The Perfect Human Diet (2012) User Reviews

Pretty good on evolutionary diet, but clearly biased and makes poor logical conclusions

[jbradfordinc · 5/10 · 16 July 2017]

Watched this documentary yesterday. It was very interesting from the perspective of evolutionary origins of the human diet, and somewhat accurate from that respect I believe as well. However, it's clear anti-vegetarian/anti-vegan bias made it less than desirable as a movie to recommend. It makes several poor assumptions about what it means for us in a modern society based on our ancestors' diets. And it glosses over a many of the modern arguments for vegetarianism and veganism that are very powerful.

This documentary also continues to harp on the idea that the consumption of meat is responsible for our ancestors developing large brains. While this may have been a factor, it completely ignores the fact that most evolutionary biologists believe that it was the advent of cooking that is largely responsible for our increased brain capacity, not the consumption of meat. (No other carnivore/omnivore developed large brains, only us.) It is much more likely that our bodies incorporated certain animal-based nutrients, like vitamin B12, as our brains enlarged, rather than being the cause of our enlarged brains.

But, it should be noted that veganism and vegetarianism are not diets for optimal human health in and of themselves. You can absolutely be a fat, unhealthy vegan if you want to. Veganism is largely based in the ethical and environmental arguments, taking into account the almost irreparable damage that our modern agricultural industry is doing to the planet. To be vegan AND healthy, you must also consider what our ancestors consumed and make sure you are getting adequate plant protein from diverse sources, nutrients, etc.

Both "Food Choices," which I highly recommend, and this documentary overlap in certain areas, which are that the consumption of highly refined, processed food products (like HFCS) are bad for human health in general. They both agree that humans are the most healthy when we consume whole food products with fewer additives. They also agree that milk products in general are not good for human health beyond a very young age.

Not perfect

[DennisLittrell · 6/10 · 23 June 2013]

The problem with the conclusion that this documentary comes to is it won't work! If all of humanity—seven billion strong and increasing—ate the "natural" quasi-Paleolithic diet that the scientists in this film find "perfect"...well they won't because with present technology it is impossible for the planet to feed that many people that high on the hog. Raising the necessary number of cows, pigs, chickens, etc. requires more land and fresh water than is available. It's as simple as that.

The second problem involves a "what is, is right" kind of fuzzy thinking. The fact that our ancestors ate a lot more meat than they did grains does not mean that sort of diet is best. They ate that way because they had no choice.

The third problem is that the kind of meat hunters and gatherers ate was a bit different from the fat-laden, choice cuts of meat eaten today. It was lean and grass-fed. And a lot of it wasn't meat at all. It was fish, shellfish, clams, mussels and insects.

Aside from these three very important points the documentary is not bad. The film makes it clear that it is the modern diet of processed foods that is responsible for the obesity epidemic in the developed world. And yes the paleo-primal, hunter-gatherer diet is superior to the junk food that is shoved in our faces on TV, over the Internet, on billboards and at fast food restaurants.

And yes meat- and fish-eating turned upright-walking dull-witted apes into hominids. Without high-quality foods we could not have grown our big brains. But that was then. This is now, and what is needed is a balanced diet of whole foods with plenty of fruits and vegetables, some carbs, some high protein foods, and oils from the trees: e.g., olives, avocados, coconuts, etc.

—Dennis Littrell, author of "The World Is Not as We Think It Is"

A vegetarian, high variety meal perspective

[ogasior · 6/10 · 28 May 2014]

I used to be a junk food eater in high school including tons of fast food Mcdonalds, Wendy's and weighed about 180lb. In college I added tons of variety and became a serious fitness addict and studied nutrition, adding tons of greens and ideas to my diet. I went to 165lb in sophomore year, and went back up in weight with muscle gains back to 180lb. During my senior year I shifted back to a protein diet because of weight lifting, but I kept up with fruits and low vegetables and high carbs. My diet mostly consisted of very lean meat, ground chicken/ turkey or beef at least 95% lean, tons of fruit smoothies, and subs with vegetables and either roast beef or tuna. After that year at 21 I saw myself and visually felt and looked older. That year I'd already given up drinking alcohol and I never smoked cigarettes. I just looked like my teen years had left behind and I was definitely an adult. Around that time I got injured from weight-lifting and decided very spur of the moment that I'd be a vegetarian around that time for health purposes because of all the information I had been taking in on health and nutrition/ nutritional labels. I spent a lot of time online looking up data on nutritional labels, fats, mono+poly, carbs simple-complex, proteins and their sources. So I had a workout injury prompting me to stop working out for 6 months and lose 3 years of hard workouts and was only eating about 1-2 small meals a day dropping to 155lb. I was eating tuna/ almost no meat about once every 10-14 days vs the traditional cycle of 3.5 oz meat/ day and this was 2010. This only lasted about 4-5 months before I started really turning the corner and getting a lot of grains in my diet and homemmade apple pies and homemmade bread with tons of seeds and variety's of grains. Pizza was my personal favorite, and usually home-made utilizing pizza flour purpose powder and adding water, cheese, tomato sauce. From 2010-summer 2011 I got back up to 200lb and tons of exercise/ working out while only eating approximately 4-5 oz of meat every 10-14 days rather than daily. I regained a lot of my strength gains even as a mostly vegetarian. From that point forward I decided to take an unexpected next step forward towards full vegetarianism. In summer 2012 I took out all meats completely.. and since then (2014) have had 2 cans of tuna worth of meat in 2 years and no land meat. I'm into fitness and feel that it lends no disadvantage to me knowing the proper staple of foods I need to eat and not processed junk.. but just organic, and only lends a long term advantage to avoid long term health risks. It also helps with focus and allows me to stay up at a maintained moderate high energy throughout the day where-as when I was higher on a meat diet, I would NEED to take a nap after I did a workout with no exception. I find meat-substitutes at Whole Foods for Ex. quite good soy-based (not engineered). My diet is heavy on dairy, grains like whole breads, or multi-grain pizza dough, recently more and more vegetables, quesedilla's with guacamole/ salsa/ cheese, sometimes vegan cheese, vegetable soup with added peanuts, yogurt parfait with nuts/ fruits, smoothies, home-brewed tea's, soy- milk, oat grain milk etc. I weigh about 190 lb currently at 25 years old.

I believe the most critical line that came from this documentary is "food perspective is like religion," and that was the critical point and defining spectrum on what this documentary was about.

I felt the best resource to really take out is a variety is important. The documentary itself tries to promote a Low carb (low grains), High protein (high meats), low dairy, balanced with nuts, vegetables and fruits based on ancestral history. The most interesting point in the documentary for me was when they scaled out ancestral history on the football field, but I felt this contradicted, and didn't support the meat based argument. It showed how much of our history had been hunter- gatherer, but the greatest evolutionary leap was after the agricultural/ industrial revolutions in all intellectual and physical scale.

In my perspective I think vegetarianism is a strong choice but the video attempts to de-signify this movement, and information about eating meat linked to heart disease was left out of the video. As humans evolve and have more physical and intellectual resources available to them and live out the fulfillment of an herbavorian, physical complexion it is proved that humans CAN choose to be vegans/ vegetarian's and survive. Whether this is the better option is up for debate but it is possible to be healthy that way, in my belief it is healthier.

I believe the biggest issue is facts get filtered through personal feelings/ quests/ wants. The facts are there but what facts are focused on and interpreted and sought for is determined by a personal quest of findings. Take for example Darwinism and creationist theory. During his era he was greatly disputed Darwin, for his beliefs and even physical archaeology and scientific research was used to back up creationist theory in the essence of the "perfection" in innate physiology of for instance fish bone structure that allows for the species to swim and live in harmony in only a way a creator or God could make, that evolution was too random. Well to that point that's why evolution took so many millions of years and time to advance, because of a search of harmony and trial-error and adaptive selection process to physically fulfill a more operable set of tools to handle the environment and life. So, Darwin was heavily opposed, but now mostly seeming to be correct by consensus, and the point is that facts can be interpretable.

Sadly, one of the best documentaries of late on any subject

[imdb-487-881561 · 5 January 2013]

Sadly, because this documentary is only of average quality which, of course, speaks to how bad documentary making has become in terms of objective reporting. Nonetheless, the production of this (as most other) documentaries is quite good. There is nothing amateurish about the effort. It has plenty of eye-candy and moves along well.

Content-wise, it is unnecessarily reactionary. This, in my opinion, is the biggest flaw of the documentary. Framing the narrative around a rejection of vegetarian principles only serves to elicit responses like that of the other commenter, responses that misconstrue the message and get lost in delusional, inane diatribes around fantasy subjects like "everything meat" and "meat versus vegetable". If your brain is plugged in while watching, you will find that traditional diets are, by necessity, far more balanced and rational. An interesting topic on its own.

For those that don't consider nutrition to be a religious issue, it is a good introduction to evolutionary diets. If interested, read more on the subject (e.g. Weston Price is a good lead).

goes from one extreme to another, but a good question is raised here

[aurore-malet · 2/10 · 11 February 2013]

This documentary is quite shallow at the end, even though there is a real effort to interview serious scientist and to approach the different diets. They go from the extreme no meat to only meat... as some of my peers said

However this is the first documentary that is really focused on an evolutionary perspective for diets, and for this, i gave them my two stars. But, the format makes me to a reality TV show, especially for the first half. they seem to be very into "scoop" and sensitization of the informations, which annoyed me quite much i have to say. with the little harp music that often comes... this is really annoying. So i really had a problem with the format.

plus the use of the expression by some of the scientists " we are design for...", well as a scientist myself this is... ouch! And one the guy is citing the sphenoid bone which is a the center of the theory of the intelligent design.... For me this documentary is really on the slippery slope and i am wondering if it has not just been made for good traditional American (that is just evolved enough to accept there might be some kind of evolution) to give them weak scientific justifications for they diet.

And most of it, there is an important point that they forgot to take in the equation : the impact of the environment.... This is something that our ancestors did not have to deal with.. So yes some of our ancestors ate mainly animal products, but those resources now have such a cost on our environment, which makes me question a lot about the perfection of this diet. If we want to really think about our diet, i think that we are at a point were we need a more broad approach that really embraces more problems that are related to food. They are NEVER talking about the pesticides...!!!! This is why i think this documentary is at the end quite presumptuous, even if the questions it asks is really interesting.

An excellent movie. And addressing "flaws".

[FenbyT · 10/10 · 4 January 2013]

The movie itself is excellent. It points out the problems in our modern diets, and gives a method of being healthy that has been nothing short of a miracle for me and my family.

To address some issues others have had:

It is true that life was hard during earlier times, meaning that only those that could survive in such harsh conditions could survive. This shaped us, but says nothing of our lifestyles today. If anything, this could help explain why intermittent fasting is so beneficial.

Many insects/bugs are anything but unhealthy. You can think they're disgusting as an effect of the culture of your upbringing, sure, but to claim they're all unhealthy is just untrue.

You can't conflate diet with hygiene. I don't counter vegetarians with "if all you want to do is eat plants in small meals, why don't you just take off all your clothes, ruminate, and forget about toilets?"

If you don't think hunting, gathering, walking everywhere, crafting, and everything else that comes along with living as our ancestors did constitutes exercise, I can't imagine what would. Take a look at the physical fitness of modern H/G tribes and tell me they don't exercise.

Humans are the most versatile species ever. We live and have lived everywhere from below sea level to the tops of mountains, from desert to jungle, eating every plant or animal that didn't kill us. To claim that a majority of humans throughout our evolution were primarily fishers is nonsense. At the very least, humans have been hunting for two _million_ years. More than enough to help shape us.

Look at native populations all over the world. The Anbarra, Arnhem, Ache, Nukak, Hiwi, !Kung, and Hazda tribes. All eating the historical diets of their people, and all in good enough shape to live many long years in incredibly difficult environments.

"Many long years?", you say? "But I thought they only lived to 40!" You might want to read the paper "Longevity Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross- Cultural Examination." Hunter/Gatherers live to be 80. Want to know something even better? Many H/Gs get 70-80% of their calories from meat, and they have no atherosclerosis (per other papers by Kaplan, et al.).

As for grains, while the heritage strains of wheat that we have been farming for the last 10k years might be fine, the fact is that the wheat we eat today is nothing even close. It should be considered an entirely new food type. Not to say that humans haven't found a new food and thrived on it before, of course, just that pointing out how long we've been eating it is irrelevant when it's been completely overhauled.

In summary, the movie does an excellent job pointing out the problems of a modern diet, and offers an alternative that has proved to be hugely beneficial to those that try it. Humans function best when we eat what humans have eaten throughout our entire evolution: real food. Given our long evolutionary history of eating everything with a pulse, that should definitely include animals--meat, offal, marrow and all.

No scientific backing

[lauren_glenn-59017 · 1/10 · 6 May 2016]

This is written with so much faulty science. Again a reporter trying to make it rich spewing bullshit to unsuspecting viewers. Watch forks over knives or check out Nutritionfacts.org for REAL science. Such a shame money is clouding everyones judgement. Someone trying to help you make smart nutritious choices would never make this documentary. Yes, there is a crisis right now, but the answer isn't paleo. Its completely unsustainable and impossible. Another documentary. Conwpiracy. These films I'm referring too won't be funded by big directors because they are against the corporate Big Meat and Dairy agenda. Check out the beef check off programs. Or MilkPEP. These organizations work with the government to make you eat more meat and drink more milk so they make money. Open your eyes!! For your life, choose a whole food plant based diet. Eat amazing food, always be full, and eat the diet our ACTUAL ancestors ate. Fiber is the MOST important nutrient and its estimated we'd save billions in health costs if everyone just had 1 more gram of fiber a day. Meat, dairy, and eggs have no fiber at all.

Great documentary using sound science.

[blashy · 9/10 · 23 January 2013]

This is not an exaggerated doc. It shows what we ate for millions of years and who it helped us thrive.

The doc spends most of the time talking to scientists who actively study this, not people of opinion or ideological preferences (like a vegan). That's what I found most compelling.

Some individuals will say how can this be a good diet when the lifespan was so short. Well science has also shown that life expectancy was not really affected by what our ancestors ate but how they did not know about hygiene which is the single most important element on how life expectancy is so high today, then you have medicine for injuries (and they lived in much harsher environments), as well you have death from childbirth which along with hygiene really kill a a life expectancy ratio.

Some good info but not well presented

[gypsytwilight · 5/10 · 17 August 2015]

So the message behind the film seemed to be eat more meat. Here are just a few problems I saw with the arguments the film use's to make that claim.

1. Person claims humans have a herbivores digestive system. Obviously untrue (we are omnivores as are our closest relatives) but I'm not sure why he chose to feature a business owner selling soy jerky to make it other than it discredits people who support vegetarianism. Would have been better to either not addressed vegetarianism at all, or had some sort of expert to explain the relative upsides/downsides of a vegetarian diet. For example of the 4 of the 5 blue zones in the world have a plant based diet and the 5th is mostly fish.

2. Person claims that all herbivores have four stomachs. This is factually not true. Horses, Rhino's, rabbits, and a host of other herbivores have a single stomach.

3. If you have read In Defense of Food you know how complicated nutritional science is. The film implies that the old low fat movement came about with no scientific backing. To me that sounds more like an infomercial than a documentary. It's quite possible whatever evidence they were gathering was either misleading or misinterpreted but it would have been more illuminating to discuss what the specific errors were and why the modern science is better. Is the view the film is pushing the result of increases in knowledge or just the next fad. Personally I'm not sure and looking at this film critically doesn't go a long way towards convincing me.

3. Person claims that there high carb proponents make no differentiation between processed an non-processed carbs after a scene at the vegetarian summit where a presenter specifically said avoid processed foods. This is sort of the base problem with the films premise. Humans have evolved to thrive on a pretty wide range of foods and whole grains are not that different from the foods we were eating previously. The problem is that in refining them we remove all but the least nutritionally dense portion of the grain and turn that nutritionally deficient substance into a large portion of or diet. That is far different from having a moderate amount of whole grains and a greatly increased level of more nutritionally dense vegetables which is the diet vegetarians actually promote. Again maybe paleo are right but you need to make a fair comparison to know one way or the other.

4. The analysis by the plank institute only covers Europe, an area that earlier in the film noted has no plant food sources for a significant period of the year. Humans are opportunistic eaters they will eat what is available. If plants are not available they won't be a large portion of the diet. If you look at what we know about diets world wide the only thing they have in common is variety.

5. When you make a film that is promoting establishment views you don't need to give outsiders a voice. The opposite is not true. At some point it would have been a good idea to have some sort of expert on to explain why the current recommendations exist and to weigh in on the benefits and disadvantages of the diet the movie.

I think paleo is an overall fairly healthy diet. I think this film would have made a better case for it by focusing on modern studies showing it's benefits than focusing on one side of the debate over what our ancestors ate. It also seemed to miss that all the nutrients animals are getting come from the food they eat so if you're eating grain fed beef you're not making a huge improvement over eating the grains yourself.

In Search of the Perfect Human Diet Documentary

[bippywhite · 5/10 · 7 May 2022]

What was never discussed in this documentary was that although early man killed animals for food, how long did they live for, and what chronic diseases did they suffer from as a result of eating meat? Humans may have been eating meat for a very long time, but we have always had afflictions like cancer and coronary heart disease following along. We are also destroying the planet, and animal agriculture is accelerating this. That in itself doesn't make us the most intelligent creature to have walked the earth. Food for thought?

Great presentation of a simple yet profound idea

[keith-tully64 · 9/10 · 4 October 2013]

Excellent documentary of an idea that seems so simple yet profound: when determining what we should consume, look to how we as humans have lived for the vast majority of the past 2 million years. When viewed through that context, the ideas of eating highly processed foods, eating only vegetables or eating large amounts of grain are the untested and somewhat radical approaches. Yet those diets are what we either consume or are told to consume. I wish the documentary would have explained in more detail that they recommend removing grains and sugars but replacing them with healthy fats. I thought the Primal Diet was about eating more protein but they seam to say that we should replace the sugar and grain calories with more fats including animal fats for optimal health. But otherwise, fast paced for a documentary, well presented information that should be eye-opening to all.

The stupidest film ever

[annastevens-86330 · 1/10 · 11 July 2020]

The guy is so confused. The info is all over the place! No consistent scientific evidence to support ANY of his point of views, of which he has many. What a waste of time!

Misguided and Flawed - Goes from one extreme to another extreme

[thornsthorns · 8/10 · 25 September 2012]

The entire documentary is all built on flawed logic, flawed assumptions and flawed conjectures. basic gist is, since evolution and history says that for 99.9% of human history we humans have been hunter gatherers, our diet should be like that. But that is a very flawed way of thinking. Just because our ancestors were meat eaters doesn't mean meat is better than vegetables for us. Our ancestors were not exactly optimizing their potential, just because they were living like animals. Evolution does not create perfect scenarios and perfect species of perfect health, that is a fallacy this documentary is based on. It assumes our ancestors were eating a diet, that they had perfectly evolved into. Which is not the case. While i agree with half the documentary (the half condemning modern diet of processed foods), the other half of it is a load of pile of false truths and false logics. I present here some of these flaws the documentary ignores. 1) Our ancestors no doubt starved many months, many weeks, many days of the year, through winter, when they could not find hunt food to the point where many no doubt died. This documentary completely ignores this fact when promoting this high meat diet theory. 2) Our ancestors also ate insects, larvae, and other unhealthy and disgusting things, at no point do they start promoting a diet of insects. Which again is another example of picking and choosing history. 3) Our ancestors also didn't bath or clean themselves at all. No one would say poor hygiene and living and eating like a wild dog is better for us, just because our ancestors did it for millions of years. So why use the same premise for dieting? 4) another example since our ancestors never exercised and only exerted themselves when hunting, optimal health means we should not exercise unless chasing a deer. Which they probably only did once a month for a few minutes and only in large groups. 5) historically human societies have been fishermen rather than hunters. This a fact the video ignores, as game food was not guaranteed whist fish from the ocean or rivers largely was. Thus most civilizations were situated on coastlines and near rivers. Ultimately the point is, our ancestors did not have an optimal best perfect diet, trying to mimic them is like trying to copy a C student in an exam, you are not going to better a better grade. This is the poor logic used in this DVD, which is flawed. If you look at native aborigine populations in south America, Australia who are following very much our ancestors diet, and look at the athletes from the Olympics, anyone with half a brain can tell that the athletes in the Olympics are healthier and better. Our ancestors also rarely lived beyond 40, average lifespan was probably around in the late 30's. so evolution hasn't engineered the paleo-primal diet to exactly keep our body ship shape beyond 40 (going by their own logic). So that's another flaw in using the logic of our ancestors diet is evolutionary wise the best for us. Frankly documentary is a load of baloney. But they are right in that the paleo-primal diet is a million times better than the modern processed sugar, salt, spices, oils artificial chemical diet we have in the 21st century. But they need to De-emphasise the meat intake, as our ancestors if anything like normal hunter gatherers would most likely have not had much meat in their diet as consistently as modern lifestyles or the paleo-primal diet likes to infer. As you can't exactly catch and cook a deer with a spear 3 times a day. Even lions eat only once a week in the wild, sometimes once a month periodically, and even starve when the herd migrates. As hunting eating food isn't exactly on the dot, breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner time like we have made nowadays. Saying completely no to wheat is a fallacy as no doubt our ancestors must have eaten wild grain, in order for them to become farmers of the stuff. So it was part of their diet, which documentary ignores.

Excellent documentary!

[gekejo1 · 10/10 · 8 August 2014]

Don't listen to the critics of this film, they have the "false" logic. This film gave great evidence with the people interviewed and background to understanding why what we eat is important to one's health based on historical evidence. Everyone should watch and learn. Also, as someone who is fit and eats healthy, I can testify that this type of diet is spot on. Let your own results be the truth. Don't listen to those who are against this logical and accurate approach to becoming healthy. Simply, follow what these individuals talk about and there will be all the evidence in the world that you have done the right thing. g-

Great documentary!

[michellelcalvert · 9/10 · 28 July 2013]

There are so many conflicting theories about diet that it makes sense to look back and see what humans ate and thrived on as they evolved. In recent decades there's been a lot of new theories with very little scientific research to support them, and at the same time, humans are getting fatter and sicker than ever before. Low-fat, high-carb, vegan, and other new diets all sound good, but there's no history of these diets ever being utilized by humans for any substantial amount of time. This film looks at the history of human diets and has some great concepts on what a healthy diet should be. The film touches on Weston Price's studies done in the 1930's, where Dr. Price was able to meet people who were raised on primal diets that had not yet been influenced by processed food. The results were quite surprising, and he published a book called 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration', which should be a must-read for every medical student.

wonderful documentary

[adamwyson · 10/10 · 3 February 2014]

I've watched a lot of documentaries on health and eating habits and can I just say what a relief it is to finally have one with actual scientists and doctors. I have always been a heavy meat eater and I personally know many vegetarians with much worse health than I. My doctors are always amazed at how healthy I am with little exercise and a diet which includes meat in every meal. I have always avoided sugars my whole life. It was never a personal decision, I just have never enjoyed deserts and candy. My wife thought I was so odd when she met me and found I don't enjoy desert after dinner. My friends wonder why I'm not a thousand pounds and attribute it to genes. Carnivore for life.

Well Researched! and High Production Quality

[yitzi · 9/10 · 15 February 2019]

If you set aside your programming of the last 30 years of what should be the western diet and allow yourself to be taught, you will see the clear logic of science showing through. Real science with double blind studies over a long term are totally lacking in the area of nutrition an diet. The modern western diet is based on opinion and very weak associational studies. This documentary uses real science and a rigorous review of the archaeology and anthropologic record to reveal the real diet of humans that permitted us to excel in obtaining high energy food which led to brain development setting us at the top of the food chain.