A Caveman’s Diet
The Best For Gaining Muscle And Losing Fat

By Al Wilson

We all know the phrase, we are what we eat, and I’m sure you all agree with it because, in fact, it’s true. And if every molecule of our body were made from chemical substances that we obtain from food, it would be reasonable to conclude that the quality of our body is dependent on the quality of the food we consume. But there’s more… the reality is that we are the way we are as a legacy of what the human race has eaten throughout its entire evolution. 

Bodybuilders know perfectly well that when it comes to developing the muscle they are after, nutrition is not just essential but a determining factor. How many times have you read that the big champs and the best trainers all agree that diet is 80% of success in building large, lean muscles? Plenty, I’m sure. And it’s no fallacy; it’s the reality.
Building muscles is a chemical process dependent on a number of factors, one of them being weight training with progressive loads to deteriorate the muscle fibres, unleashing the process of recuperation and the compensatory effect of hypertrophy. But that is just the first step in the whole process. As hard as you may train to build bigger muscles, what you do at the dinner table is more important than what you do in the gym.
I can assure you that the key to achieving your full potential for growth in general revolves around your diet… but probably not the one you are following now. If you really want to eat the best way for building big strong muscles and stripping off fat, you would be better off with a diet like that of our cave dwelling ancestors. But we’ll come back to that. 

The Human Diet Through Evolution
According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, species evolve as a function of their environment, adapting to the best form to ensure survival, but it is a process that occurs over millions of years.
Scientists attest, and have sufficient proof, that the current human race emerged from Africa around one million years ago, or perhaps more, and in adapting to different environments different races and bloodlines came about. Light hair and skin and eyes for those in the cold north, and dark skin, hair and eyes for those in the hot south are generalised examples of this adaptation.
Our genetic make-up does not change overnight; as such we are adapted to processing and digesting the foods that have given us sustenance for many hundreds of thousands of years. And now many of us believe that the illnesses and physical difficulties facing large percentages of the population are the result of the generally bad diet we have been following recently.
Agriculture is around 10,000 years old, whereas man has manufactured food industrially for less than 200 years, meaning that if agriculture has served our nutritional needs for 1% of our time here on earth, man-made foods have served us for just 2% of that 1%!
To put it another way, if you considered a million years as a day – 24 hours, or 1,440 minutes – then agriculture would have existed for the last 14 minutes, and processed foods for just the last 16.8 seconds of that whole day. As you can see, exposure to industrially manufactured food is something completely new to the human body.
It might be interesting to think about what might comprise the ideal diet, keeping in mind the following facts:

• Scientists believe that the human body stopped evolving around 40,000 years ago, meaning that our organs – the pancreas, liver, adrenal and pituitary glands, kidneys, etc – have remained the same as they were then. That was a long time before man domesticated animals and developed agriculture, which happened some 30,000 years later.
• For much of its existence the human race was dispersed in tribes and was nomadic, dependent largely on hunting and gathering for survival. Humans had to fight hard against animals and adverse climactic conditions, collecting fruit and vegetables when hunting did not provide.
• Different tribes were dispersed throughout different zones of the planet and humans became omnivores, although carnivores predominated with the exception of the tribes of Ecuador that subsisted on plants. It is established, however, that those populations who lived on the plains and were primarily carnivores had larger physiques with a greater quantity of muscle than those who lived in forests and subsisted mainly from plants.

It is known that those of the Palaeolithic age were physically the largest and strongest. They could be likened to today’s athletes, as they had to run long distances hunting large animals in groups in order to feed their tribes, and return loaded down with the spoils to feed the women and children. This activity over thousands of years led to human of 1.8m in height and 100kg in lean weight. Their diet was based on meat, fish, roots and wild fruits.
The hunters and gatherers of the Palaeolithic age began to disappear some 12-10,000 years ago due, it is thought, to the change in diet that came about when cattle raising and agriculture were developed in order to guarantee survival. That’s when people began to live more sedentary lives, as it was no longer necessary to go out in search of food.
Around 9,000 years ago the human physique started to shrink in height at around a centimetre per millennium, losing lean muscle at a rate of two kilograms over the same period, while the percentage of fat began to rise. Agriculture and farming guaranteed survival, making nutrition more comfortable and secure, but this lead to a corresponding reduction in the size of people, along with the loss of muscle and accumulation of fat.
To make things worse the millstone was invented for the grinding of grain, allowing for the production of new manmade foods but at the expense of a great number of vital nutrients.
This physical decline reached its apex around one thousand years ago and with the appearance of manufactured foods, experts agree, came the appearance of cancer, obesity, diabetes and other modern diseases.
While our organs and genes have not changed from those of our hunting and gathering ancestors, today in stead of healthy, wild meat with good fats we eat the meat of sedentary animals pumped up with steroids and raised on a diet far from their natural one, the grass of the hills and plains. Vegetables are now intensively cultivated using artificial fertilizers and pesticides, harvested before they are ripe and matured in refrigerated vaults. And to make things worse the food industry engineers foods full of huge amounts of sugar, trans fats and a great number of additives like colourings, preservatives, sweeteners, flavour enhancers, etc.
Even fish have not escaped this deterioration, as now they are either raised in farms on an unnatural diet or come from contaminated seas so that many species contain high quantities of heavy metal and other toxins. And it’s only getting worse. 

The Ideal Diet For Strength & Muscle Gains And Fat Loss
Naturally it would be impossible to outline a specific diet that would suit everyone here, due to the innumerable factors that come into play for each individual, but looking at the science of our evolution it is relatively easy to understand that the best diet for all of us, and especially bodybuilders aiming at enlarging their physiques, would be similar to that which our cave-dwelling ancestors followed, the hunters and gatherers.
The first step is obtaining the most organic and unprocessed natural foods possible, such as free-range organic meats, wild caught fish from deep, cold waters, and organically cultivated fruits and vegetables. It is not always possible to discern the origins of many foods available in larger supermarkets, but it is becoming easier and easier especially in smaller stores where all types of organic produce can be found these days.
In any case, simple by eliminating processed and refined foods from your diet you will be making a giant leap towards better health and fitness, which will translate into stronger, larger muscles and a better body fat coefficient.
In conclusion, make your diet as close as you can to a caveman’s diet and you will gain muscle as well as improve your general health.