I have always thought that the pursuit of ancestral fitness involved at least two layers. Maybe, like onions, and ogres, and parfait, ancestral fitness is simply a thing of layers. There is the simple game, and the deep game. Inevitably, the more one pursues this thing we call ancestral fitness, the deeper one goes. This is, of course, true of almost everything, not only onions, ogres and parfait. (That’s a Mike Myers reference, kids!)
The two levels? There is the advanced, complex level, where we throw around phrases like glycemic index, ketogenesis and epigenetics. And there’s the simple level, where we say things like “eat real food.” Both levels are working towards a similar goal—a basically fit human, but they’re vastly different in terms of the depth and sophistication with which they approach that goal.
Inside baseball is looking to build Mark Sisson, to build Arthur de Vany. Inside baseball is looking to maximize human performance. Inside baseball is all about applying the serious study of human anatomy and physiology to take the raw human meat and make it, in the words of the old Army commercial, all it can be.
Both Mark and Art provide excellent, introductory level guides to ancestral fitness, Mark with his Primal Blueprint and Art with his Essay on Evolutionary Fitness. Both of them, however, operate at a much higher level than just “eating real food.”
Unfortunately, the deeper you get into the game, the weirder and more abstruse you sound to outsiders. There have been times when I would attempt to explain ancestral fitness to someone and their eyes would glaze over. My enthusiasm would lead me to start reeling off phrases like “insulin resistance” and “ketogenesis,” “catabolic state” and “glycemic index.” TEGO. (Their Eyes Glaze Over) When you’re talking to a layman, even an interested layman, about ancestral/paleo/primal/evolutionary fitness and you launch into a discursion on the ratios of omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids in grass fed vice grain fed beef, you are liable to scare off a potential convert.
I mean, meat is meat, right?
On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, no. Come on—after delving into ancestral fitness and doing the background readings, we all know that grass fed, grass finished, hormone free, antibiotic free beef is an entirely different product than what I like to call “industrial meat.”
It’s fun to deepen our understanding of ancestral fitness, and to explore, further, how to self-experiment and tinker with our bodies. It’s pleasant to be able to converse with our fellows at a high level of sophistication. It’s tremendously satisfying to feel that we can pierce the veil of misunderstanding, and arrive at a better mythology of how our bodies work.
But that’s inside baseball.
While confessing this might jeopardize my status as a good American, I don’t really pay attention to baseball. I may watch a game from time to time, but I do so more to hang out with my friends in a convivial atmosphere than to actually follow the game. I understand the basics of baseball—three strikes and your out, four balls and you walk, nine innings with a stretch in the seventh. When things get beyond that, my poor head starts to ache. I think I’m smart enough to understand baseball, if I spent the time to learn more about it, but time is fungible and there are other things I’d rather understand, or try to understand. Baseball just isn’t that important to me.
I understand baseball at a very superficial level.
Let me hasten, now, to point out that there’s nothing wrong with having a superficial understanding of things. While I consider myself a student of history, there are vast swaths of history that I understand only superficially. I am aware that Sir Francis Walsingham was a counselor and spymaster to Queen Elizabeth I of England. That’s pretty superficial. I’ve spoken with a real student of Elizabethan history, who had devoted many long hours to Walsingham. I was humbled by how little I knew . . . but I was able to follow along when the information was presented in an easily digestible manner.
The world is full of people who are eating the Standard American Diet (SAD), who could be helped with even a superficial understanding of ancestral fitness. If we have any interest in helping people, we need to be able to communicate our information at a superficial level.
Fortunately, we can do that. Ancestral fitness is, at its base, a simple concept. For better health, eat like your ancestors did. There! Isn’t that simple?
Starting in the 1970s, the United States government changed its recommendations for what we should eat. A much higher emphasis was placed on a high consumption of grains, while foods high in saturated fat were deemphasized, shunned and abjured. A breakfast of bacon, eggs and buttered toast gave way to a breakfast of oatmeal. At the same time, processed foods became much more popular, as “food science” applied scientific principles to the production, packaging and distribution of food. These changes occurred as an experiment in making us fitter and healthier. If you are in (very early) middle age like me, you have seen the experiment play out before your eyes. Has it worked?
Have rates of obesity, diabetes, or coronary artery disease remained the same, declined, or increased? Are we healthier now than we were then? Have the changes we made to our diet worked for us? If your answers are that obesity, diabetes and coronary artery disease have all increased, and that we are not noticeably healthier now than we were then, how could we change things?
An easy answer would be “Eat real food.” What is real food? Real food is food your grandmother, when she was a young woman, would have recognized as food. Real food isn’t shelf-stable, for months and months. Real food isn’t highly processed. Real food doesn’t have a long, long list of ingredients. Read the ingredient lists and avoid anything with high fructose corn syrup. Eat less bread, pasta, grains and potatoes. Don’t buy convenient foods. Don’t buy food you have seen advertised on television.
There’s lots more we could say about ancestral fitness. There’s lots more, in fact, that we do say about ancestral fitness–that’s why we blog, that’s why we comment, that’s why we try to push our understanding further. The superficial description listed above, however, could serve as the introduction. Three strikes and you’re out, four balls and you walk, nine innings and a stretch in the seventh.
How much more do you need to know? Do you need to know the biochemistry of carbohydrate breakdown? Do you need to have a firm grasp on whether its carbohydrates themselves, or insulin, or inflammation, that supplies the underlying mechanism poisoning your body? How does the old joke go? “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” “Don’t do it any more.”
Inside baseball—or rather, inside paleo—-is about building Spartans, whether of the Leonidas or HALO versions.
Outside baseball—or rather, outside paleo—is about reducing the chronic poisoning of the human body that is an inevitable consequence of the deficiencies of the standard American diet. We don’t all have to be Mark Sisson, we don’t all have to be Arthur de Vany. A lot of people will never have the time or interest in pursuing that level of health and fitness. But if we can explain a few simple steps that will help people get started on the way to better health, and better fitness, we can help a lot of people. Hundreds? Surely. Thousands? Probably. Millions? Why not.
With all due apologies to GEICO, ancestral fitness really is so simple even a caveman could do it. 
