Monthly Archives: August 2015

CHRIS: Carbohydrates are a part of the food pyramid, aren’t they?

JONCE: Yes they are. The USDA’s original food pyramid from 1992 had the people eat 6-11 servings of bread, cereal, rice and pasta. By far more than any other food group. And the reason why was not because the nutritionist really believed that eating that many carbs was healthy for the people. No, it was because the agriculture lobbyist came to Washington with loads of money, and ‘convinced’ the politicians to support that food pyramid. Albeit not having any clue about nutrition. Now if we trace back the obesity curve, we can see exactly how since then the obesity rate has risen to ‘epidemic proportions.’ And even though since then some ‘modifications’ have been done to the food pyramid, in most people’s minds, it remains that eating tons of carbs is the way to feed yourself.

CHRIS: Oh wow!

JONCE: The harm and damage that the USDA and its politicians have done to the consumer/people is immoral, if not even criminal. When one sells a product he will do whatever it takes to sell as much as possible of that product, after all it’s his livelihood. Well, in our case its grain. The more he sells, the wealthier he gets. Never mind that it is causing quite some harm to the people. But one might say “nobody is forcing the masses to eat all those processed carbs.” True, but the ‘carb industry’ is spending millions of dollars on advertising their ‘junk,’ making their product not only more attractive for our taste buds, but also for our eyes, counting on the gullibility of the consumers.
Let us define what grain is, “the seed of a food plant such as wheat, corn, rye etc. Grain has been around for about 10.000 years and in the scope of human evolution it is a speck of time. It is a food that has been cultivated by man. Compare that with meat and fat, which for one has been provided by nature, and two, has been around for as long as humans have been roaming the earth. Our ancestors’ main food source was meat and fat. Occasionally they would find some seasonal fruit and honey along their journey, but definitely not on a daily basis. And that was probably all they had regarding carbs/sugar. So for hundreds of thousands of years the human species were eating mainly meat and fat. And then approximately 10,000 years ago man discovered grain. The question then arises, has the human gene or more exact, the digestive system adapted to this ‘modern’ food in a rather short period of timeline? Well, the answer must be a ‘yes’, since such a vast amount of people are eating grain and its sub-products by the tons. But there is another question that is by far more important, and that is, have we had time to adapt sufficiently to make it a healthy food? I would argue the answer is NO!!

When ‘modern’ humans begun to cultivate and domesticate wild plants about 10 millenniums ago, they truly believed that their lives have become easier. After all it took less effort to plant crops, wait, and reap. Rather than going out in the wild searching for fruit and nuts or chasing a wild animal that could maybe kill you. Perhaps that was the case, although anthropologists and archeologists have evidence that hunter- gatherers had more leisure time than farmers. But that is not the subject of this thesis. What was the impact on the people’s health, that’s what I’m interested in. People/Farmers commenced to eat a high-carbohydrate diet, primarily consisting of grain, potatoes and rice. Nearly 70% of their food intake was made up of just that (to this day our nutrition consists of two thirds processed carbohydrates.) In contrast the hunter-gatherers diet was wild plants, roots, berries and meat. Not only did they have a more balanced nutrition, but more important, a significant higher protein consumption. A side note, Protein is the building block of our bodies. Protein is made up of amino acids, which are essential for life and health. How can we deduce and compare the health, vitality, and lifespan of the hunter-gatherer with the agricultural lifestyle? The answer is twofold, skeleton remains and paleopathology. A paleo pathologist is able to deduct the age, sex and weight.

Further, he can examine teeth for signs of malnutrition, and recognize scars left on bones by anemia, tuberculosis, leprosy, and other diseases. All these and other, for humans, detrimental data, were discovered by paleo pathologists. Among other sets of reasons why agriculture was bad for health, the one that I find of major importance for the purpose of this writing is, the hunter-gatherer enjoyed a varied diet, while early farmers obtained most of their food from a few starchy crops. They (farmers) gained cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition, (today just three high-carbohydrate plants – – wheat, rice and corn – – provide the bulk of the calories consumed by the human species, yet each one of them is deficient in certain vitamins and/or amino acids essential to life.)

As Jared Diamond described it “Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life in human history. In contrast, we are still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it is unclear whether we can solve it. If we illustrate human history by a 24 – hour clock, and one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time, and if the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers nearly the whole of the day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:45 p.m. we adopted agriculture.”

We have been living for the vast majority of our human existence as hunter-gatherers. We were healthy, strong, vital and powerful, and then came agriculture. With it all those mentioned attributes have for the most part vanished. But we are genetically still to this day the hunter-gatherer. Our genome has not been changed, and upon that fact we can again live a healthy, strong, vital and powerful life style.

By Izi Curtis