Note: This is an older study — one that most people don’t know about but should.

Change the diet and see striking improvements in virtually every measure of health for people with diabetes in just seven weeks? That’s exactly what happened for ten middle-aged, overweight, diabetic Australian Aborigines in 1982.

All ten of them had developed type 2 diabetes after leaving the bush where they had lived some years before and abandoning their traditional diet. Their diet in an urban area of Australia consisted mainly of flour, sugar, rice, carbonated drinks, beer, port, powdered milk, cheap fatty meat, and potatoes.

For a research experiment, the Aborigines agreed to return to their traditional homeland, and eat the way they did before, hunting and gathering foods. During that seven-week period of time, their diet consisted of seafood, along with birds, kangaroo and the fatty larvae of a local insect (during the time they were on the coast). They moved to a more inland location and ate freshwater fish and shellfish, turtle, crocodile, birds, kangaroo, yams, figs, bush honey, and other plant foods.

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Some people simply like to enjoy the visual, sensual experience of watching my Food Slide Show without explanation. (It’s best to view the slide show with a high-speed connection.) Others want to know more specifics about the foods in the slide show. So, for those of you who want to know the details, here are the foods in the order they appear:

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Eating a Stone-Age-type diet with no grain products is considerably more effective at lowering blood sugar levels and reducing waist sizes than the often-recommended Mediterranean diet that contains whole-grain foods, according to a study by Staffan Lindeberg, MD, PhD, and his colleagues at Lund University in Sweden.

In the study, the researchers asked 14 patients to consume an “ancient” (Paleolithic or Stone-Age) diet with lean meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, eggs, and nuts, but no grains or dairy products. Fifteen other patients were asked to follow a Mediterranean-like diet that included some of the above foods along with whole-grain foods and low-fat dairy products. Both groups of the patients had serious heart disease, plus either type 2 diabetes or a less severe form of glucose intolerance.

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