than 100 years ago that humans began to manufacture, process, and create foods. Is it a coincidence that degenerative disease has EXPLODED among modernized human populations? Is it a coincidence that the rates of obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes has EXPLODED and continue to grow? Hardly.

In other words, we’ve got a few million years of hunting and gathering programmed into our DNA. Just like cows thrive off pasture because that’s what they EVOLVED eating, I believe that humans thrive off a hunter-gatherer type diet. Conversely, when you feed cows things they didn’t evolve to eat, disease appears. The same goes for humans.

This is the basis behind Transformetics nutritional principles.

Start thinking about this way of eating. Are your genes abel to handle twinkies? How about deep fried twinkies? Did your genes evolve around drinking 100 grams of sugar in a big gulp coke? Did people 10,000 years ago gather a loaf of bread off a plant? How about some enriched wonder bread? Maybe start to CONSIDER the possibility of moving in this direction of eating. I can tell you that the results I’ve experienced have been amazing. Fat has melted off. Muscle has gotten more powerful. Energy levels are higher then ever before. Everything in life is better.

I’ve never claimed to be a scientist, but hopefully this is useful information and a good foundation for you to really research this on your own. It just makes sense.

Sam