By Marie Dufour, RD. The human body has not evolved to process the foods currently been fed to its organs. Result? Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and shortened life expectancy.
It’s not a question of whether we’ve been created by a Higher Being or have evolved from primary life forms. Whichever way we have appeared on this planet, we have slowly evolved to the life form we are today. Over millions of years (or hundreds of thousands, or thousands), we have gradually adapted to our food environment. We have lived off of the products of the earth in the most natural ways. We’ve been hunters and gatherers first, then farmers. But the industrial revolution has also brought a nutrition and health chaos. I hinted at this concept yesterday in Meal Hierarchy but came across a medical news report this morning that I thought worth investigating.
Just released, a 7-year study of the 9,000-strong Tsimane tribe in the Bolivian Amazon reports the absence of vascular disease and heart attack. The main killers in this population are infectious and parasitic diseases. The Tsimane have high levels of C-reactive protein, which is a marker of inflammation used in the US to predict heart disease. Although inflammation is prevalent (2/3 of the population have intestinal worms), peripheral vascular disease is virtually unknown.
Which brings us back to diet and lifestyle. The Tsimane live a very traditional lifestyle. They fish, hunt, gather, cultivate the soil, live in family groups and have little contact with the modern world. This tribe in the heart of the Bolivian Amazon lives the way our body is designed for: limited intake of non-processed foods*.
The human body is just not made to deal with the high-calorie, high-fat, high-sugar and increasingly high-protein regimen we are putting it through. Perhaps in few hundred years it will have adapted to this regimen. But for now, it has not. The change has been too sudden. The result is devastating to our specie:
Our children’s generation will have a shorter lifespan than ours.
We need to make a conscious and concerted effort to make what I will call “regressive food choices.” Select fruits and vegetables, whole grains, seeds and nuts as our nutrition base, with a mix of non-processed meats and fish, organic dairy… and teach our children and grandchildren to do so.
Let’s go back to the more primitive “us”. Regressive Food Choices: it’s a wild thing.
* “Non-processed foods” doesn’t mean “raw food.” It means foodstuff that has not been denaturated through industrial processing.
Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/160425.php
By Marie Dufour, RD. The human body has not evolved to process the foods currently been fed to its organs. Result? Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and shortened life expectancy.
It’s not a question of whether we’ve been created by a Higher Being or have evolved from primary life forms. Whichever way we have appeared on this planet, we have slowly evolved to the life form we are today. Over millions of years (or hundreds of thousands, or thousands), we have gradually adapted to our food environment. We have lived off of the products of the earth in the most natural ways. We’ve been hunters and gatherers first, then farmers. But the industrial revolution has also brought a nutrition and health chaos. I hinted at this concept yesterday in Meal Hierarchy but came across a medical news report this morning that I thought worth investigating.
Just released, a 7-year study of the 9,000-strong Tsimane tribe in the Bolivian Amazon reports the absence of vascular disease and heart attack. The main killers in this population are infectious and parasitic diseases. The Tsimane have high levels of C-reactive protein, which is a marker of inflammation used in the US to predict heart disease. Although inflammation is prevalent (2/3 of the population have intestinal worms), peripheral vascular disease is virtually unknown.
Which brings us back to diet and lifestyle. The Tsimane live a very traditional lifestyle. They fish, hunt, gather, cultivate the soil, live in family groups and have little contact with the modern world. This tribe in the heart of the Bolivian Amazon lives the way our body is designed for: limited intake of non-processed foods*.
The human body is just not made to deal with the high-calorie, high-fat, high-sugar and increasingly high-protein regimen we are putting it through. Perhaps in few hundred years it will have adapted to this regimen. But for now, it has not. The change has been too sudden. The result is devastating to our specie:
Our children’s generation will have a shorter lifespan than ours.
We need to make a conscious and concerted effort to make what I will call “regressive food choices.” Select fruits and vegetables, whole grains, seeds and nuts as our nutrition base, with a mix of non-processed meats and fish, organic dairy… and teach our children and grandchildren to do so.
Let’s go back to the more primitive “us”. Regressive Food Choices: it’s a wild thing.
* “Non-processed foods” doesn’t mean “raw food.” It means foodstuff that has not been denaturated through industrial processing.
Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/160425.php