Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Says You! We Should Be Eating Like Our Ancient Ancestors

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

What is “ancestral eating” and is it a healthy way to eat? Should we be eating the same foods our ancient ancestors did? I’ve written and recorded a lot of evidence-based content over the years on just about everything you can imagine related to building muscle, losing fat, and getting healthy. I’ve also worked with thousands of men and women of all ages and circumstances and helped them get into the best shape of their lives. That doesn’t mean you should blindly swallow everything I say, though, because let’s face it—nobody is always right about everything. And especially in fields like diet and exercise, which are constantly evolving thanks to the efforts of honest and hardworking researchers and thought leaders. This is why I’m always happy to hear from people who disagree with me, especially when they have good arguments and evidence to back up their assertions. Sometimes I can’t get on board with their positions, but sometimes I end up learning something, and either way, I always appreciate the discussion. That gave me the idea for this series of podcast episodes: publicly addressing things people disagree with me on and sharing my perspective. Think of it like a spicier version of a Q&A. So, here’s what I’m doing: Every couple of weeks, I’m asking my Instagram followers what they disagree with me on, and then picking the more common or interesting contentions to address here on the podcast. And in this episode, I’ll be tackling “ancestral eating.” That is, eating like our ancient ancestors. Timestamps: 0:00 - Save up to 25% during my July 4th sale! https://buylegion.com/ 2:44 - What is ancestral eating? 6:07 - What is the scientific evidence on ancestral eating? Mentioned on the Show: Go to buylegion.com and save up to 25% during my big July 4th sale! Use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% on any non-sale items or get double reward points!

Oh, hello there, and thank you for joining me today. I'm Mike Matthews. This is Muscle for Life, and this episode is a new installment in my Says You series, where I ask people primarily on Instagram, but sometimes this is via email, to share something they disagree with me on, and then I pick ones that are particularly interesting or that I haven't already beaten to death, and I address them here on the podcast. And so in this episode, I will be tackling ancestral eating, the claim that we should all be eating like our ancient ancestors. Before we get started, 246 years ago, a bunch of disgruntled Brits were told to give up their guns and pay ridiculous taxes to crown and country, which was blowing coin like a boozy bourbon king. Their reply was, eh, get stuffed.

General Howe's reply was, eh, how about you get your ticket punched instead? And while fisticuffs ensued, the lobster backs got their lumps and a nation of yanks were then free to pursue a new flavor of life, liberty, and happiness, and to celebrate this glorious freedom to make great gains. Legion is holding its annual July 4th sale, and that means that you can save up to 25% on many of our most popular products, including our protein powders, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, multivitamins, and more. So to save big on my 100% natural science-based supplements, head over to buylegion.com. That's B-U-I-L-E-G-I-O-N.com. And also use the coupon code MUSCLE at checkout, and that will take 20% off anything that isn't discounted if this is your first time buying with us. If you are a first-time customer,

if you are not a first-time customer, then that coupon code muscle will double your rewards points on your order, which is basically like getting 10% cash back that you can then apply toward future orders of whatever you want in our store. And so again, the URL is buylegion.com, B-U-I-L-E-G-I-O-N.com. And I would recommend going now before things start running out of stock because it happens every year. It is basically impossible to predict which products are going to explode, not to speak of flavors. So if you want to make sure that you get what you want and you save big on it, go to buylegion.com now. All right, so let's start with a definition of our terms. What is ancestral eating? Well, when most people refer to it, I mean, it can mean

different things to different people, but in most cases, it refers to a diet that's based on the eating habits of our ancient forebears. So this is thousands of years ago. The ancient period of history started about 5,000 years ago and lasted about 3,500 years. And many people confuse ancestral eating with similar diets like the paleo diet or the primal diet, which was just a spinoff of paleo, really. These are diets that are also inspired by what early humans purportedly ate. In some cases, they stretch all the way back to 10,000 years ago. And I say purportedly because research shows that a lot of the supposed science that supports the claims of how our ancient ancestors ate are not true. These are misinterpretations of research or just made up out of whole cloth. But that's a separate topic.

Let's stick to ancestral eating here. And so ancestral eating is similar to paleo and primal diets insofar as it excludes processed foods like refined sugar, processed vegetable oils, prepackaged food, low-fat or fat-free products, which of course have been processed to reduce the fat or remove it altogether, and processed wheat products. Now, the big difference between ancestral eating and paleo and primal style diets is with ancestral eating, you are allowed to eat almost anything else, provided it is locally sourced and in season, and preferably it would be also produced organically and in an environmentally sustainable way. And so, for example, if you lived near a field of goats, but not cows or sheep, then you could drink goat's milk. You could eat goat's cheese as long as it is unpasteurized, but you couldn't consume the milk or cheese from other animals. So think of it like this, the paleo diet encourages you to eat like a hunter-gatherer supposedly did before any food processing methods were invented. And ancestral eating encourages you to eat like someone after

the agricultural revolution when we humans started to farm land and rear livestock. And the main argument for ancestral eating is that modern diets are making us fat and unhealthy and unhappy and that eating less processed foods, ideally no highly processed foods, that's the answer to better health. argue that fruits and vegetables that are produced locally and eaten while fresh, while in season, that they are more nutritious than fruits and vegetables that are grown elsewhere and transported. They often say that your body is adapted to eat according to your heritage or your lineage or your culture, and therefore your body will respond better to foods that your ancestors would have eaten rather than foods that are grown far from where you live. And so how do those claims and just ancestral eating on the whole, how do they stand up to the weight of the scientific evidence? Well, the main benefit is that ancestral eating

does encourage you to eat a lot of whole, minimally processed foods that you prepare yourself. It endorses eating animal products, including organ meats, which provide protein and vitamins and minerals that sustain good health, like vitamin B12, creatine, carnosine, taurine, calcium, selenium, D3, A, iodine, and others. Ancestral eating also encourages you to eat fruits and vegetables, and that decreases the risk of many types of disease like cardiovascular disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. Ancestral eating also emphasizes a higher intake of omega-3 fatty acids, which provides a variety of health benefits. It can reduce blood pressure. It can reduce the risk of kidney and cardiovascular disease. It can reduce the risk of stroke and metabolic syndrome.

It can improve cognitive function and more. And finally, with ancestral eating, you are going to be avoiding artificial trans fats, which increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and can increase insulin resistance, which of course can lead to metabolic dysfunction. And so you could do a lot worse than ancestral eating. It has a lot going for it, but it also needlessly restricts foods that we know are healthy and it restricts them arbitrarily based on geography and time of year. So for example, if you live somewhere that's landlocked, that's far from a river or lake, according to many ancestral dieters, you couldn't eat seafood. And we know that seafood is a great source of protein

and nutrition. You don't have to eat seafood, of course, but if you like it, then go ahead, eat it regularly. I mean, you do have to pay attention to the amounts of pollution in the foods that you are choosing and choose low pollution seafood if you are going to be eating it regularly. But aside from that, seafood is fantastic regardless of where you live. Anyway, similarly with the ancestral style of eating, you are not supposed to eat fruits and vegetables that are out of season. So no tomatoes in winter, for example. And while there is some truth that fruits and vegetables lose nutritional value as they age, the storage and transportation methods are getting better and better. And currently, at this point, it's just a non-issue. It's similar to arguing that conventional fruits and vegetables are so

devoid of nutrition that they're basically not even worth eating. And if you are going to eat fruits and vegetables, you need to make sure they are organic. It's just not true. Again, while it is true that the general nutritional profile of many fruits and vegetables, at least here in the United States, has gotten worse over time, it is still more than sufficient to support our health and our recovery and our well-being. And while some organic fruits and vegetables are more nutritious than their conventional counterparts, when you look at the differences in the context of a well-balanced healthy diet, it just doesn't matter. If you eat your, call it four to six servings of vegetables and two or three servings of fruit per day. It doesn't much

matter whether they are conventional or organic. You are going to get plenty of nutrition. And so anyway, the same logic applies to eating fruits and vegetables that are out of season, that have been produced elsewhere and transported long distances. It's not ideal for maximizing the nutritional value of the foods and of your diet. But if you eat enough fruits and vegetables, your diet is still going to be plenty nutritious. Now, it's also worth mentioning that I'm unaware of any scientific basis for this argument that your body responds better to foods that your ancestors ate or would have eaten. And also keep in mind that it's unlikely your ancestors lived in the same place as you do now, or that they grew the same crops that are cultivated near you now, making that line of argument even weaker. And what if you move somewhere that has a very different culinary

culture from where you currently live? Let's say you move to Italy. Are you supposed to keep eating, let's say, the potatoes, carrots, and turnips that you are currently eating based on where you live and then skip stuff like lemons, tomatoes, and olive oil, which again, we know are perfectly healthy and nutritious, but you are not supposed to eat them because you are not of Italian stock. It's just silly. And so that's my position on ancestral eating. I am okay with a lot of the do's, but most of the don'ts, most of the restrictions are just illogical, which again, just comes back to eating a variety of foods regardless of their origin, limiting but not prohibiting foods that are demonstrably bad for your health,

like highly processed foods and artificial trans fats and high sugar drinks, making sure that you are eating several servings of fruits and vegetables every day, several servings of high quality protein and a variety of healthy fats, a lot of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. And some saturated fat, of course, is fine, but I would recommend limiting it to no more than 10% of your daily calories. And at least a serving or two of whole grains every day is smart as well. And my final comment here is one of the problems with that prescription is it doesn't have much marketing sizzle. For some reason, a lot of people approach their health and fitness as a consumer. They have a consumer's mindset. And what I mean by that? I mean that many people don't just want to be told what to do.

They don't want just the truth. They want a brand. They want a story. They want something that they can identify with. They want something that maybe they feel says something about who they are as a person. And that mindset creates an opportunity for liars and criminals to sell them all kinds of offbeat diet and exercise methodologies and pills, potions, and powders. And for unscrupulous people who are well-versed in the fundamentals of persuasion and marketing, it's just not that hard to fool a lot of people and sell them a lot of stuff. Now, you could also say that this points to a failure of people, of thought leaders in the evidence-based fitness space to take the boring basics and make them sexy enough to appeal to the masses. And I think that that would be a valid criticism. I think that, for example, many people in the

evidence-based fitness space, especially many of the thought leaders, they talk over the heads of most people. They use a lot of jargon, for example, that most people don't understand. A lot of the thought leaders are really speaking to each other. And while, of course, they understand each other, most people don't understand them. That's a problem. Also, many of the true experts in the evidence-based fitness space are not good marketers. experts in the evidence-based fitness space are not good marketers. And many of them who I've spoken to would agree. They would say, yeah, I'm not a good marketer. I don't like marketing. I don't want to learn about marketing. I don't like selling. It makes me feel kind of skeezy. I'm above it is basically what they're saying. And what they're missing though, is that attitude is preventing them from reaching a lot of people and influencing them and ultimately helping them.

Because fundamentally, marketing comes down to messaging and it comes down to the art and science of getting a yes, getting people to say yes to you, getting people to say yes to your ideas. say yes to you, getting people to say yes to your ideas and also yes to your products and services. If you have products and services to sell and it's not easy getting good at getting yeses. And so many people just avoid it. And instead they focus on what they enjoy, which is often researching and creating content that they find interesting and that their peers find interesting. And then when it doesn't resonate with most people, many of these experts, they blame those people. They just say, well, the people are too stupid. It's not my fault that they are so stupid. And yeah, sometimes stupidity is an issue. Sometimes that is a major obstacle that has to be overcome when you are trying to teach

people things. But I would turn that around on the expert and say, no, that's your failure to communicate in a way that could be understood. That is your failure to understand who you are communicating to and how you need to communicate them to get them to first just understand what you want them to understand. Clarity precedes persuasion. If people can't understand what you're saying, they will never agree with it. And so anyway, at this point, I'm just rambling, but I'll wrap up with saying that all of what I just described is one of the reasons why from the beginning, my personal goal has been to communicate workable evidence-based strategies

for eating and exercising and supplementation in a way that anyone could understand them. And I've also never had the goal of winning over other experts or thought leaders. I do not create podcasts and articles and books, etc. with those people in mind. I am speaking to the everyday people who are confused and frustrated and who just want to finally lose some fat, gain some muscle and get healthy and stay that way for the rest of their life without hating their life, eating foods they like, doing workouts that they like, and finally feeling that their health and fitness is under their control. They understand which buttons to push and which levers to pull to gain muscle, to lose fat, to maintain their body composition, to reduce the risk of disease and dysfunction,

and so on. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com,

muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.