Today we are going to look at the theory behind the Paleo diet.

This theory has implications for all human health, so don't make the mistake of pigeonholing any of this into some little Paleo nutrition box.

It's about human health, not just what humans eat. So let go of your dogmas and biases and read this information with fresh eyes.

The implications behind this theory profoundly impact the full spectrum of human health whether you eat Paleo, Vegetarian, Vegan, Fruitarian, or whatever.

The premise of the Paleo diet is based on looking at the available evidence that our ancestors left behind to find ways we modulate our environment to the best life today.

Try thinking about evolutionary biology instead of Paleo if you are still struggling with any of this. That might help those who don't particularly like the word "Paleo."

The fundamental premise of evolutionary biology for explaining problems modern humans face is based on the theory that evolution takes an extremely long time to progress and that technology, and the way our lives have changed because of it, has come at a faster rate than what the human genome has been able to adapt to.

This means that our genes are designed to live in a particular environment, the environment our ancestors lived in for hundreds of thousands of years up until about 12,000 years ago when our ancestors moved from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to the farming lifestyle.

Farming Vs. Hunting

Before humans moved to the farming lifestyle, they lived in the wild. This was the life of a nomadic hunter-gatherer.

Early humans were always moving in search of food and a better climate.

Compare that to farming life, a stationary life connected to a plot of land.

This transition caused many problems for our species and still does to this day, considering our genome is still 99% the same as our ancient ancestors (and 99.5% the same for each human living today).

Before a human ever planted a seed and hung around until that seed turned into something edible, humans lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers in small tribes of about 50-75 people.

Within their tribe—their "family"—early humans hunted, gathered, and lived their entire lives together (talk about solid social bonds).

They moved around constantly, always searching for food and water and moving with the seasons.

Long before we had chairs, cars, computers, smartphones, and all the environmental byproducts of these technologies, human life involved plenty of daily movement in the sun, lots of leisure time, and constantly varied food that was in-season and inconsistent. 

We socialize daily.

We walked an average of 13 miles daily at a slow, meandering pace. We went to sleep when the sun went down and woke when it rose. We hunted. We gathered.

According to human fossil records, humans have lived this way for some 200,000 years, dating the earliest human fossil to the Middle Paleolithic area.

Regarding human health, mismatch theory, rooted in evolutionary biology, is our current best guess.

I've seen it work in my own life and for countless others around me, so I readily recommend it to others.

And I'll continue to do this until a better best guess comes along that works better. If a better theory comes along, I'll test it. Then, if it produces a better result, I'll change what I do and recommend.

This is hard for most people, so they stubbornly cling to their current beliefs through biases that make it impossible to see other views.

Furthermore, we are creatures of habit, and breaking habits is hard.

It comes down to this: Regardless of what research, science, or your gut tells you, you have to take action and test what works for you. Then you have to have the mindset of a scientist interested in finding what works best while being aware of the pitfalls of confirming or discounting evidence based on preconceived beliefs.

After doing your tests, if the results come back unfavorable to what you initially thought or wanted to think, you have to be strong enough to stay objective.

Regarding health, you have to be the scientist and the experimenter.

You have to study conflicting ideas and opinions and then try the things that make the most sense to you. Then you have to ruthlessly discard what doesn't work while doubling down on what does.

Back to our ancestors

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived as nomads, constantly moving around with the seasons to find areas where food, game, and water were abundant. They didn't have refrigeration or canned foods, and there was very little in the way of food preservation.

There was also no farming.

They had to work for their food daily, hunting and gathering for as much as 6 hours a day on average. As a result, our ancestors would routinely go days without food, sometimes weeks (which is why intermittent fasting is a healthy human activity).

Then, when our ancestors found food, it was real food. It was wild food.

This environment creates the genes that make up your body. These genes survive with an inconsistent food supply, with only real food found in nature and a diet lower in starches and sugars on average due to a lack of them being found in the wild.

And so your genes will do their best when they live in the environment they were designed for. Your genes are designed to live in the wild.

In the wild:

• You won't find sugar cane plantations, corn fields, or potato farms.
• Food changes with the seasons, and you can do nothing to prevent it except move to areas with a better food supply and climate.
• The game is sometimes available and sometimes scarce.
• Food is varied and colorful.
• Food is always real.

Local, in-season, real food is the best way to express human genes through nutrition. Now compare that world to the world we live in today.

• We have access to food every second of the day (a mismatch).
• We can eat the same thing daily if we want to (a mismatch).
• We can eat processed foods full of artificial ingredients (a mismatch).
• We can eat more ingredients our ancestors didn't eat, like seed oils, sugar, carbohydrates, grains, etc. (a mismatch).

Nutrition is the single most significant mismatch affecting the human species today.

And it all started when agriculture came into the picture some 12,000 years ago.

Agriculture provided early humans with a steady food supply. And while agriculture allowed the population to grow, it had many problems.

Due to the lower quality of nutrition produced through agriculture and the droughts and inconsistencies in yield, humans traded a more consistent food supply for a lower quality of life.

As Daniel Lieberman puts it in his book The Story of the Human Body, "Farming created more food and allowed populations to grow, but for most of the last few thousand years, the average farmer had to work much harder than any hunter-gatherer, experienced worse health, and was more likely to die young."

Agriculture yielded food that could have been more nutritious and varied.

Due to a lack of fruit and vegetables in their diets—which are fatal if left untreated—many farmers developed scurvy, which was one of the problems this caused.

Agriculture also required a more laborious lifestyle, resulting in another mismatch due to the physically demanding work required.

By contrast, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle includes walking, climbing, and moving in varied ways while rarely repeating the same movements repeatedly, the kind of work needed for farming.

Agriculture created the first significant environmental mismatch for the human species and would lead future humans into a progressively more mismatched world as technology advanced. We moved further away from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

The Paleo and Paleontology community has been discussing these ideas for a while now. So none of this forms the realization I mentioned at the beginning of this article.

The realization I mentioned earlier was like an "aha" moment and went like this:

Evolution and devolution are happening right now, every single day, in every one of us.

Nutrition is the single most significant mismatch affecting the human species today.

And it all started when agriculture came into the picture some 12,000 years ago.

Agriculture provided early humans with a steady food supply. And while agriculture allowed the population to grow, it had many problems.

Due to the lower quality of nutrition produced through agriculture and the droughts and inconsistencies in yield, humans traded a more consistent food supply for a lower quality of life.

As Daniel Lieberman puts it in his book The Story of the Human Body, "Farming created more food and allowed populations to grow, but for most of the last few thousand years, the average farmer had to work much harder than any hunter-gatherer, experienced worse health, and was more likely to die young."

Agriculture yielded food that could have been more nutritious and varied.

Due to a lack of fruit and vegetables in their diets—which are fatal if left untreated—many farmers developed scurvy, which was one of the problems this caused.

Agriculture also required a more laborious lifestyle, resulting in another mismatch due to the physically demanding work required.

By contrast, the hunter-gatherer lifestyle includes walking, climbing, and moving in varied ways while rarely repeating the same movements repeatedly, the kind of work needed for farming.

Agriculture created the first significant environmental mismatch for the human species and would lead future humans into a progressively more mismatched world as technology advanced. We moved further away from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

The Paleo and Paleontology community has been discussing these ideas for a while now. So none of this forms the realization I mentioned at the beginning of this article.

The realization I mentioned earlier was like an "aha" moment and went like this:

Evolution and devolution are happening right now, every single day, in every one of us.

Now that you know how our ancestors lived, think about how that lifestyle compares to today.

• Imagine having no car, phone, books, restaurants, or refrigerators.
• Imagine being unable to walk to the fridge to get food when hungry.
• Imagine living with the same 50-75 people for your entire life.
• Imagine hunting dangerous wild game barefoot with only a wooden spear and a few fellow hunters. (There is evidence that women would hunt right alongside men; the subjection of women started with the creation of farming, personal property, and marriage.)

This is the life that humans have lived for 90% of human existence. And this is the way, as the theory suggests, we are meant to live.

Today's way of living drastically differs from how humans have lived for most of our existence. This is what the theory behind Paleo is based on.

It's called The Mismatch Theory.

The mismatch theory states that we live in an environment that is mismatched to our genes because our genes are designed to live the way our ancestors did.

The mismatch theory is based on the theory that the human genome has yet to adapt to our new environment because this environment has come on so fast. Twelve thousand years might seem like a long time, but if you look back at the history of life on Earth (billions of years) and the history of humans on that Earth (200,000 years or more), you see that it's a relatively short period.

Here are a few of the new environmental factors affecting humans today:

• Most humans eat processed foods from industrial seed oils, grains, and sugars. As a result, a large percentage of the world is obese and struggling with Food-related diseases.

• Modern humans sit more and move less, contributing to increased disease and a lower quality of life. (Our ancestors walked an average of 13 miles a day.)

• Modern humans spend most of their time indoors—some estimates put it above 90% of waking hours for those living in first-world countries. As a result, many suffer from low Vitamin D levels, high toxicity levels, and other mental and physical issues. (Hint: we are made to be in nature.)