Reply to L Cordain et al

Abstract

50% of dietary energy from animal foods and suggested that "the universally characteristic macronutrient consumption ratios of hunter-gatherers in which protein is elevated at the expense of carbohydrate" may have therapeutic health effects for modern humans. As discussed in my March 2000 editorial on this topic (2), hunter-gatherer societies, both recent and ancestral, displayed a wide variety of plant-animal subsistence ratios, illustrating the adaptability of human metabolism to a broad range of energy substrates. Because all hunter-gatherer societies are largely free of chronic degenerative disease, there seems little justification for advocating the therapeutic merits of one type of hunter-gath-erer diet over another. What general features of hunter-gatherer diets might contribute to this lack of degenerative disease? One important feature may be that many wild foods consumed by hunter-gatherers are similar or identical to foods consumed by their prehuman 1590 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR