About Mike

My background as a chef added to my recent forays into adventuring has not only changed my whole relationship with food but has also triggered an enormous appetite for learning more about our evolutionary journey and the food that guided it.

I’ve got a really cool thing happening this year – it’s called The Human Diet Project!

Starting in September 2026 I will be diving into the three main human diets that we’ve evolved with over the last 2 million years. All with genetic testing, bloods, stool and any other tests I can get in there. I will be accompanied on the way by a supergroup of experts from many fields to predict and analyse the results of what I’m doing. The aim being to address and discuss the plethora of issues we have with our health and food system – changing climate, animal welfare, global population levels as well as trying to operate within the constraints of a capitalist world system.

I will be on each diet for three months starting with;

Hunter Gatherer – I will be talking with archaeologists, anthropologists, nutritionists and a whole host of others to determine what we would’ve been eating for the vast majority of the last 2 million years as we migrated our way around the planet. And of course I will be eating what I preach as well. What really interests me is what role our diet played in our development and also how close we can get to that original diet. We have changed the dietary & food landscape so much I’ll be asking what the effect of that change has had on our evolution. The second three-month diet will be;

Agriculture – we have changed the face of the planet through our farming systems which occurred over a prolonged stop-start process around 10,000 years ago. This led to a major change in our diet, giving us much higher levels of carbs and sugars and which also paved the way for society as we know it to develop, with all the attendant levels of hierarchy & bureaucracy we have now. During this period I will be attempting to farm emmer & einkorn wheat to make bread, grow legumes, raise sheep and pigs as well as a dairy cow, all using techniques from thousands of years ago as I try to understand the immensity of the shift into farming.

Industrial – in only the last few generations we have progressed through the most radical change in our collective diet in millions of years. For this diet I will be mirroring the average modern diet, so around 60% of my calories will come from processed food. This is the one I’m least looking forward to.

The final three-moth diet will be;

Hybrid – based on the results of the three diets the team of experts will try and select an optimum modern diet for me taking into consideration all the points raised above as well as what evolution seems to have intended for us. 

This project is going to provide a really fascinating snapshot of our evolutionary health and will raise awareness of the complex issues underlying a relatively simple premise.