What Did Hunter-Gatherers Really Eat?

Nutrition Science

Jul 15

Spoiler: It Wasn’t Grains, Almonds, or Bacon

For decades, the public has been sold a fantasy version of the “paleo diet.” Flip through a popular paleo cookbook and you’ll see heaping plates of ribeyes, piles of nuts, and endless “grain-free” breads made with almond flour. This glossy picture has almost nothing to do with what our ancestors actually ate. If you want the truth about human metabolism and ancestral nutrition, you have to step away from modern reconstructions and look at the real evidence from living hunter-gatherers, primate biology, and archaeology. The reality is both surprising and liberating: our ancestors weren’t keto, and they weren’t scarfing down handfuls of almonds. They were carb-powered primates who lived on honey, fruit, roots, and modest amounts of animal food—with very little fat.

Grains and Nuts: Modern Myths About Ancient Foods

Let’s start with what they didn’t eat. The idea that hunter-gatherers survived on wild grains is mostly projection. Wild grains existed, but they were small, bitter, and packed with antinutrients. They required extensive processing—pounding, grinding, soaking—to yield meaningful calories. Grinding stones have been found in the archaeological record, but this proves only that early humans could process grains, not that they were staples. At best, grains were fallback foods in times of scarcity, not everyday fare. Agriculture only made grains truly accessible by breeding them into larger, sweeter, less toxic varieties.

Nuts are another modern misconception. Today’s almonds, walnuts, and cashews are heavily domesticated, bred to be palatable and high-yield. Wild versions were often bitter and sometimes toxic. While some groups consumed nuts like mongongo or acorns, they did so seasonally and only after elaborate detoxification steps like soaking or leaching. They were never daily staples, and they certainly weren’t the PUFA-laden snacks that line modern supermarket shelves. To imagine the Hadza walking around with almond milk lattes is pure fantasy.

The Real Building Blocks of the Human Diet

So if not grains and nuts, what did hunter-gatherers rely on? Ethnographic evidence, especially from the Hadza of Tanzania, paints a very different picture. Their diet revolves around five food categories: honey, fruit, tubers, baobab, and meat. Of these, honey and tubers are particularly central. Honey is the single most prized food of the Hadza, sometimes making up 15–20 percent of total calories. Men will climb dangerous heights to raid hives, bringing back combs dripping with sugar and bee larvae. Tubers, on the other hand, are the fallback food—the reliable starch that sustains the group through lean seasons.

Fruit and berries round out their plant staples. These wild fruits are not the oversized candy bombs you find in today’s grocery stores; they are smaller, denser, and typically higher in protein and minerals. Baobab fruit pulp and seeds provide important minerals, with the seeds being one of the few significant fat sources in the Hadza diet. Meat does play a role, but it is irregular and opportunistic—sometimes abundant, sometimes absent for days. And even when consumed, much of the meat is lean.

Taken together, the Hadza diet is overwhelmingly carbohydrate-based, with roughly two-thirds of energy coming from starches and sugars, around 15–20 percent from protein, and only about 10–15 percent from fat. This matches estimates from other indigenous groups like the Kitavans of Papua New Guinea, whose diet is nearly 70 percent carbohydrates from tubers and fruit, with very little fat. It’s also strikingly similar to the Okinawan diet—85 percent carbohydrate, mostly from sweet potatoes—which produced some of the longest-lived people on earth.

Humans Are Carbohydrate-Burning Primates

The deeper reason for this macronutrient pattern is evolutionary. Humans are primates, and primates are frugivores. In the wild, fruits make up the bulk of the diet for many monkeys and apes. Studies of wild fruit composition show that they are low in fat—on the order of just five percent by dry weight—while being rich in carbohydrates and fiber. Even chimpanzees, our closest relatives, consume meat in tiny amounts, often less than two percent of total calories. Our digestive systems, teeth, and metabolism all reflect this frugivorous heritage.

In fact, what sets humans apart is not that we abandoned fruit and starches, but that we learned to cook tubers and roots, unlocking massive amounts of digestible carbohydrate. Richard Wrangham, the primatologist who pioneered the “cooking hypothesis,” has shown that the ability to process starches with heat may have been the critical turning point in human brain evolution. Carbs, not fat, powered the expansion of our energy-hungry brains.

The Danger of the “Swampland” Diet

If ancestral diets were so carb-heavy, how did fat become glorified in the modern paleo and keto movements? The confusion stems from conflating occasional fat-rich foods (like baobab seeds or fatty game meat) with the foundation of the diet. In truth, most hunter-gatherers consumed fat sparingly. When you look across cultures—from the Hadza to the Kitavans to the Okinawans—fat intake hovers around 10 to 20 percent of calories, rarely more.

Contrast this with the modern American diet, which is roughly 40 percent fat—half of it from industrial seed oils that were never part of our evolutionary environment. When fat is layered on top of abundant carbs, you get the “metabolic swampland”: a dangerous mix that drives insulin resistance, obesity, and chronic disease. Our ancestors never lived in this swampland. Their diets were either carb-based and low in fat, or in rare cases, fat-based and seasonal (such as Inuit relying on blubber during certain times of the year). But never both at once, and never with seed oils.

Carbs as Metabolic Medicine

The implications for modern health are profound. Carbohydrates are not the enemy—they are essential for thyroid function, sex hormone balance, and metabolic rate. The conversion of T4 to active T3, the hormone that sets metabolic speed, depends on glucose availability. Progesterone production also requires adequate carbohydrate supply, which is why carb restriction often disrupts menstrual cycles. Even body temperature, a reliable marker of metabolic health, drops when carbs are insufficient.

This explains why people transitioning to pro-metabolic, high-carb, low-fat diets often feel warmer, more energetic, and hormonally balanced. It also explains why groups like the Hadza, Kitavans, and Okinawans remain lean and free of chronic disease despite consuming far more sugar and starch than the average American dares to imagine. The difference is not the presence of carbs but the absence of excessive fat, especially polyunsaturated fat.

Rethinking “Paleo”

So what did hunter-gatherers really eat? They ate honey, fruit, roots, lean meat, and the occasional fatty seed or animal organ. They did not eat large quantities of grains, nuts, or dairy. They did not eat seed oils, processed foods, or butter-drenched ribeyes. Most importantly, they did not eat high-fat, high-carb hybrid diets that suffocate the metabolism.

Our true ancestral blueprint is high-carb, moderate-protein, and low-fat. It is the diet of primates, the diet of the Hadza, the diet of the Kitavans and Okinawans, and the diet that keeps the thyroid and metabolism humming. Carbs are not just safe—they are essential. And the sooner we stop fearing sugar and start respecting the frugivorous design of our species, the sooner we can reclaim the metabolic resilience our ancestors enjoyed.