5 Things about Hadza Diet that Will Surprise You

Many folks, especially those in the carnivore community, have heard the evangelism of Carnivore MD @carnivoremd or Paul Saladino. Saladino has popularized some of the dietary philosophy and practices of the Hadza. However, after visiting the Hadza myself in an immersive experience, my own experiences somewhat conflict with Saladino’s—or, at least with his interpretation(s) of the experience. He undoubtedly cherry-picks the facts about the Hadza he chooses to share, and strategically chooses to omit other important details. While I won’t go into everything in-depth here, these are the five most surprising things that I discovered about the Hadza diet during my stay, and I imagine the surprise will resonate with many others who are familiar with Paul Saladino’s content—especially that relating to the Hadzabe tribe and other hunter-gatherers.

My own experience was enlightening, dietary philosophy and practices only being a small part. I am adapting both in my daily lifestyle as well as my overall life philosophy, and my own dietary intake has changed somewhat as a result—but that is for a later blog post!

1) MEATLESS MONTH

Meat is the favorite food of the Hadza, but only makes up about 25% of their total caloric intake. Ask Hadza what makes them happy, and they will tell you: “meat, honey, and water. If we have these, we are happy.” Meat is central to the Hadza diet and lifestyle; there can be no doubt of this. However, I was told by the Hadza (through an interpreter) that there is generally about a month-long period each year when the Hadza consume very little, if any, meat at all. They do not enjoy or like this period, but it is exists. I was told that during the rainy season, game can become scarce and difficult to hunt in Hadzaland near Lake Eyasi. The Hadza may stay in caves for shelter during this period, and hunting activities are minimally productive. They didn’t elaborate much on this time period, and it seemed like a time the Hadza didn’t enjoy reflecting on or thinking about. I was told anecdotally through a local Tanzanian interpreter that they could go an entire month during this period without succesful hunting, and therefore without meat.

After my trip, I began to seek out every modicum of information on the Hadza people that I could find (there is not much). This of course led me to Dr. Frank W. Marlowe’s book The Hadza Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania. Marlowe describes a season for a berry called undushipi (Hadzane) that is about a month long. The berries are so productive and abundant during this season, and game so scarce, that the Hadza live on berries only. However, I found this interesting to note, and tied it into the account I received from the Hadza as well—could the period described of living in caves during rainy season be the undushipi season? I imagine the connection is likely.

Describing the situation is perhaps best to do by quoting directly from Marlowe: “Berries comprise the largest share of the Hadza diet as measured by kilocalories…they totally dominate consumption every day they are available…[the Hadzabe] eat almost nothing but that one type of berry for two months…”

In any case, both Marlowe’s experience and my own brief time with the Hadza revealed that there is generally a month-long (or longer) period in which minimal meat is consumed. Funny how @carnivoremd never mentions this when he is making extrapolations from Hadzabe practice to “how we should eat.” This omission strikes me as being awfully convenient if you’re an advocate for a carnivore-based diet, and are using the Hadzabe as evidence for your case.

2) Organ meats are for men…mostly

The Hadza do eat the organs of a game animal immediately after harvest and they do seem to be prioritized. Whether it is for flavor (the Hadza, and indiginous cultures in general, have a tendency to enjoy strong flavors—often to the total opposition of an industrialized western palate) or for the health benefits conferred, my experience watching the Hadza hunt, butcher, cook, and eat game was that the organs (brain/head included) were prioritized. In the cases of smaller game such as genet cats, dikdik antelope, and bat-eared foxes, I watched the Hadza prepare the organ meats in an algorithmic way. First, they sharpen sticks into skewers. They then placed chunks of organ meats all along the skewer until it was crowned at the top with the head of the animal. These skewers were placed circumferentially around the fire, leaning over it, slow roasting and periodically turned like a manual rotisserie. These were always cooked and eaten immediately.

It is possible (and probable in my view) that these are cooked and eaten immediately for several reasons. While Saladino and Brian Johnson state this is because the organ meats are so highly valued, I think this is only part of the story. I do think it is obviously true the Hadza (and other indigidnous groups) highly value organ meat. However, I think there are practical reasons to consider as well, such as storing the meat. With large game and other leftover muscle meats, the Hadza will cut it into strips and then hang it in sun-dappled tree limbs to dry. They’ll pull strips off the tree and cook them on an as-needed basis. Obviously, this would be extremely difficult to do with offal, and I think they’d spoil more quickly than muscle meats—especially items like liver, brain, and the softer tissues.

There is an interesting ceremony and correlating diet and set of taboos which deeply pertains to consuming organ meats among the Hadza. This relates to Epeme, a complex cultural concept and phenomenon. Here is Marlowe’s account: “Epeme refers to the whole complex of manhood and hunting, but also to the new moon and the relationship between the sexes (Woodburn, 1964). Fully adult men are referred to as epeme men….when [he] kills a big-game animal…”

There is a set of complex rules and rituals relating to epeme, but the aspect that I find striking enough to write about is the gender segregation in regards to meat consumption. Women are not allowed to consume epeme meat, which includes specific cuts from the following species: warthog, impala, greater kudu, eland, giraffe, buffalo, zebra, wildebeest, lion, rhino, hippopotamus, and elephant (Marlowe). The specified cuts not allowed to be shared with women, children, or non-epeme men include kidney, lung, heart, neck up to and including the tongue, genitals, upper chest, and some of the warthog flank.

However it came to be, it is the case that organ meats, especially and specifically the organs of big game animals (with the exception of liver), are only eaten by a specific class of men in the tribe. It is a deep taboo for anyone who is not epeme to consume epeme meat. I found this extremely surprising—what about the women’s health, I wondered? Surely, they desire to eat these and would benefit from them as well? I did see women eat livers of hunted animals during my stay with the Hadza, but was ignorant to the complexities of epeme at the time and didn’t observe astutely enough as to whether they ate other organ meats.

Marlowe’s book notes that women and children will consume turtles and turtle meat, while this is taboo for men. He hypothesizes that this is a cultural compensation for the epeme taboo. It may also be a nutritional compensation as well—I imagine the women and children consume the organ meats from the turtle, and I would be keenly interested in a nutritional assay and analysis of turtle meat and its organ meats. Perhaps it makes up for lack of organ meats in the women’s/children’s diets. If it does not, it piques my own interest even further into how the women survive and thrive on a hunter-gatherer diet with no organ meats.

In any case, I found it fascinating that women and children are only really allowed to consume the livers of animals, but almost all other organ meats are off-limits for them. My own experience was that a few folks in the band I stayed with had favorite bits, and generally had their way with them—Sokolow, the chief, seemed to have a taste for eyeballs and would routinely pick these out of roasting skulls. A prepubescent boy (although something of a man, as he hunted with us daily) seemed to favor the brains of animals. I watched him suck and scrape the brain from a vervet monkey skull for several minutes with relish, and then watched him do it again the next day. So, it would seem that men reserve these highly nutrient-dense items for themselves, with the exception of liver—I imagine the women would not be willing to deal with liver being added to the list, as I hypothesize it is necessary for health reasons.

3) Tubers are least desirable

There are several species of tuber in Hadzaland, and the Hadza eat all of them, all year long (Marlowe). They range between sweetness, fiber content, water content, and flavor. The clear favorite is the sweetest variety that is relatively low on fiber. However, while sweet potatoes and other tubers are often touted for a plethora of benefits in the industrialized west, it is interesting to note that the Hadza really don’t enjoy or otherwise prioritize these as a food source. They are essentially a fall-back food, a regular and monotonous staple. We had to request that a Hadza show us the tuber digging/eating multiple times before they sort of reluctantly took us to the tuber patch. In the end, they dug up several varieties that we ate together, and even the Hadza ended up consuming them. However, I believe that had we not requested them to show us these, we would not have seen the Hadza consume any tubers at all. The Hadza were very successful hunting during my immersion, and had a bit of different honey types while I was there as well (they know of 7 total bee species and corresponding honey types in Hadzaland, and I got to sample the medicinal kununua and the ubiquitous favorite from stinging bees, baalako). In other words—they couldn’t care less about tubers at the time! These cross-fit favorites are really considered a mediocre survival food by the Hadza and are eaten with little gusto, although it is probably worth noting that they are eaten somewhat frequently, generally speaking.

4) so. much. fiber!

Another convenient omission by Paul Saladino and the Carnivore community is that the Hadza consume high quantities of fiber. This is certainly not intentional, and seems to be almost a byproduct of their life style and diet. Again, the Hadza favor meat as their food source and will certainly choose it over other foods. However, because meat is inherently difficult to acquire, the Hadza diet is relatively rich in a variety of non-animal foods. The other components of their diet are, almost universally, high-fiber foods. These would include the aforementioned tubers (some of which are so fibrous in fact that the fibrous wad must be chewed and spat out, which coincides both with my own experience as well as Marlowe’s account). Also included would be, another surprise, honey! In the west, we think of honey as the golden goopy goodness we get in a glass jar—virtually all sugar, and no fiber to speak of. However, when the Hadza refer to “honey,” they are referring to a much less refined product. Honey in Hadzaland is, in part, the golden-goopy-goodness—however, it is also so much more. The Hadza raid bee hives, and eat the hives themselves. The hive is composed of honeycomb and waxes, full of honey, bee larvae, bees, and potentially even bits of wood fiber. While most of the comb and wax is spat out, I cannot help but assume this Hadza “honey” has some fiber and other prebiotic and probiotic components present as well.

Another food I saw Hadza eating commonly was a wild cucumber/melon. While technically a melon, it tastes much more like a cucumber, and has the crunchy texture of one. The Hadza do not carry water with them, and plants like this one make that much easier to accomplish. Hadza find cucumbers like this on their hunts, and will stop to slice and eat them—both an energizing snack as well as high in water, electrolytes, and—fiber! They are significantly fibrous, moreso than a cucumber.

There are several berry species in Hadzland, as we have already somewhat covered. They are not like domesticated berries however—they have a very thick seed and pulp which is only lightly surrounded by actual fruit material. Thus, one really needs to eat a lot of berries to feel satiated or consume significant calories. These berries, which are already abnormally fibrous, are consumed in massive quantities, especially by children. And, as mentioned previously, the Hadza can go for a month or two per year where berries are almost the only food source available

Finally, and certainly not last, is baobab. Baobab trees produce massive quantities of fruit, which of course the Hadza eat abundantly. The fruit consists of seeds, which are surrounded by a sweet and extremely fibrous pulp. This pulp is eaten by Hadza from the time they are extremely young, and it is an extremely fibrous material. So fibrous in fact it can be a pain to eat for a westerner accustomed to soft, domesticated fruit species. The Hadza also cook and eat the seeds from the Baobab, which are rich in certain fats as well as, you guessed it, fiber.

In any case, it is clear that Hadza have an abundance of fiber-rich foods in their diet at any and all given times. Tubers, baobab fruits, wild cucumbers/melons, berries, and even honey contribute to an extremely high-fiber diet.

5) source(S) of robust microbiome

The Hadza are world-renowned for their diversity and richness of microbiome. According to a recent study in Nature (titled “Hunter-gatherer lifestyle fosters thriving gut microbiome”) the average Hadza has about 700 species in their microbiome at any given time, and around 800 total have been found among the Hadza. Compared to a modern and industrialized Californian, who averages closer to 175 species. The Hadza diet is often touted as the cause for this. Certainly, especially with their heavy fiber intake, there is a powerful argument to be made for this, and I am sure is a part of the story. However, my own observations offer additional data that I believe must be considered when hypothesizing about the Hadza microbiome.

Where does this robust biome come from? Is it really all the prebiotic foods and lack of antibiotic use?

Again, I do think that this is part of the story. However, the lack of modern hygienic practices is certainly part of the case as well. During my stay with the Hadza, the extent of bathing I witnessed was washing one’s face with water in the morning. Every Hadzabe, at least the men, carries a knife on him. This knife is a sort of all-purpose tool—they are used for crafting bows&arrows, skinning&butchering game, fork-knife-spoon-in-one, and virtually any/everything else you could imagine. As such, their knives go many places, and often are going in/out of Hadza mouths. For example, I watched one Hadza skin an animal, cut some meat into strips, then wiped the bloody blade onto a nearby dog (literally every Hadza dog has open wounds from baboon fighting and I imagine has never been washed) before using the same blade to free a piece of cooking meat from a skewer. This was then placed in the Hadza’s mouth, as one does. I imagine that regular exposures like this can only enhance the diversity and robustness of the typical Hadza’s microbiome. Obviously, most of us are not exposed to things like this on a daily, or even once-in-a-lifetime basis!

Key Takeaways & Conclusions

• People on the internet, especially handsome influencers, do not always have your best interest in mind, and oftentimes will twist facts and cherry-pick them for their own purposes and agendas. The reader can make up their own mind about Paul Saladino, the carnivore community, and how they may or may not have used the Hadza in this way.

• Despite being touted as champions of the Carnivore community and living proof our ancestors were primarily carnivore, the Hadza diet and lifestyle actually speaks to the contrary—they have extremely varied diets, and the bulk of their caloric intake is composed of berries. They probably value meat so highly, because it is a scarcity.

• Organ meats are primarily reserved for men, and women really don’t eat much liver or other organ meat.

• Tubers are eaten frequently and commonly, but are not a favorite of any Hadza by any stretch

• Almost all foods eaten by Hadza are abnormally rich in fiber, with the exception of meat. Aside from meat, virtually every other dietary component is rich in fiber, antioxidants, and/or other prebiotic or probiotic properties.

• The Hadza (Hadzabe) tribe is world-renowned for its robust and diverse microbiome. This is continuously being studied—however, the source of their microbiotic richness is likely not from food alone, and I hypothesize many lifestyle factors must be considered as well