As scary as it sounds, half of U.S. adults now have high blood pressure, and more will have it as they age. Read on to learn what constitutes high blood pressure and what you can do to bring yours down.

Blood Pressure: How High Is Too High?

In November of 2017, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology released new guidelines on high blood pressure, or hypertension, stating that the cutoff for diagnosis is now 130/80. (Previously, the cutoff was 140/90.)

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As a result of this change, millions of people with blood pressures that were previously considered normal, like 134/82, now meet the clinical definition for high blood pressure. Under the current guidelines, even a blood pressure with the top number in the 120s is considered to be “elevated,” which means it carries a higher risk for heart disease and death.

Source: American Heart Association

High blood pressure is common, affecting 116 million Americans.

Under the current guidelines, 30% of men and 19% of women under age 45 have high blood pressure. If you don’t have it, you likely will sooner or later: Nearly 90% of U.S. adults develop high blood pressure during their lifetimes.

The scary part is how dangerous the condition can be over time. Often described as a “silent killer,” high blood pressure doesn’t always cause symptoms, which is why having your blood pressure checked is vital. Untreated high blood pressure can lead to heart failure, stroke, kidney disease, heart attack, and even death.

Proven Strategies for Lowering Blood Pressure Naturally

If you are diagnosed as having high blood pressure, you may not need blood pressure medications immediately. Whether you need medication depends on how high your blood pressure is, if you have other diseases (like kidney disease or diabetes), and your long-term risk for having complications from high blood pressure.

More importantly, basic lifestyle changes can help prevent or reverse high blood pressure for many people. The most important changes to make include the following:

Lifestyle Changes Are an Effective Tool

These interventions can be effective depending on the magnitude of the lifestyle change. In one study, 76% of participants who followed a vegan diet for one year were able to discontinue or drastically reduce their medications. However, adhering to these seemingly simple changes can be difficult.

Nevertheless, many of these “lifestyle interventions” are routine for traditional societies that generally have low rates of hypertension. High blood pressure is not a natural part of the human aging process. For example, populations in rural China and rural Africa do not have age-related increases in blood pressure, although this is rapidly changing as Western habits percolate globally.

Immigrants to Western countries develop an increased risk of high blood pressure after arriving, which only continues to rise as more time is spent in the West. This pattern is thought to be caused by adopting a Western diet and decreasing physical activity. Changes in lifestyle can undoubtedly raise—–or lower—–your blood pressure.

Even though statistics say you will probably develop high blood pressure during your lifetime, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.

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Summer picnics usually go hand-in-hand with hot dogs. But were you aware that processed meats can increase your risk of dying? Replacing bacon, hot dogs, and sausages with healthier options like fruits will help you avoid the toxic nitrosamines found in processed meats. And fruits contain antioxidants and phytonutrients—a win, win! Furthermore, the beneficial effects of fruits aren’t just limited to mortality; they have also been shown to help prevent and treat some of our most common diseases.

Whole Fruit Can Help You Avoid Heart Disease and Type 2 Diabetes

Several studies have shown that fruits have a dose-dependent relationship with the incidence of heart disease, meaning that those who eat more fruits have a lower risk of developing the condition. Fruits have been so effective in reducing heart disease that a whole province, North Karelia in Finland, embraced the idea by changing its dairy farms to berry farms to increase fruit consumption—and improve the health—of its citizens. By replacing animal-based foods with berries, along with other healthful changes, the region went from having one of the highest rates of heart disease in the world to one of the lowest within a generation.

Fruits have also helped patients all over the world lose weight and lower cholesterol. Fruits, contrary to popular belief, can also reduce your risk of developing diabetes. I often hear of patients who avoid eating fruits because of the sugar content, but these patients could not be more mistaken. While fruits do contain sugar, they have not been shown to worsen existing diabetes when consumed in their entirety, as opposed to being consumed as a juice, which concentrates the sugar to high levels. Fruit juice can increase body weight and the risk of diabetes. In contrast, the fiber content in whole fruit offers a protective effect by slowing digestion and absorbing the sugar load. In fact, fruits have recently been shown to be beneficial for people with diabetes. Eating fruits is healthy for people both with and without chronic illnesses, but unfortunately, too many people don’t eat enough of them.

Fruit Is Health Food, So Eat Generously

I, too, was once guilty of only eating just a single piece of fruit per day. When I was a child, my favorite fruit was the banana, and I would eat a single banana every day, perhaps like many of you. After eating my daily banana, I thought I had fulfilled my daily need for fruit, and the idea of eating more than one banana per day was almost heretical. But I was wrong. The adage “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” should not be taken literally. Eating multiple servings of the same fruit is both safe and encouraged! Scientific studies have shown that eating 20 servings of fruit daily is safe, and even more fruits could be consumed since there is likely no upper limit to healthy fruit consumption. I now eat several bananas in one sitting.

Another major reason I hear people cite for not eating fruits is their perceived lack of fun when compared to a prepared dessert, for example. In fact, fruits can be extraordinarily fun to prepare, present, and eat. A berry medley, peach cobbler, and a fruit salad are all great options for an outdoor picnic. In terms of fruit variety, there’s no better season than summer, with its bountiful array of choices like plump apricots, decadent cherries, ripe peaches, succulent nectarines, juicy melons, and sweet berries of all sorts.

Eating a single fruit a day leaves a lot of healthful opportunities still on the table, both figuratively and literally. With so many easy options to have fun and be healthy with fruits, there is no reason to hold back from eating more of them this summer. What are you waiting for?

(Photo by Mastering Diabetes.)

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Vitamin B12, or cobalamin, is naturally found in animal foods or bacteria. Animals obtain vitamin B12 by eating foods that are covered in bacteria or from the bacteria that already line their own guts. Humans have lots of bacteria in their guts, but only in the colon. Unfortunately, humans are unable to absorb the vitamin B12 produced in the colon because vitamin B12 is only absorbed in the small intestine, which is upstream of the colon.

Primates, indigenous societies, and prehistoric populations never got cobalamin deficiency because they didn’t have the advanced hygiene techniques that we have today, even if they were eating a plant-based diet. Their food had enough vitamin B12–containing bacteria on the surfaces to meet their needs. Humans, unlike other members of the animal kingdom, take great care to clean, wash, and cook their foods, which reduces the vitamin B12 content of any plant foods we may eat.

Risks of Having Vitamin B12 Deficiency

Consequently, vegetarians and vegans run the risk of vitamin B12 deficiency. The risk increases the more plant-based one eats, with long-term vegans being at the highest risk. In one study, vitamin B12 deficiency affected 86 percent of all vegans. Vitamin B12 deficiency is serious and can cause anemia, nerve damage, neurocognitive changes, and, over time, paralysis—all problems that you don’t need.

What Are the Best Vegan Sources of Vitamin B12?

The good news is that vitamin B12 deficiency can easily be prevented. Vitamin B12 can be found in fortified foods, like certain cereals, soy milk, and nutritional yeast. Yet, the simplest and most reliable way to ensure you get an adequate amount of B12 is to take an oral supplement. The usual dose for the average person is 250 micrograms a day or 2,500 micrograms a week. I personally take a daily supplement for consistency, but either option is OK. If you are not sure if you are getting enough or getting too much, you can always see your doctor to get your levels checked.

Carnivorous humans and paleo-enthusiasts may say that taking a supplement is unnatural and that you should eat more meat. However, consuming the amount of saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol found in meat is unnatural for humans, who are best suited for a plant-based diet. There is no health reason to eat meat. Given that 1 in 6 meat eaters is also vitamin B12–deficient, they might be wise to take an oral supplement themselves.

To learn more about a whole-food, plant-based diet, visit our Plant-Based Primer. For help staying on a healthy plant-based path, check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool.

This article was originally published on Aug. 31, 2017, and has been updated.

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With plant-based foods being so beneficial for the prevention and treatment of so many other diseases, it should come as no shock that they are also good for your kidneys.

WHAT IS KIDNEY DISEASE?

Kidney disease, or CKD (chronic kidney disease), refers to any process that damages the kidney. The kidneys are the body’s filter and regulator for many of the contents in the blood. When the kidneys are damaged, their ability to regulate the amount of water, electrolytes, and toxins in the blood and urine becomes impaired. This often leads to too much water, sodium, and toxins in the blood and not enough in the urine. In other cases, people have too much protein or blood in their urine. In severe cases of kidney disease, people need a kidney transplant or long-term dialysis to replace their damaged kidneys.

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WHAT CAUSES KIDNEY DISEASE?

The most common causes of kidney failure are diabetes and high blood pressure. Both conditions cause changes to the blood vessels and internal structures of the kidneys, reducing their function over time. The more uncontrolled your blood pressure or diabetes is, the more damage can be done to your kidneys. Less common causes of kidney disease include autoimmune diseases (like lupus), medications, infections, and cancers.

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS

Unfortunately, there are no symptoms of early kidney disease. Even with moderate kidney disease, a person may not realize anything is abnormal. For this reason, it is important to have your physician perform blood and urine testing if you are at risk for kidney disease. People at risk include those with conditions that can cause kidney disease (such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and autoimmune diseases including lupus) and those with a family history of kidney disease. Some signs and symptoms of kidney disease include high blood pressure, leg swelling, foamy urine, fatigue, changes in appetite, and trouble sleeping.

PREVENTION

The best treatment is prevention, and nowhere is that truer than in kidney disease. Once your kidneys are gone, they are gone forever, leaving dialysis or transplant as the only options—and neither is as good as holding onto your own kidneys, which work to filter out excess water and toxins from the body to form urine.

BEST DIET FOR PREVENTING CKD

If you already have high blood pressure or diabetes—two of the most common causes of CKD—it is not too late: They can be controlled and even reversed by eating a plant-based diet. Foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, and lentils can treat diabetes and high blood pressure and thereby prevent damage to your kidneys.

Plant-based foods are rich in fiber and antioxidants that can directly lower your blood pressure, improve glucose levels, reduce total body weight, and lower inflammation—all of which play a role in kidney disease. There is even evidence that meat-based foods cause the production of a compound called TMAO, which has been shown to directly cause CKD. Animal-based foods often are rich in other components that can be harmful to kidney function, such as sodium, fat, acid, phosphate, and excess protein.

How a Plant-Based Diet Treats Kidney Disease

If you already have kidney disease, adopting a plant-based diet is one of the best things you can do, because it targets three important health issues that contribute to the disease.

WORRIED ABOUT PROTEIN?

Many patients worry about getting enough protein on a plant-based diet, especially those with CKD. However, multiple studies have shown that people eating a plant-based diet that includes a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes have no trouble getting enough protein or amino acids. Patients only run into problems if they rely solely on a limited number of foods for their calories (for example, eating just apples and nothing else, day after day).

A WORD ABOUT POTASSIUM AND KIDNEY DISEASE

High potassium levels can be fatal in patients with kidney disease and are a concern for patients eating plant foods, which are often rich in potassium. However, not all foods raise potassium to the same extent. For example, dried fruit and plant-based juices and sauces can raise potassium levels quickly and should be avoided or used with caution. Eating whole fruits and vegetables is generally safer, as they contain fiber, which helps eliminate potassium from the body with bowel movements. Plant foods also contain natural alkali, which can blunt the rise in potassium in the blood.

If you have kidney disease and are considering transitioning to a plant-based diet, it is important to have your blood checked to monitor for high levels of potassium, at least initially, and to have physician supervision. If you have high levels of potassium, you may need to adjust your diet (reducing the use of tomato sauces, for example) or your medications to help with the transition. However, many patients with CKD have safely tolerated the transition to a plant-based diet and, more importantly, have greatly benefited from it.

CKD SUCCESS STORIES

If you’re wondering whether diet can really have such an impact on chronic kidney disease, read these firsthand accounts from real people who have dramatically improved their CKD prognoses since going plant-based.

• At 73, I Went Plant-Based and Said Goodbye to Obesity, Heart Disease, CKD, and Arthritis
• How I’m Beating CKD on a Plant-Based Diet
• From 3 Percent Kidney Function to Dialysis-Free on a Whole-Food Vegan Diet

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For those who are unaware, the keto, or ketogenic, diet excludes all carbohydrates to the point that the body derives energy from another macronutrient: fats. Followers of the keto diet do not eat whole grains, legumes, or fruit because of the carbohydrate content of these foods: Even some vegetables contain too much starch to be allowed in the diet. As a result, the body extracts energy from fats consumed in the diet, which creates ketone bodies as a byproduct of metabolizing fats, hence the name.

No Human Population Has Survived in Ketosis

Don’t let keto evangelists tell you the Inuit survived and thrived on a nightly fare of seal blubber, whale sirloins, and caribou jerky while being in the purportedly nirvana-like state of ketosis. (“Keto flu,” the common phrase for the symptoms of malaise, nausea, and fatigue that keto dieters regularly experience, is more indicative of the unpleasant truth.) The Inuit certainly ate those things; farmers markets are scarce in the Arctic because, well, there aren’t vegetable farms in the tundra. But they also evolved to avoid ketosis altogether: A mutation occurred several thousand years ago to prevent ketosis in this population. The mutation is now found in more than 80 percent of Greenland and Canadian Inuit. Because the keto diet increases acid levels in the blood, it is hypothesized that ketosis reduced the ability to tolerate further acidosis during times of illness, injury, or complete starvation, thereby increasing the chance of death. That so many Inuit have the mutation strongly suggests that ketosis was perilous for the aboriginal inhabitants of the Arctic—and likely is perilous for anyone else on the diet as well.

Deficiencies in Vitamins A to Z

It should come as no surprise to anyone that the ketogenic diet causes vitamin and mineral deficiencies. After all, there are large food groups that followers simply cannot eat, such as whole grains and most fruits. The rules for maintaining ketosis are so strict that an extra helping of broccoli might push you over the carbohydrate limit.

The only people who should be on a ketogenic diet are children who have refractory epilepsy, for which the diet has been used as therapy to reduce seizures for nearly a century. Researchers have been studying the side effects of the diet in this population, including vitamin and mineral deficiencies. In one study, researchers found deficiencies in every vitamin and mineral analyzed except for vitamin B12, which is commonly found in fatty foods of animal origin. The severity increased with increasing ketosis. In some cases, deficiencies in selenium were so severe that children died.

Until Death Do Us Part

Study after study has shown an increased risk of death with low-carb diets, and the keto diet maintains utmost supremacy in carbohydrate restriction. In a recent study published in The Lancet, those eating low-carb diets and relying primarily on animal-based foods, such as lamb, beef, pork, and chicken, were associated with a higher mortality. We already know that eating animal-based foods, such as dairy and meat, increases the risk of dying. The keto diet, in particular, also worsens levels of both good and bad cholesterol, which puts one at risk of dying from heart disease. The foods that the keto diet excludes—fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains—are some of the healthiest foods around. It’s no wonder the risk of dying goes up when you leave these foods off the plate.

Does Keto Keep Its Promises?

Keto’s claim to fame is its almost mythical ability to treat diabetes and obesity. However, long-term studies show no benefit for diabetes. Although studies of short-term duration (less than a year) frequently show a benefit in the treatment of diabetes, a meta-analysis of studies lasting more than a year showed no difference in glucose levels of those on the ketogenic diet compared with controls. And for weight loss? A paltry two-pound advantage over a low-fat strategy, after one year of counting carbs. Two pounds of weight loss is not enough to make you look that much more svelte. There are saner—and safer—ways of losing two pounds over the course of a year, like eating a whole-food, plant-based diet.

I’ve Got 99 Problems, but Carbs Ain’t One

Even if you believe the keto diet works for weight loss, there are plenty of other reasons to avoid it. In reviewing the literature of the documented side effects in epileptic children on the diet, I found that patients suffered from no shortage of side effects, including kidney stones, restricted growth, fatal cardiac arrhythmias, pancreatitis, higher cholesterol levels, and many more. The diet seems to be worth utilizing only if one happens to be a child with refractory epilepsy—and even then, children discontinue the diet because of its numerous side effects.

The ketogenic diet has swept the country up with the hope of a miracle diet, but, in the end, it may only bring us down with disappointment. Let food be thy medicine, but not if you need actual medicine to support thy food.

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Humans evolved in a calorie-poor environment, meaning that finding dinner wasn’t as easy as ordering delivery. In fact, for more than 99.9 percent of human evolutionary history, our ancestors were dependent upon what they could find in nature for food. Without reliable agriculture, humans were at the mercy of mother nature and luck, experiencing periods of starvation and excess. It was during these periods that humans evolved adaptations to endure extreme starvation. Those who survived—that’s us—are remarkably resilient at enduring life-limiting hunger.

So when you attempt to lose a few pounds by reducing your caloric intake, the body responds the way it has done for millennia—by slowing the metabolism, increasing hunger, and doing everything possible to acquire more calories. One study found that dieters experienced a 15 percent reduction in resting metabolic rate after a few weeks of conventional dieting—even after adjusting for the weight they lost. For the average person, this could mean the body is now burning 250 to 400 calories less just to stay alive. This is like your laptop reducing the screen brightness to save energy when the battery runs low. To make matters worse, those who are obese have greater reductions in their resting metabolism compared to those who are not obese, which makes things harder for those with the most to lose.

But there’s more: The body responds to dieting by increasing levels of ghrelin, the hunger hormone, to drive you to eat more. Ghrelin levels rise with additional weight loss, which is why dieters experience such intense cravings for food. Hunger is a stimulus so strong that psychologists have observed it impairing performance on basic memory tests.

Even still, dieting affects the brain in other ways to thwart meaningful weight loss. Eerily reminiscent of the waning judgement of an alcoholic, dieting can cause you to pick out foods that are calorie-dense, underestimate how many calories are in a meal before eating it, and think you’ve eaten less than you actually have. With so much compensatory chicanery, it’s no surprise that more than 82 percent of dieters are unsuccessful.

So how are some people—despite all the odds—keeping the weight off? Research shows that one of the best strategies hinges on the concept of calorie density. Calorie density is the amount of calories in a gram of food, which is important because humans eat a consistent weight of food from day to day. Knowing this, one could surmise that by eating lots of foods that are low in calories, one could lose weight. And you can, which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective; humans have been eating mostly low-calorie fruits, leaves, tubers, and vegetables for the better part of our ancestral history.

Paradoxically, by eating more food with
fewer calories, dieters were able
to lose weight and feel full at the same time.

Studies of low-calorie-density diets have found that people can reduce the amount of calories they need to eat to achieve satiety. In the first study to test this hypothesis, in 1983, participants eating a low-calorie-density, plant-based diet took in a mean 1,570 calories a day while those on a high-calorie-density diet took in 3,000 calories per day before feeling full. A later study showed that those committed to low-calorie-density, plant-based diets (which, in this study, happened to be a Hawaiian fare) could lose weight at a remarkable clip: an average of 17 pounds over 21 days. Long-term studies have shown that these results are maintainable.

By eating so few calories per day, dieters should have gone hungry, but they circumvented this problem by eating a larger volume of low-calorie foods. Paradoxically, by eating more food with fewer calories, dieters were able to lose weight and feel full at the same time. Low-calorie-density foods like legumes, fruits, and vegetables can help dieters avoid the siren call of hunger that can doom the best of intentions.

The proportion of plant foods eaten is an important facet of success. Eating more plants further lowers the calorie density of a diet and results in additional weight lost. Studies have shown that vegetarians, for example, eat 363 fewer calories per day than omnivores and have higher resting metabolic rates—up to 11 percent higher in some cases, which may be why vegetarians weigh less too.

For those not ready to become vegetarian, you don’t have to overhaul your entire diet. By feeding as few as three apples a day to human volunteers, researchers have still been able to show weight reductions. With results like that, eating an apple a day might keep the doctor away, but it might also help you lose weight.

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If we could go back in time to see how humans lived, way before the era of iPhones and Twitter, we would find humans living—and eating—in their natural habitat. In this snapshot, of course, we would not find pizza boxes, potato chips, or Twinkies, but an earthy pantry of fruits, vegetables, and, seemingly, meat. I can’t argue against the need for more fruits and vegetables, but what irks me is the requirement for meat.

The necessity for meat is unsettling, especially red meat, which the Paleo diet features prominently, since red meat increases the risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and death. But what about other types of meat? And how much? Should we be eating no meat?

And so, I’ve become a bit obsessed with finding the answer. And for good reason: every patient that has a lifestyle disease that I would come in contact with as a physician could be affected by how I answer this question, which is to say, nearly all of my patients. The answer wasn’t easy to come by, and at times wasn’t clear. There were even times when I nearly convinced myself that the Paleo diet was correct in its premise. After spending hundreds, if not thousands of hours, over the past several years understanding human biology, evolutionary medicine, and anthropology, I’ve arrived at the answer.

Ultimately, the Paleo diet is right in its intent but errs in its methodology and conclusion. The Paleo diet assumes that humans in the Paleolithic period, the era which Paleo pundits reference, spanning 2.5 million to 10,000 years ago, were living in a manner that was in harmony with their—and by extension our—“genetic makeup.” But the human genetic makeup has been evolving for millions of years, and drawing a conclusion from one particular time point neglects the evolutionary context that surrounds it.

Human evolution dates back to at least 40 million years ago: a messy process filled with dead-ends and detours extending from anthropoids to hominoids to hominins to, finally, Homo sapiens sapiens, better known as the modern human. During the bulk of this time, human ancestors were primarily herbivorous. True, meat in the evolutionary diet didn’t gain momentum until the Paleolithic period, but it wasn’t until later in the Paleolithic period—how late, however, is a matter of ongoing contention. Some have argued that significant meat consumption didn’t start until around 400,000 years ago, when the first spear was discovered. But spears aren’t particularly useful unless you have a spear-thrower, or atlatl, which wasn’t invented until 17,000 years ago. Through a combination of improved group-hunting tactics and the introduction of advanced weaponry, many agree that effective hunting was likely in full swing by 40,000 years ago.

Over the course of human evolution, our lineage didn’t have the resources or, more importantly, the life-or-death need to eat meat. When humans engaged in effective hunting 40,000 years ago, they did so because they had left their warm ancestral homelands in Africa, which would have been replete with plant-based sources for food, and were now dependent upon the resources available in the new and colder environs they would have encountered venturing through southeast Asia and Europe during the last Ice Age. Food wouldn’t have come easily to early humans and likely drove the need for sophisticated tools to hunt animals. Early humans survived by adapting to these harsh environments by eating meat.

This is, however, different than saying, “Humans evolved to eat meat.” These early humans made weapons, hunted, and ate venison because it was necessary to stave off starvation and not because this was in their “genetic makeup.” Had these early adventurers found pizza, doughnuts, or french fries lying around the glacial forests and tundras of yesteryear they would have consumed that too because those would have been sources of precious calories.

The early humans from 40,000 years ago, who are the same subspecies of humans as modern humans, were not significantly different in their biology or anatomy than the ancestors they evolved from, and they certainly didn’t have any specific evolutionary traits to help them eat meat, or doughnuts for that matter. Their biology was consistent with a 40-million-year evolutionary process that was suited to eating foliage, and not fauna.

The carnivorous departure is a fairly new phenomenon and only represents 1 percent of the human evolutionary timetable, even when considering the earliest time point for effective human hunting. Any diet that says we should eat meat overlooks the other 99 percent of human history when we weren’t eating meat. If we were to compress human evolution onto a single calendar day starting at midnight, humans would have only started eating meat on a regular basis at 11:45:36 PM.

Just because we have evidence that cavemen ate meat doesn’t mean we should make it the foundation of our diets. Just because it happened in the anthropological record, doesn’t mean we should replicate it with every meal for a lifetime, unless you wanted to specifically live like a caveman, but then you might as well toss out your cell phone and hair dryer.

Our biology is best suited for a plant-based diet. After 40 million years of evolution, we see that the human gut anatomy is remarkably similar to our closest extant relative: the chimpanzee, who share 99 percent of their DNA with us. Chimpanzees are also 99 percent herbivorous, eating primarily fruits and leaves. Only 1 percent of a chimp’s diet is meat, while the average American wolfs down about 27 percent, or more, of their daily calories from animal-based sources. It is easy to see how a lifetime of errant dietary habits can take their toll on human health.

And indeed, medical science proffers the final coup de grâce on the subject. For years, scientists have published studies on meat shortening human life expectancy. Most studies show an increase in life expectancy anywhere from 1.5 to 3.6 years in life, but in some cases the difference in life expectancy has been as great as a decade, the difference between the life expectancy of smokers and nonsmokers. Researchers have also shown a dose response with meat: the more meat in your diet, the higher the risk of dying.

Humans during the Paleolithic era ate meat for survival, not for long-term health. Fortunately, humans of today are living under less brutal, and more enlightened, conditions. It’s difficult to argue that the Paleolithic diet’s requirement for meat is in sync with our genetic footprint, and the oversight is proving fatal for both the Paleo diet and, perhaps, for those following it.

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