Our Paleolothic ancestors ate better than we did. By “better” I don’t necessarily mean yummier - unless you consider caterpillars and antelope kidneys a delicacy (which many do) - but that their diets were undoubtedly healthier, more varied and more nutrient-dense.
For at least 95% of our evolutionary history as a species, we Homo sapiens hunted and gathered for a living. This means that we cultivated nothing, bought nothing, and stored nothing. We ate berries fresh off the bush where we found them. We dug up big, starchy tubers, built fires, and roasted and shared them the same day they were harvested. When a hunter brought down a large animal, everyone got a portion, and nothing was wasted - not even the eyes, the brain, the digestive organs or the juicy marrow inside the bones.
The contrast with our modern, Western diets could not be more stark. Today we eat far more saturated fat, sugar, and sodium than our ancestors ever did and we transform even the once-healthy, ancestral foods into junk. For instance, we apparently still love tubers, but instead of digging them up and roasting them whole, we turn them into french fries and potato chips by adding oil and salt and a host of other questionable ingredients. In America today, only about a third of potatoes are eaten fresh, while the other 60% are transformed into frozen french fries, hashbrowns and chips. The average American eats 55 kilograms of potatoes every year (that’s about 2000 medium-sized potatoes), but only 16 kilograms of these are consumed in their whole, unprocessed form.
But at least as important as what we are eating is what we are not eating. Even if we were to eat our potatoes whole, without the added oil and salt, they are a far cry from wild tubers. The Hadza (contemporary hunter-gatherers living in Tanzania) eat a kind of wild tuber that is apparently so tough that it takes ages to chew, even after roasting, and they have to spit out big wads of fiber that are virtually indigestible. In modern America, our potatoes are so soft and starchy that you can basically eat them without teeth, as long as they’ve been cooked. A standard American white potato has about 100 calories, mostly from carbohydrates, only 3 grams of fiber and small amounts of potassium and vitamin C. Wild African tubers, on the other hand, contain (in addition to vitamin C and potassium), significant amounts of iron, calcium, magnesium and zinc, as well as plenty of fiber. For centuries now, we have been breeding our crops for taste, appearance and shelf-life at the cost of nutrient density. We have also steadily eroded the quality of our soil through decades of industrial agriculture and heavy pesticide use. Scientific research has shown an alarming decline in the nutritional quality of agricultural foods over the last several decades. To make matters worse, our industrial food supply chains are so slow that a potato you buy and eat from the grocery store today was probably harvested several months ago, during which time it has lost even more of what little nutritional value it had. Hunter-gatherers, on the other hand, eat their harvested wild foods the same day.
Hadza women dig for wild tubers, from Frontier Bushcraft
Because of the wider variety of foods they consumed and the relative nutrient density of those foods, our ancestors had diets far more abundant in key micronutrients like iron, folate, ascorbic acid, vitamin B12, and essential fatty acids (I recommend this book if you want more details). Our bodies evolved over millions of years to expect high levels of these and other nutrients in order to maintain core functions. Industrial agriculture has only disrupted this process in the last couple of hundred years, not nearly enough time for evolution to catch up. The discrepancy between our ancestral and modern diets accounts for a significant portion of death and disease in the contemporary West.
But here’s the kicker: like so many things, it disproportionately affects mothers.
That’s because pregnancy and breastfeeding are two of the most nutritionally-taxing experiences the human body can undergo. It might seem obvious, but when a baby is inside its mother’s belly, it can’t feed itself. So it gets everything it needs straight from mom, via the placenta. The placenta itself is a real monster of a construction project, sucking up iron, cholesterol, protein, and many other nutrients from the mother’s system. The baby will then require a whole gamut of vitamins, minerals and micronutrients in order to build its growing body. If the mother is not getting enough of these nutrients in her diet, as is often the case in the modern context, then the baby will steal them from her.
For instance, I noticed changes in the quality of my teeth for the first time when I became pregnant (apparently 91% of pregnant women do too). A possible explanation is that morning sickness (which I certainly had) can lead to higher acidity in the mouth. I accepted this explanation at the time, but morning sickness has been a feature of human pregnancy for thousands of years without ever affecting dental health (hunter-gatherers have both morning sickness and exceptional dentition). Later I learned that pregnant women are also particularly susceptible to low levels of vitamins and minerals, including calcium, that support healthy teeth – of course in combination with a healthy dental routine. During my second pregnancy I made sure to eat plenty of calcium and I took a supplement as part of my routine and I noticed a big difference.
Unfortunately, the nutritional stress on a mother’s body does not stop after birth. Breastfeeding is yet another potential source of nutrient depletion for many mothers. Take omega-3 fatty acids, for example. In our evolutionary past, our ancestors regularly consumed organ meats from wild-caught animals, which are known to be particularly rich in omega-3s. Muscle-meat from grain-fed livestock (the only kind of meat most Americans eat today) is relatively poor in omega-3s. Most of us are probably deficient in omega-3s compared with our Paleolothic ancestors, but humans are also resilient to some level of nutrient paucity and so most of us can get away with it and never notice any serious symptoms. But for breastfeeding women, it’s a different story.
Omega-3 fatty acids make up about 20% of the human brain by volume. When a human baby is born, its brain is only about 20% of the adult volume, compared with 40% for chimpanzee babies, our closest living relatives. Humans are born immature by design (compared with other apes who have smaller heads and bigger pelvises) in order to give their mothers a fighting chance in childbirth, but then they have to make up for that developmental gap in brain volume afterwards. How do they do it? Mostly through mother’s milk.
A human baby’s brain will go from 20% of its adult size to 80% in the first three years (the age at which most children are weaned in hunter-gatherer societies) and 20% of that brain mass is pure omega-3s. And it’s coming straight from mom. Recent research suggests that omega-3 deficiencies in newly-postpartum mothers may be related to feelings of brain fog and low mood that many of us experience, and supplementation with omega-3s has been shown to reduce such symptoms.
These are just a few examples of how nutrient deficiencies affect modern mothers. We are only just beginning to understand some of the far-reaching impacts on our bodies, moods and overall well-being. Like so many areas of women’s health, it’s underfunded and understudied. The research that does exist mostly focuses on the effects on developing babies, but an undernourished mother’s body will often give her baby what it needs to her detriment. What we know for certain is that our modern diets come up short when compared to those of our ancestors and the biologically-taxing states of pregnancy and breastfeeding make mothers more vulnerable to these shortages. We don’t yet fully understand which deficiencies matter, under what circumstances, and for what outcomes. More research is desperately needed.
In the meantime, short of harvesting roly-pollies from your backyard, it’s a good idea to eat foods that align with our ancestral diets (i.e. not too many potato chips) and to move your body as often as you can. Trust me, I know this is easier said than done when wrangling toddlers and trying to maintain some semblance of self, but it’s one of the most important forms of self-care in the modern context. It’s also a good idea to take a high-quality supplement throughout pregnancy and postpartum, to make up for all of the cold, leftover mac and cheese I know you are undoubtedly eating (I’m right there with you).
In the end, your body will thank you, and this body is all you’ve got.
Needed contributor Elena Bridgers is a science writer specializing in motherhood. Her Substack, Motherhood Until Yesterday, explores the science, evolution, and cultural shifts of motherhood—focusing on how it was practiced for 95% of human history, during our time as hunter-gatherers. Click here to subscribe.
