John Durant

To understand human health we have to study our own species, the human animal. We start by looking at how we lived as hunter-gatherers on the African savannah.

The quest for a healthy human diet doesn’t end in the Paleolithic—but that’s the right place to start.

Yet carb-heavy grains are exactly what farmers feed to livestock to fatten them up as quickly and cheaply as possible. Let me repeat that, just for good measure: grains—the base of the USDA food pyramid for humans—are what American farmers use to fatten up their livestock.

Almost any change in diet that results in eating less industrial foods will improve one’s health. It doesn’t matter whether it’s due to veganism or Atkins—people who stop drinking soda will get healthier. This is a major reason that so many wacky diet programs work initially: they get people to avoid a similar set of industrial foods, such as white flour, refined sugar, and vegetable oils.

There’s no such thing as perfect—no perfect diet, no perfect exercise, no perfect lifestyle. Unconcerned with perfection, biohackers adopt smart rules of thumb that stand a decent chance of being more or less right (the 80/20 rule).

The challenge may seem daunting, but we can do what our ancestors did: take one small step after another until we arrive at a very different place. Risen apes or fallen angels, we walk tall with eyes forward—one foot firmly planted on the ground of what we are, the other reaching into the future of what we can become.

In general, avoid things that are made in a factory, contain lots of ingredients you can’t pronounce, and don’t spoil. Avoiding sugar, vegetable oils, and cereal grains will also preclude most industrial foods.