jbradfordinc Watched this documentary yesterday. It was very interesting from the perspective of evolutionary origins of the human diet, and somewhat accurate from that respect I believe as well. However, it's clear anti-vegetarian/anti-vegan bias made it less than desirable as a movie to recommend. It makes several poor assumptions about what it means for us in a modern society based on our ancestors' diets. And it glosses over a many of the modern arguments for vegetarianism and veganism that are very powerful.This documentary also continues to harp on the idea that the consumption of meat is responsible for our ancestors developing large brains. While this may have been a factor, it completely ignores the fact that most evolutionary biologists believe that it was the advent of cooking that is largely responsible for our increased brain capacity, not the consumption of meat. (No other carnivore/omnivore developed large brains, only us.) It is much more likely that our bodies incorporated certain animal-based nutrients, like vitamin B12, as our brains enlarged, rather than being the cause of our enlarged brains.But, it should be noted that veganism and vegetarianism are not diets for optimal human health in and of themselves. You can absolutely be a fat, unhealthy vegan if you want to. Veganism is largely based in the ethical and environmental arguments, taking into account the almost irreparable damage that our modern agricultural industry is doing to the planet. To be vegan AND healthy, you must also consider what our ancestors consumed and make sure you are getting adequate plant protein from diverse sources, nutrients, etc.Both "Food Choices," which I highly recommend, and this documentary overlap in certain areas, which are that the consumption of highly refined, processed food products (like HFCS) are bad for human health in general. They both agree that humans are the most healthy when we consume whole food products with fewer additives. They also agree that milk products in general are not good for human health beyond a very young age.

Sophia Aragon Sadly, because this documentary is only of average quality which, of course, speaks to how bad documentary making has become in terms of objective reporting. Nonetheless, the production of this (as most other) documentaries is quite good. There is nothing amateurish about the effort. It has plenty of eye-candy and moves along well.Content-wise, it is unnecessarily reactionary. This, in my opinion, is the biggest flaw of the documentary. Framing the narrative around a rejection of vegetarian principles only serves to elicit responses like that of the other commenter, responses that misconstrue the message and get lost in delusional, inane diatribes around fantasy subjects like "everything meat" and "meat versus vegetable". If your brain is plugged in while watching, you will find that traditional diets are, by necessity, far more balanced and rational. An interesting topic on its own.For those that don't consider nutrition to be a religious issue, it is a good introduction to evolutionary diets. If interested, read more on the subject (e.g. Weston Price is a good lead).

Tyler Fenby The movie itself is excellent. It points out the problems in our modern diets, and gives a method of being healthy that has been nothing short of a miracle for me and my family.To address some issues others have had:It is true that life was hard during earlier times, meaning that only those that could survive in such harsh conditions could survive. This shaped us, but says nothing of our lifestyles today. If anything, this could help explain why intermittent fasting is so beneficial.Many insects/bugs are anything but unhealthy. You can think they're disgusting as an effect of the culture of your upbringing, sure, but to claim they're all unhealthy is just untrue.You can't conflate diet with hygiene. I don't counter vegetarians with "if all you want to do is eat plants in small meals, why don't you just take off all your clothes, ruminate, and forget about toilets?"If you don't think hunting, gathering, walking everywhere, crafting, and everything else that comes along with living as our ancestors did constitutes exercise, I can't imagine what would. Take a look at the physical fitness of modern H/G tribes and tell me they don't exercise.Humans are the most versatile species ever. We live and have lived everywhere from below sea level to the tops of mountains, from desert to jungle, eating every plant or animal that didn't kill us. To claim that a majority of humans throughout our evolution were primarily fishers is nonsense. At the very least, humans have been hunting for two _million_ years. More than enough to help shape us.Look at native populations all over the world. The Anbarra, Arnhem, Ache, Nukak, Hiwi, !Kung, and Hazda tribes. All eating the historical diets of their people, and all in good enough shape to live many long years in incredibly difficult environments."Many long years?", you say? "But I thought they only lived to 40!" You might want to read the paper "Longevity Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross- Cultural Examination." Hunter/Gatherers live to be 80. Want to know something even better? Many H/Gs get 70-80% of their calories from meat, and they have no atherosclerosis (per other papers by Kaplan, et al.).As for grains, while the heritage strains of wheat that we have been farming for the last 10k years might be fine, the fact is that the wheat we eat today is nothing even close. It should be considered an entirely new food type. Not to say that humans haven't found a new food and thrived on it before, of course, just that pointing out how long we've been eating it is irrelevant when it's been completely overhauled.In summary, the movie does an excellent job pointing out the problems of a modern diet, and offers an alternative that has proved to be hugely beneficial to those that try it. Humans function best when we eat what humans have eaten throughout our entire evolution: real food. Given our long evolutionary history of eating everything with a pulse, that should definitely include animals--meat, offal, marrow and all.

thornsthorns The entire documentary is all built on flawed logic, flawed assumptions and flawed conjectures. basic gist is, since evolution and history says that for 99.9% of human history we humans have been hunter gatherers, our diet should be like that. But that is a very flawed way of thinking. Just because our ancestors were meat eaters doesn't mean meat is better than vegetables for us. Our ancestors were not exactly optimizing their potential, just because they were living like animals. Evolution does not create perfect scenarios and perfect species of perfect health, that is a fallacy this documentary is based on. It assumes our ancestors were eating a diet, that they had perfectly evolved into. Which is not the case. While i agree with half the documentary (the half condemning modern diet of processed foods), the other half of it is a load of pile of false truths and false logics. I present here some of these flaws the documentary ignores. 1) Our ancestors no doubt starved many months, many weeks, many days of the year, through winter, when they could not find hunt food to the point where many no doubt died. This documentary completely ignores this fact when promoting this high meat diet theory. 2) Our ancestors also ate insects, larvae, and other unhealthy and disgusting things, at no point do they start promoting a diet of insects. Which again is another example of picking and choosing history. 3) Our ancestors also didn't bath or clean themselves at all. No one would say poor hygiene and living and eating like a wild dog is better for us, just because our ancestors did it for millions of years. So why use the same premise for dieting? 4) another example since our ancestors never exercised and only exerted themselves when hunting, optimal health means we should not exercise unless chasing a deer. Which they probably only did once a month for a few minutes and only in large groups. 5) historically human societies have been fishermen rather than hunters. This a fact the video ignores, as game food was not guaranteed whist fish from the ocean or rivers largely was. Thus most civilizations were situated on coastlines and near rivers. Ultimately the point is, our ancestors did not have an optimal best perfect diet, trying to mimic them is like trying to copy a C student in an exam, you are not going to better a better grade. This is the poor logic used in this DVD, which is flawed. If you look at native aborigine populations in south America, Australia who are following very much our ancestors diet, and look at the athletes from the Olympics, anyone with half a brain can tell that the athletes in the Olympics are healthier and better. Our ancestors also rarely lived beyond 40, average lifespan was probably around in the late 30's. so evolution hasn't engineered the paleo-primal diet to exactly keep our body ship shape beyond 40 (going by their own logic). So that's another flaw in using the logic of our ancestors diet is evolutionary wise the best for us. Frankly documentary is a load of baloney. But they are right in that the paleo-primal diet is a million times better than the modern processed sugar, salt, spices, oils artificial chemical diet we have in the 21st century. But they need to De-emphasise the meat intake, as our ancestors if anything like normal hunter gatherers would most likely have not had much meat in their diet as consistently as modern lifestyles or the paleo-primal diet likes to infer. As you can't exactly catch and cook a deer with a spear 3 times a day. Even lions eat only once a week in the wild, sometimes once a month periodically, and even starve when the herd migrates. As hunting eating food isn't exactly on the dot, breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner time like we have made nowadays. Saying completely no to wheat is a fallacy as no doubt our ancestors must have eaten wild grain, in order for them to become farmers of the stuff. So it was part of their diet, which documentary ignores.