Neanderthin: Eat Like a Caveman to Achieve a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body

by Ray Audette, Troy Gilchrist, Michael R. Eades

A revolutionary diet guide describes how to lose weight and be healthier by following the diet that ancient people followed, using natural foods that can be found in nature, with nothing processed. Reprint.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nutrition

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 1999

Reviews

[Ash Moran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice, easy-to-read introduction to paleo nutrition. Straightforward, and grounded in common sense. Unreferenced though, which means that finding follow-up material is harder. But the author is someone who used paleo eating as a practical means to treat his own illness (diabetes and arthritis). The goal of this book is not to act as a scientific reference, but to describe in simple terms why we should eat paleo and how.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book, my main qualms are with the exercise section. His recommendations on that suck, and one of the main things I didn't like was that he included activities such as bird watching as exercise. If you consider bird watching an enjoyable activity, much less exercise, I guarantee you that literally every person you've ever known has hated your guts, because you fucking suck. Get a real hobby and go squat.

Other than that, pretty solid book. I still have a lot of reading to do on this subject, however.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like this book.

[Ward Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's Paleo. Very helpful. I suffer from Crohn's disease. The theory is that it is an immune system disease caused by our diet which changed since the agricultural revolution. Answer? Eat like a cave man/hunter-gatherer. EAT: Meat and fish, fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds, berries. DO NOT EAT: Grains, beans, potatoes, dairy, sugar. This is going to be hard for me. I love salt and sugar. Worth a try. I'm not doing it to slow weight, I'm doing it to stay out of the hospital.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for an anthropology class and found it an interesting read with information that actually does agree with the scientific proof of how humans evolved in their diets, and what foods actually harm, or regress, the human body.

[Jodi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought the 2013 edition of this book after listening to an interesting interview with the author online via the Underground Wellness website.

But this book was so disappointing. I regret buying it. I got so much more out of the interview. The points were made a lot more clearly and logically and more discussion was included about exactly which vegetables to avoid, the benefits of a very high calorie diet and a few other points.

I'm a big supporter of eating a diet that is around 60% healthy natural fats, and with adequate protein from meat and lowish carbs of probably below 60 or 70 grams a day - supplied by large amounts of green vegetables etc. That is what works best for me though I know some people have a higher carb tolerance/need.

The bare bones of the diet described in this book are solid. But the finer points could be debated a lot and some are a bit iffy. I'm not quite sure why there is such a huge focus on truly massive amounts of meat, and what the reason is for being quite so wary of reasonable serves of vegetables. The author even says that getting 5 serves a day of fruit and vegetables will be too hard probably and so not to even worry about it.

Eating a ton of meat 3 times a day instead of just an adequate and satisying amount makes little sense to me. The meat serves are so massive and the vegetable serves so small, I think it'd be a needlessly expensive and unpleasant way to eat. Broccoli and spinach and many lower carb vegetables are tasty! They go so well with a good meat dish and give you lots of nutrition. Meat is great too and SUPER-nutritious but it's not so tasty when overeaten. Why stress your kidneys so much for no reason? Why eat so much meat that your body will just turn the massive excess into glucose anyway? The book doesn't even mention this as an issue. Nor does it talk about how eating excess protein gives the body so much extra metabolic and detoxification work to do. It's quite incomplete.

Also not mentioned at all is the fact that some ill people such as those with M.S. etc. may do poorly on very low carb diets and need to eat around 60 grams a day to feel well. This has been explained well by Barry Groves in his low-carb diet books and also some others.

The inclusion of flax oil in this book is just crazy and goes against the authors own theory. There is also a ton of olive oil in the recipe section. Not very hunter and gatherer-ish and also most flax oils are rancid before you even get them home due to the oils being so unstable and often poorly processed and explosed to too much light and heat etc. Yet really good foods full of nutrients such as beetroot/beets are written off with no real explanation as to why. The book also doesn't promote bone broths and organ meats (as just about all the great hunter/gatherer nutrition books do) yet claims to be the healthiest diet there is.

This book is just so thin. If this were my first book on this type of diet I'd be very unconvinced to make dietary changes based on such thin evidence and logic you could drive trucks through in parts. Some of the scientific facts given are wrong too.

For anyone that is ill and wants good dietary advice you can get all the good parts of the diet explained here, minus the iffy bits and with a ton of better reasoning and references, in wonderful books by Nora Gedgaudas and also Dr Terry Wahls. Mark Sisson's book is also much better than this one and so is the book by Underground Wellness author Sean Croxton. They all run rings around this book in every possible way yet contain all the good parts and advice that is given here too.

The bare bones of what this book stands for are solid but I can't recommend this book unfortunately.

Jodi Bassett, The Hummingbirds' Foundation for M.E. (HFME) and Health, Healing & Hummingbirds (HHH)

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

I heard about this on a science podcast, in which it was mentioned somewhat divisively, and thought it would at least be an interesting read. Basically, it's one long not-very-well-written ad for the hunting industry. Ray Audette is the "official nutritionist" for the Ted Nugent Show, and that pretty much tells you all you need to know. He's a meat promoter. And that's fine, but it really seems like he's just making up crap as he goes along. Whatever sounds scientific and supportive of his argument gets in the book, but nothing else.
Co-author Troy Gilchrist is billed as Audette's assistant, and a massage therapist and personal fitness enthusiast. Obviously, he is well informed about a balanced diet. And probably chakras and ear candling and homeopathy, too.

Besides, it's just the Atkins Diet, except you're supposed to throttle your food with your own bear hands. To be fair, they do impress the importance of exercise, so that's good. I give them that.

But WHOA! Page 48: "All varieties of potatoes are excluded from the NeanderThin diet." WHAT?! Oh noes! Any diet that forbids potatoes is no friend of mine!

Ahhh... science.

Yeah, don't read this book. It's dumb. I just feel bad for whoever had the book before me and was so compelled by it that he highlighted the crap out of every page. I want to find him and shake him and tell him he doesn't need a diet, "neanderthin" or otherwise. Just eat less and move more!

However, there are recipes for Nut Milk, Nut Sushi and Nut Pizza... So, there's that.

[Niklas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A highly readable primer on the diet that evolution has tailor made for your body. This book is out of print but I found it at my Library and followed the recommendation for a month. Ray Audette was on a personal journey to heal from the "modern, prefab" diet. His research is our treasure. I Feel great and Lost some weight, and even though I'm not as strictly adhering to the books dietary guidelines, I know that this is the blueprint of how I'll eat for the rest of my life. Prefer this book to The Paleo Diet which is similar but not nearly as fun or groundbreaking as NeanderThin was back in the 70's. Our ancestors ate meat, so if you're a vegetarian this is probably not your book. :-)

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book during the month I decided to give up eating grains and refined sugar, and it was a good reinforcement. Easy to read and sensible. I'm not disciplined enough to follow a NeanderThin/Paleo diet all the time, but I can stick to a modified version (that allows dairy) most of the time. When I find that I've moved too far off the diet, I read another book and restrict my diet to get back on track.

[Mike Moskos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much more than a book on what to eat now; this is also a great history book about what we've eaten over the years. Not too many other books on food cover this topic as well.

While I generally agree with his pronouncements, I don't think he made the case for not eating/drinking dairy decisively, esp. if it is fermented dairy from raw/unpasteurized milk (think kefir, yogurt, raw cheeses, etc.).

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent guide to the Paleo Diet. I read it in the 90's and it is still one of my favorite books. If you like Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint you'll love this.

[Marty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring