Eat like a caveman - new restaurant lets you do just that

By Antonia Lange Sep 1, 2011, 4:06 GMT

Berlin - Above the door hangs a deer's antlers, a slate tablet covered with meat skewers sits on a table and the fossilised remains of an animal hang on the wall while a candle flickers.

The ambience looks like the kitchen in Fred Flintstone's house and that's not far off the mark as the food that is cooked here in the Berlin restaurant Sauvage has a distinctly Stone Age character. The owners say their cooking can even help you lose weight.

'We only use ingredients that were available during the Stone Age,' says Boris Leite-Poco. Leite-Poco opened Sauvage two months ago in the district of Neukoelln together with his spouse Rodrigo.

Both men follow a diet that strictly adheres to what our prehistoric ancestors would have followed. Sugar, pasta, rice, potatoes and bread are taboo. Meat, fish, vegetables, berries and nuts are, however, on the menu. It's a Palaeolithic form of nutrition know as the Paleo Diet - or simply Stone Age eating.

'I eat a lot and still manage to lose weight,' says Leite-Poco. The 27-year-old has been following the Paleo Diet for two years. 'Since that time I've not been sick.'

Proponents of Stone Age food say the human body is genetically programmed for a prehistoric menu. Bread and milk became available much later to humans and therefore the body is less well able to digest them. The result is more weight and poorer health.

However, there are no mammoth steaks or dinosaur filets at Sauvage. The menu looks distinctly modern - leg of lamb in rosemary-ginger butter, egg-wrap with shallot-tomato sauce and nut-sesame cake are just a few of the items guests can choose from. Naturally dessert items are free of sugar and baking powder. The Paleo Diet is already well known in the US and singer Tom Jones is a follower.

The owners of Sauvage believe their restaurant is the first of its kind in Europe. The Prague restaurant Pravek (Stone Age) cooks its meals over an open fire in a cave-like atmosphere but potatoes and cheese are served. Leite-Poco says there is a restaurant in London that serves Palaeolithic meals but not exclusively so. Sauvage is the only business in Germany offering this type of menu.

Kawan Lotfi prepares crackers in Sauvage's kitchen using only vegetables as ingredients. The 26-year-old kitchen helper has changed his diet to that of Fred Flintstone. 'I used to have a problem not eating ice cream or sweet things,' he says. 'But now I no longer need to eat those very sweet things.'

But there are a few devices of the modern age that Lotfi cannot do without such as his microwave oven for cooking crackers while meals are cooked on an electric stove. 'We're not trying to imitate how prehistoric people used to cook but to eat as healthy as they did,' says Leite-Poco. 'Paleo is not a diet but a way of life.'

Dietitians, however, are sceptical about whether it is healthy to completely avoid every form of grain. 'Eating grains does not have to be negative thing per se,' says Alexander Stroehle from the University of Hanover.

Stroehle works at the university's Institute for Food Science and Human Nutrition and has researched the eating habits of our prehistoric forbears. He says the human body no longer has the same needs it had two million years ago.

'However, the Paleo Diet can be quite healthy viewed from the nutritional concentration aspect,' he says. 'But the rationale behind it is not plausible.' Stroehle says our ancestors looked upon food in a completely different way from us today: 'In the Stone Age humans did not want to lose weight.'