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Nutrition, Evolution,
and Having a Healthy Diet
by: Judith Schwader
Nutrition has everything to do with health. This isn’t
news, exactly, but looking around at the crazy information
on the market, one wonders if anyone actually makes the connection:
what you eat affects how you feel. It’s that simple.
Your health depends on the food choices you make in both the
short and long term.
Take a pill, and all you’ve done is treat a symptom.
Change your eating habits, and create a lasting change in
your well-being. There are so many approaches to eating, however,
and so much conflicting information that it’s come down
to this simple question: does whatever you’re eating
right now make sense?
Well, sense isn’t common, and it does depend on some
good information. So here is something to consider: what kind
of foods are humans evolved to eat? Cheetos? Don’t think
so. That’s a no-brainer, but what about some others
that we counted as healthy staples until recently, like bread
and pasta. Go way back in your imagination, to hunter gatherer
days – before agriculture and the obesity which followed
for the first time among humans – and consider what
would be part of our ancestors’ normal diet. If you’re
about to pop something into your mouth that wasn’t around
before agriculture, (a relatively recent development in human
history), then eat it knowing it’s not considered a
‘normal’ food by your body. Foods your body considers
‘normal’ contribute to your health, other foods
are either neutral or harmful. How simple is that?
A well-known exploration of this concept that certain foods
help our bodies thrive is Dr. Peter D’Adamo’s
book, “Eat Right 4 Your Type,” in which he bases
his lists of what to eat and avoid on blood type. D’Adamo
asserts that type O is the oldest type, and the newer A type
didn’t show up on the scene until agriculture. So, Os
should eat lots of meat and veg because that blood type doesn’t
know how to handle too much grain. Type As can eat grain,
but not dairy. Dairy is a category reserved as a ‘normal’
food only for the yet more recent human blood type, AB. (Maybe
we’ll evolve a new type that can handle Cheetos and
red licorice, my personal favorite abnormal foods).
D’Adamo supports his blood-type theory with all kinds
of careful research, and so what? Does it make sense that
humans should rely primarily on foods that occur naturally?
Absolutely. If you’re going to eat a grain like wheat
then, eat it whole, or don’t eat it at all, and don’t
eat much of it anyway because humans pretty much made wheat
up! I’m not going to take the, “Does it occur
naturally?” debate too far, because it’s time
to look at another researcher’s take on the food and
evolution connection.
Dr. Phillip Lipetz wrote “The Good Calorie Diet,”
a book for the weight loss market, but he also has supported
his theories with all kinds of careful research. His describes
how the human response to starvation that was developed during
the ice age carries on today. Ironic, isn’t it, that
the food available to us today - rich and sweet and abundant
- causes our bodies to behave as though starvation is at hand.
The short story for how this works is that up until the ice
age, humans ate whatever was readily available, like roots,
plants, fruit, and a little tasty carrion now and then. Along
came the ice ages, and those foods became scarce. Now humans
were forced to hunt, but it was dicey and the weapons were
primitive, so spans of time occured between kills. The result:
our ancestors evolved ways to make the most of the conversion
of excess blood sugar into stored nutrition in the form of
body fat. When they starved, they lived off stored fat.
Today’s diet mimics the ice age diet: high fat and
high protein, and our genetic programming says, “Uh
oh, we’re facing starvation again. Better store up some
fat.” Lipetz goes into convincing detail about food
combinations in his book. He describes some that cause the
creation of excess fat, such as butter on bread. More useful
are his combinations that actually inhibit fat formation,
like lean meat with most vegetables. In a society where obesity
and its attendant health issues are rampant, these food combinations
are helpful places to focus our attention. Yet the single
most useful bit to remember from his research is that foods
which cause our bodies to create excess fat all have one thing
in common: they weren’t part of our ancestors’
normal diet.
Armed with this overview, next time you’re about to
pop something in your mouth - whether your focus is health
or weight – you don’t need to have a bunch of
rules and whacky information in mind. Just use common sense.
Ask whether it’s a food that was around before the advent
of agriculture. If it was, go for it. If it wasn’t,
then consider that your body won’t consider the food
‘normal,’ and in both the long and short run,
that’s got health consequences.
© 2004 Judith Schwader
About The Author
Judith Schwader holds a Master's degree in Education, and
has written extensively on health. She has a background in
social science and addressing chronic health conditions through
nutrition and life style. Judith's articles appear in: http://QandAHealth.com,
and http://masteringyourtime.com.
This article may be reprinted in its entirety so long as
this paragraph and the authors credits remain intact.
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