Beyond the Paleolithic prescription: Authors’ reply to Commentary

Abstract

We would like to thank Drs. Muskiet and Carrera-Bastos for contributing to the interesting and ongoing debate about the Paleolithic diet. Drs. Muskiet and Carrera-Bastos raise questions about three main aspects of our recent paper: 1) our depiction of the research of proponents of the Paleolithic diet, 2) the extent to which epigenetics is a set of genetic mechanisms, and 3) the role of cultural transmission and social learning in shaping evolutionary pressures and human diets in the pre-agricultural past. Each of these issues is addressed below. Drs. Muskiet and Carrera-Bastos argue that none of the proponents of the Paleolithic diet support a single model claiming that evolution stopped after the agricultural revolution. Yet, a number of researchers quoted in our article, have, in fact, published research pointing toward human bodies as reflecting primarily Paleolithic adaptations in terms of diet.1,2 This research has been highly influential in shaping clinical applications based on evolutionary medicine. While the importance of Neolithic adaptations is acknowledged in more recent work,3 much of the mismatch hypothesis still relies on a Paleolithic default for explaining human eating behavior, to the exclusion of other mechanisms or lines of evidence. The issue here is not …