Nutritional Anthropology

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Chapter 3
How We Eat and Its Consequences 

In this chapter, we will examine the history of the current food supply using the new food groups defined in chapter 2. We will indicate in general terms the consequences of accepting these foods into the diet. There are some surprises: many foods that we think of as being traditional and acceptable are in fact recent and sometimes harmful. Many foods, although newcomers to the human diet, are perfectly acceptable and in conformity with the Savanna Model. To improve our health, we have to confront some incorrect yet ingrained ideas about how we should be feeding ourselves.

 GRAINS GROUP: BREAD, RICE, AND PASTA
 Wherever we look, we find that farming was initially based on the cultivation of grains of some sort. The reason was simple: it was possible to grow, harvest, and store grains. Grains were the first major new food to enter the food supply since the origins of the human species. None of the world’s major civilizations could have gotten started without them. It is not surprising, therefore, that we think of grains as a normal, even essential part of our food supply. We are taught by our parents and teachers at an early age that eating grains helps build our bodies. This accepted belief has led most government authorities to give farmers incentives to grow this crop and to recommend grains as the staple (principle component) of their population’s nutrition. But such advice is mistaken, even for unrefined grains
. Nature has equipped many creatures to eat grains. For example, the chicken has a hard, ridged palate to husk the seed and a powerful, muscular gizzard to grind the grain into flour. It even swallows gravel to help the grinding process. However, nature did not so equip humans. Let us look at the processing required to turn grains into something that will feed us. The hard, outer husk of the grain is inedible and difficult to remove just by chewing, so the first farmers had to think up new mechanical techniques to achieve what nature alone could not provide. First, they had to split the edible part of the grain (“wheat”) from the inedible husk (“chaff”) by a process known as threshing. They did this with a flail (two long rods joined by a leather thong) and beat the

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wheat until the grains were separated from the chaff. It took a man one day to thresh the amount of wheat that grows on about 100 square yards. Second, the wheat is “winnowed” (separated from the chaff) by tossing the mixture of wheat and chaff into the air; the wind then blows away the lighter chaff. Even then, the food processing is not finished: humans do not have teeth designed to chew the grain, so the farmers had to find mechanical ways to break down the seeds into something the body can handle. The solution is grindstones: with a lot of physical effort, they could mill the grain into a coarse or fine powder called flour. Finally, nature did not equip the human body to digest flour in its raw state. Real grain eaters, like chickens, have special enzymes for the digestion of raw flour. Their pancreas, the chief organ for secreting starch-digesting enzymes, has several ducts, (1) while the human pancreas has only one.

 The only way the human digestive system can handle flour is by cooking it first. Those first farmers had to take the flour, make it into patties, and roast them in the embers of a fire. In this way, humans were already moving from a natural diet to one based on a rudimentary technology. Rudimentary, yet quite impractical for the average hunter-gatherer. In making these changes, those first farmers were smart enough to grow foods that tasted good and provided a level of nourishment. However, although these new foods filled their stomachs, they were not necessarily helpful to their general health

Those early farmers were eating flour cooked without yeast—in other words, unleavened bread. It took another 5,000 years before someone in the Egyptian civilization discovered the use of yeast to “raise” bread and give it a more agreeable texture. Modern breads still owe their basic recipe to an inventive Egyptian baker who lived around 4500 B.C.


The Problems with Eating Grains
Grains, as a class of food, were never part of our ancestral diet. We are speaking of all types of grains—wheat, rye, rice, barley, oats, quinoa, and so on—and all forms of these grains, including bread, pastry, breakfast cereals, pasta, pizza, oatmeal, and cookies. Consumption of all these grains is linked to a range of 

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conditions such as heart disease, high cholesterol, cancers, osteoporosis, obesity, depressed immune system, premature aging, and diabetes. There is a common thread to some of these conditions: they are, in part, provoked by abnormal surges in blood sugar. These surges in turn disrupt hormones that control other processes, such as bone building, immune function, cell renewal, and cholesterol control.

Grain consumption leads to micronutrient deficiency. Even whole grains have poor concentrations of the multitude of these vital substances that are essential to human health: vitamins, minerals, carotenes, flavonoids, and many more. Grains are basically bulk fillers that displace more nutritious foods from the diet. The situation is even worse with refined grains, because with mechanization, the millers strip out the most nutritious part of the grain. Now we know why governments try to compensate for this shortfall by insisting on the “fortification” of breakfast cereals and many other grain products. Of course, these efforts are only a crude and inadequate substitute for the real thing—the marvelous cocktail of thousands of compounds working together as a team, which are provided by plants conforming to the Savanna Model

From anthropological evidence, we know that the earliest farmers suffered a sharply reduced quality of life: reduction of stature, (2) increase in infant deaths, (3) reduction of life span, (4) increase in infectious diseases, (5) increase in anemia, (6) diseased bones, (7) and tooth decay. (8) Today, we can also link grain consumption to many other conditions that cannot be preserved in the archaeological record, including brain disorders, such as autism, (9) schizophrenia, (10) and epilepsy, (11) and immune system disorders, such as multiple sclerosis, (12) rheumatoid arthritis, (13) eczema, (14) and allergies. There is even a common occupational ailment in the baking industry, “baker’s asthma,” a debilitating allergic reaction to cereal flours. We are only recently beginning to discover a host of microscopic substances, known as antinutrients, that are common in grains and are secretly gnawing at the foundations of our health in many unsuspected ways.

Grains are also linked to colon disorders, including irritable bowel, colitis, colon cancer, and celiac disease. Full-blown celiac disease has symptoms of diarrhea, depression, vitamin deficiency, mineral deficiency, epilepsy, stunted  

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growth, and osteoporosis. These conditions had been observed for centuries. It is astounding to think that it was only in the 1960s that a substance in grains known as gluten was found to be the cause.

Gluten is more properly called “the gluten complex,” because it is not a single compound but a cocktail of many similar proteins. The human system is particularly irritated by the cocktail found in wheat, followed by rye, barley, and oats. However, in Asia, sensitivity to the gluten cocktail found in rice is also known. Indeed, all grains contain gluten in some form or another and all of them cause trouble in the human system

VEGETABLES AND SALADS
 “Plant food” or vegetation has been the major component of the human food supply since our origins. Some creatures, like our cousin the gorilla, are designed to eat tough vegetation like twigs, bark, stringy leaves, and fibrous stalks. However, humans are not able to digest these plant parts. Moreover, our ancestors did not cook their plant food either, so they focused on the young and succulent plant parts. When we think of vegetables, we do not think of them as a botanist does, as distinct parts of a plant with different functions. However, each part has its own nutritional profile and a role to play in our diet. Even today, we eat from a wide variety of plant parts, sometimes raw in salads and sometimes cooked

Above ground, the edible part can be the stem, bud, leafstalk, leaf, bean pod, or the immature flower. In addition, there are some fruits, such as the avocado and tomato, which are included in the vegetable category. Indeed, most people think of them and use them as vegetables, so they are surprised to hear that, botanically, avocado and tomato are fruits. A large percentage of our ancestors’ food supply came from vegetation that was levered out of the ground with a digging stick. Today, we still eat many foods that grow underground— roots, tubers, bulbs, and corms (solid bulbs)

Most of the vegetables we use today have been known since ancient times. Merchants, traders, and empire builders spread them around the Old World. The Romans in particular moved plants around their territories wherever they would flourish. Later, the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and British spread vegetables that they found with the Inca, Aztec, and Maya, to the rest of the world

During all this time, gardeners were hybridizing and “improving” the species, so that it is often uncertain just what the original, wild species was like. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) does not subdivide its Vegetable Group: they classify french fries and ketchup as vegetables just like lettuce and broccoli. As this example shows, it does indeed make a difference just what kind of vegetable we are eating—not all “vegetables” conform to the type of plant food to which we are naturally adapted. It is also true that our Pleistocene ancestors in East Africa would not be familiar with a single vegetable

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species in our present food supply. For reasons that will become clear later, we divided vegetables into two new groups, “starchy” vegetables and non-starchy vegetables

Starchy Vegetables
 Certain plants have evolved the ability to store food during times of plenty to see them through times of hardship. Some of them store the food in the form of starch. In most cases, the roots are pressed into service as storage organs. Examples are Old World vegetables such as beets from southern Europe, parsnips from temperate Europe, and carrots from Afghanistan. An aboveground example is the chestnut. This might come as a surprise, for the chestnut is usually lumped in with all the other tree-nuts. However tree-nuts typically are rich in oil (around 50%), rich in protein (up to 25%), and low in starch. The chestnut is very starchy and very low in protein and oils (both around 1.5%). Its nutrient profile is like other starchy vegetables and we therefore class it as such

However, it is a tuber from the New World that has relegated all Old World starchy root vegetables to minor players—the potato. The Spanish conquistadors first brought it back to Europe from Incan Peru in the 16th century. A relative of the tomato plant, it was a small, wrinkled tuber, rather like a walnut

For a long time, Europeans did not know what to do with it; some farmers grew it to fatten their pigs. Then, in the 1800s, the British blockaded France during its war against Napoleon. With their regular foods in short supply, the French developed ways to incorporate potatoes into their daily diet

Potatoes are not even edible in their raw state, as the human digestive system can only cope with them if they are cooked—they require processing. So, it is only in the last 200 years that the potato entered the diet. But its success was immediate, widespread, and rapid. It has relegated every other root vegetable to the sidelines. However, this has not been a beneficial development

We all love the potato: it is the most commonly consumed vegetable, served up in dozens of tasty and imaginative ways. Unfortunately for us, its consumption is linked to readily observed conditions, such as obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, heart disease, and cancers, because of abnormal surges in blood sugar. There are potential difficulties as well with some of the other “starchy” root vegetables, such as the aforementioned parsnip, beets, and carrots

We think of the potato as a safe food to eat—even if it might be fattening— but very few people are aware that the potato is also mildly toxic. Potato consumption is directly linked to allergies, bowel disorders, confusion, and depression. Every year, dozens of people are hospitalized with potato poisoning, and many more cases go undiagnosed. These problems are directly linked to antinutrients in the potato that our bodies can’t cope with. We will deal with the science behind these startling assertions in Chapter 4.

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Non-Starchy Vegetables
Not all underground vegetables are starchy. For example, turnip and radish, which both originated in Asia, are non-starchy, as are bulbs such as onion and garlic from Asia and the leek from the Middle East. Corms such as Chinese water chestnut are also non-starchy. Unlike the starchy roots, they mostly get their bulk from another compound called “inulin.” We will reveal the significance of this in Chapter 4 when we look at the science behind our food supply

The vegetables from above ground cover a huge range of plant parts: stems, such as asparagus from the Mediterranean and kohlrabi from Europe; buds, such as Brussels sprouts from Belgium; leafstalks, such as celery from the Mediterranean and rhubarb from Asia; leaves, such as Europe’s cabbage, lettuce, and spinach; immature flowers, such as cauliflower from Europe, broccoli from Turkey, and artichoke from the western Mediterranean; immature fruits, such as eggplant from southern Asia and cucumber from northern India; mature “vegetable- fruits,” such as tomato from Peru, avocado from Central America, and bell pepper from the Andes; edible bean pods, such as runner beans from tropical America; and edible fungi (mushrooms) from just about everywhere. Of course, today, these plants are grown all over the world, wherever farmers can produce them economically

The tomato is an unusual case. First known to the Incas, 500 years ago the Spanish conquistadors brought samples back to their homeland from Peru. The tomato comes from the same family as deadly nightshade, so for a long time, Europeans, warned off by the bright red color, thought the tomato was drop dead poisonous. Finally, some brave souls tried it and survived the experience without any ill-effects. About 200 years ago, the tomato made it into the food supply. Like the potato, it has now eclipsed all other Old World vegetables and conquered cuisines around the world. It is not without its drawbacks: it does indeed contain low levels of plant poisons (15) and some people react to them, with arthritic symptoms, for example. (16)

 It is hard to believe, but true, that the tomato was unknown to Italian cuisine just 200 years ago. The chili pepper, which gives Asian cooking and curries their fiery properties, was unknown before the Spanish introduced it (from Mexico) to India and Malaya 400 years ago

We have seen just how many new non-starchy vegetable foods have been introduced into the human diet all around the world relatively recently. Remarkably, with the exception of chili pepper, they are all beneficial entries to the diet—none of them seems to have a major adverse effect on human health. The chili pepper, however, irritates the lining of every part of the digestive tract: it causes the colon to become more porous, allowing germs, fungi, and food particles to enter the bloodstream. This can lead to a whole range of conditions from allergies to migraines to a depressed immune system

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FRUIT GROUP
 Imagine that you are one of our ancient ancestors rummaging for food on the African savanna 60,000 years ago. You see a familiar ripe fruit and pounce on it— you know it is going to taste good! Fruit and humans have evolved together over eons to help each other. The fruit wants its seeds dispersed, while humans want nutritional gratification. The fruit immediately rewards you with its gratifying, jazzy, sweetish taste, which is known as the “sugar reward.” Moreover, since fruit was a rare commodity on the African savanna, our brains are programmed to continue eating that sweetish thing until the supply runs out

Our early ancestors of the African savannas would not recognize the fruits available in our modern supermarkets. First, our fruit selections are vastly different: apples, cherries, and plums originated in the Middle East, pears in Europe, grapes in the Caucasus, strawberries in America, oranges in China, and bananas in Malaya. Second, gardeners, through selective planting techniques, have heavily modified these different species from their original state since the farming revolution. One has to admire the persistence and foresight of those early New Stone Age farmers. They took the sour-sweet, woody crab apple of the region and patiently bred it over many generations so that it became a tasty apple. They did the same with many other fruits that are familiar to us today, such as the plum, pear, and cherry. However, in the last century, the process has accelerated: agro-industrialists have selectively bred modern fruits to have an attractive appearance, long shelf life, few seeds, less fiber and a powerfully sweet taste

Ancient farmers developed most of these fruits in temperate regions. More recently, with the immense growth in global shipping during the age of European exploration, many tropical fruits became popular. The most common is the banana, originally from the jungles of Malaya, along with the pineapple from the Caribbean, the mango from India, and the papaya from Central America

The watermelon is from tropical Africa and it is just about the only plant food that our Pleistocene ancestors would have recognized. The one we eat today is a sweet-tasting descendant of the bitter-juiced tsama melon, still used by the San as a water source. Just in the 1970s, enterprising New Zealanders provided the most recent addition to mass-market fruits, the kiwi fruit. They bred it from the Chinese gooseberry, whose origins lie in subtropical parts of China

So, today’s common fruits are, in many respects, not like the fruits in our Savanna Model. There are potential snags related to the massive increase in sweetness from various kinds of natural sugars, some of which are relatively harmless and others may pose problems. Fruits rich in the wrong sugars can aggravate pre-existing ailments such as diabetes, allergies, high cholesterol, and cancers. There is a massive rise in indigestion in the U.S. and one major reason is eating fruits at the wrong point in a meal: our bodies were not built to handle the mixing up of unfamiliar foods. Different fruits have different proportions of

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each kind of sugar. Later in the book, we will discuss what fruits to choose and how much and when to eat them

PROTEIN-RICH FOODS OF ANIMAL ORIGIN
 At the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), meat is the term applied to the flesh of domesticated mammals, such as cattle, pig, and sheep. More conventionally, this is known as “red meat,” which is the designation used here. Similarly, “game” refers to the flesh of any wild land animal, such as wild boar or pheasant. “White meat” refers to flesh taken from domesticated birds, such as chickens, and “seafood” refers to fish and shellfish. We will look at both wild and domesticated sources of animal products. The USDA does not include certain classes of animal foods that were common in our ancestors’ diet—the “exotic” categories of reptiles, worms, insects, and gastropods (snails and slugs). This is fair enough as these foods are not commonly eaten in developed countries, although there are many societies around the world that still make use of them.

 Red Meat and Game Mammals
 We saw with the San how mammals such as springhare (a kind of rodent), porcupine, and warthog were part of our ancestral diet. Less commonly, there would be big game such as antelope and, occasionally, giraffe and even leopard. We now look in detail at sources of meat in our food supply, starting first with farmed meat and then wild meat.

 Within about 1,000 years of learning to farm plants, the first cultivators turned their attention to farming animals. They were fortunate that, still in the same location of the Fertile Crescent, there were several species of animal that were capable of being tamed and raised in captivity (a process known as “domestication”)

This is an important point: as biologist and historian Jared Diamond shows, the absence of farmable plants and suitable animals in their locality held back many other societies around the world in the development of farming

These early farmers, about 8000 B.C., found three creatures that lent themselves to taming and breeding in captivity: the “mouflon,” the “pasang,” and the wild boar. In 6000 B.C., this same ingenious people domesticated the massive aurochs, an ox-like creature that stood six feet high at the shoulder. All four species of animal had body compositions very similar to the wild game eaten by our ancestors of the Savanna Model. So far, so good

Ever inventive, these New Stone Age farmers bred these animals to improve their value and usefulness. However, in doing so over the past 10,000 years they, and all farmers since, changed the breed. The mouflon has been transformed into the sheep, the wild boar’s descendant is the pig, the aurochs became the smaller cow, and the pasang became today’s goat. As we shall see, with the exception of the goat, the changes were not beneficial

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In discussing meat, we tend to think of the muscle flesh—beef steaks, lamb chops, and pork spareribs. However, our ancestors would eat just about every part of the animal, from the brains, heart, and liver to the guts and the trotters

A few regional cuisines still make use of these so-called variety meats or offal. However, most of us get to eat them in another form. Ever since antiquity, these animal parts have been processed into sausages, pâtés, hamburgers, luncheon meats, and meat pies. The manufacturers of these products mostly have free license to mix-and-match all the animal parts as they see fit and add fat to “extend” them, bulk them up with low-cost ingredients. In no way can these products be compared favorably to the offal eaten by our ancient ancestors: they are from the wrong kind of creature and they are adulterated in many unknown ways. Worse, unlike our ancestral diet, we eat these processed meats in vast quantities on a daily basis rather than when there is the occasional kill. In addition, many meats, both generic and manufactured, are preserved by drying, salting, or smoking, such as bacon, salami, and bologna

These processes certainly avoid sudden death from some nasty disease contracted from decaying meat. However, they do some necessary things in order to preserve the meat. For example, some (like bacon and salami) are soaked in salt. That keeps harmful bacteria under control, but the salt is detrimental to the human body. Most are fatty (which is not good in itself) and the fats and oils have to be converted into more stable varieties that do not go rancid—saturated fats. These are heart harmful and disrupt many other workings of the body. The amount of wild meat that the average person in the developed world consumes in a year is close to zero. However, both in North America and in parts of Europe, the hunting of wild animals is still possible on a controlled, recreational basis. In this way, the meat of bear, moose, caribou, deer, wild boar, elk, and similar creatures enters the diets of some hunters’ families and the diners at specialist restaurants. This meat corresponds quite closely to the hunted big game of the Savanna Model. The same applies to small game such as the squirrel, hare, and rabbit

We are beginning to see the introduction of some “managed” wild animals on the market, such as venison (from deer), kangaroo, antelope, and bison (Plains buffalo). These creatures are not strictly speaking domesticated—they breed according to their own inclinations and are allowed to roam relatively freely on a range that closely resembles their natural habitat. Their numbers are culled in a sustainable way and their meat is introduced into the food chain. The American researcher Loren Cordain considers that the meat from these animals is similar to the Savanna Model, with the proviso that they browse the naturally occurring vegetation and are not given commercial feed. (17)

 White Meat and Game Birds (Fowl)
 We saw how the San would catch various wild birds in traps and snares and

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even hunt the ostrich. Our lakeshore-inhabiting ancestors would have caught waterfowl too. Not surprisingly, fowl (by definition any wild bird) are relatively hard to catch and so they did not form a huge part of our ancestral diet. On the other hand, the USDA applies the term poultry to birds that are farmed.

 Chicken, Turkey, Duck, Goose (Farmed)
 It took quite a while before any farming community discovered how to tame and raise birds in captivity. The first was the chicken, which was domesticated from the red jungle fowl by the civilization in India around 4,000 years ago. Since then, chickens have become a familiar sight, ranging freely in farmyards all over the Old World

Chicken. After the World War I, intense efforts were made to industrialize the process of raising chickens. It was found that the chicken could survive being cooped up in batteries of tiny cages under controlled conditions of nutrition, light, heat, and humidity. Britain developed the first “battery farms” in the 1920s. In the United States, mass production of chicken meat took off after World War II. American consumption quadrupled from 14 pounds (boneless) per person annually in 1946 to 59 pounds annually in 2004.(18) Today, the vast proportion of chicken eaten in the developed world is from intensively reared, caged birds; only a tiny proportion comes from a “free range” farmyard lifestyle

Turkey. Turkeys are native to large parts of North America. The Aztec of Mexico and the Zuni Indians of the American Southwest were the first to domesticate them. In 1519, the Spanish brought the Mexican species back to Europe. In 1621, the Pilgrims were able to put hunted wild turkey on the Thanksgiving table in New England. It was not until after World War II that turkeys were raised for meat on a wide scale. They, like chickens, are raised intensively in large covered sheds where they are crammed in so closely that they hardly have room to fall over. Their meat is now almost as cheap as chicken and American turkey consumption has quadrupled too, going from 3.5 pounds (boneless) per person annually in 1946 to 14 pounds annually in 2004. (19)

 Duck and Goose. Duck and goose consumption is minimal compared to chicken and turkey. Domestic ducks are descended from a hybrid of the Muscovy duck domesticated by Incas in Peru and the mallard duck domesticated by the Chinese some 2,000 years ago. Duck raising is practiced on a limited scale in most countries, usually as a small-farm enterprise, although large flocks of duck are bred in some areas of England, The Netherlands, and the United States. Geese are described as domesticated in the Egyptian and biblical writings of 3,000 years ago, but modern breeds are descended from the greylag, a wild goose of northern Eurasia. Geese have not attracted the attention of intensive farmers on the same scale as chickens and turkeys. Goose raising is a minor farm enterprise in practically all countries, but in central Europe and parts of France

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there is important commercial goose production. Notably in France, these birds are raised specially to make the fatty delicacy “pâté de foie gras,” made from the diseased livers of force-fed geese

Game Fowl (Wild)
 The early civilizations carried on the old traditions of hunting, trapping, and snaring fowl. The ancient Egyptians caught and ate ostrich, bustard, crane, dove, pigeon, duck, quail, partridge, pheasant, and goose. Birds associated with the gods were taboo, notably the falcon, the ibis (a kind of heron), and the vulture

The Greeks and Romans did not eat much fowl, although at feasts peacock, thrushes, and ring-dove might be served. However, we must remember that the food of the ordinary citizen was extremely frugal; banquets and feasts were for the few, the wealthy gentry

Managed Game Birds. Wild bird flesh corresponds closely to the Savanna Model. In addition, there is a large production of “managed” game to provide sport for shooting parties. These are predominantly pheasant, grouse, pigeon, partridge, and quail. (The partridge is related to the francolin hunted by the San.) However, often the managing techniques involve intensive feeding and the production of slow-flying birds. Their meat might well be closer to battery chicken quality than their wild counterparts

Ostrich and Emu. We are beginning to see some ranching of large flightless birds, notably ostrich and emu. The ostrich is the same species as the ostrich of our African homeland and hunted by the San; it can stand up to 8 feet high. The emu, from the savannas of Australia, is a slightly smaller bird, but still stands up to 6 feet high; it has flesh similar to the ostrich. Provided the farming of these creatures does not intensify (like it has for the chicken), their meat is in conformity with the Savanna Model

Eggs
 Eggs formed a regular part of our ancestors diet whenever they could find them. Of course, they were not restricted in the species of bird—anything from guinea fowl eggs to ostrich eggs would do just fine. Being in the tropics, the seasons did not vary much throughout the year, so there was usually the egg of some bird or another available most of the time for the San

Farmed. The first farmers had to go looking for wild eggs. The Fertile Crescent is outside the tropics (it is about the same latitude as Washington, D.C.) and mostly eggs only came along in spring. It was not until chickens were domesticated that eggs were “farmed”: wherever the chicken arrived, the hen’s egg arrived too. In due course, as duck, goose, and turkey were domesticated, these creatures were bred for their eggs as well. Today, with the enormous advantage of price and the massive volume of battery-hen production, it is the hen’s egg that totally dominates the food supply. Does this matter? Are there

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significant differences between battery-farmed hen’s eggs and wild eggs from a variety of birds? We will see later that there are differences, but not necessarily the ones we think

Wild. The gathering of wild eggs today is greatly restricted by government regulation in most developed countries. However, the eggs of many species are available in small quantities as a by-product of the management of game birds

In this way, eggs from quail, pigeons, gulls, lapwings, plovers, pheasants, and ostriches are available to culinary enthusiasts. We must also mention eggs from reptiles: eggs from crocodiles and turtles would have been quite common in the diet of our African Pleistocene ancestors. Turtles lay eggs in prodigious numbers in sandy shorelines, and collecting and commercializing them has become a major industry in Malaysia. Wild eggs in general form a tiny part of consumption in the developed world and, with the possible exception of quail eggs, most people have never even seen one

Seafood (Fish and Shellfish)
 Our ancient ancestors certainly consumed fish and shellfish on a modest scale—up to 12% of calories according to Michael Crawford, professor of nutrition at London Metropolitan University. (20) As we saw in chapter 1, fish were speared and trapped as the occasion presented itself. Pleistocene man (or more likely women) easily collected shellfish along the shoreline of African lakes and rivers

Farmed. Early civilizations took a long time to learn to farm fish. Carp originated in China and have been raised in ponds and rice paddies there for 3,000 years. From about 500 B.C., the ancient Egyptians raised fish in specially built ponds. The main species was Nile perch, a variety of tilapia, which is still commonly available today. Carp cultivation has spread all over the world, notably central Europe, but it was always on the scale of the village pond or its equivalent

It was not until the 1960s that fish farming or “aquaculture” came of age. Since then, salmon, trout, catfish, and tilapia have been farmed on an industrial scale. They have almost completely displaced their wild counterparts from our tables. Less commonly farmed are carp, mullet, redfish, and sea bass. Efforts are already under way to farm tuna, cod, sea bream, and turbot in vast enclosed offshore pens

The farming of shellfish, mainly mussels, oysters, shrimps, and prawns, has been carried out on a minor scale for centuries in Europe and Japan. Again, since the 1970s, rapid advances in technology have allowed the farm production of shrimp and prawns to explode. They have elbowed out the wild variety. The farming of clams, crayfish, oysters, and mussels is also growing fast

The fish and shellfish consumed in our ancestral diet were entirely of freshwater varieties. On the other hand, modern fish farming is concentrated mostly on seafood. It appears that this is not an important distinction—if there is a

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problem with aquaculture, it is with the way the creatures are often fed and the pollutants that get into their bodies

Wild. Up until the 1970s, virtually the only fish on our plates were ones caught in the wild. Now, we have seen the huge volume of fish, notably salmon and trout, that are produced by fish farms. Even so, most other species that we find in our supermarkets (fresh, frozen, or canned) are still wild. Cod, halibut, tuna, sardine, plaice, mackerel, pollock, herring, and many others, for the time being at least, are all caught in the wild. We can say that many of them conform to the Savanna Model while the others, if not conforming, are certainly not harmful

Exotic Animal Foods
 Reptile foods, including crocodile, alligator, and turtle, although uncommon in the Western diet, are still readily available to the enthusiast. In addition, many societies make use of snakes, such as python and boa constrictor, and the French have made a delicacy of frog’s legs. All of these foods, as they are currently available, readily fit the Savanna Model

There are many gatherer societies around the world, such as the Yanomamo Indians of the Amazon and the Cahuilla Indians of California, that eat (or used to eat) worms of all kinds. Curiously, there is little evidence that the San ate worms and we can only surmise if they were a common component of the Pleistocene diet. It is likely that they were—worms are easy to unearth at certain times of the year by wetting the ground and drumming to bring them to the surface

Italian biologist Dr. Maurizio Paoletti, from Padua University, has made a study of “mini-livestock” eaten by forager tribes today and finds that earthworms are an excellent food source, (21) which we authenticate as conforming to the Savanna Model

Hunter-gatherers around the world still eat insects of all kinds and anything is fair game. They collect the immature and adult forms of grasshoppers and crickets; the caterpillars of silk moths; and the larvae and pupae of beetles, bees, ants, flies and hornets. Dr. Paoletti has found that the larvae of palm weevils, as raised by certain Amazonian tribes, have an excellent nutritional profile and no drawbacks.(22) The Australian Aborigines prize the witchety grub, a kind of large caterpillar up to 3” long and 1/2” in diameter. It is relatively fatty (19%) and, when toasted in the embers of a fire, tastes a bit like roasted sweet-corn

Many primitive societies eat snails and their shell-less cousins, the slug. The idea to some minds seems grotesque, yet they are a valuable, easily collected source of food. In fact snails have been commonly raised and eaten in the Middle East and Europe for thousands of years. The French, of course, have made a national dish out of snails: “escargots” cooked in garlic and butter are even considered a delicacy. Snail and slug flesh conforms to the Savanna Model, although the French recipe is not ideal nutritionally.

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The Consequences of Eating Animal Foods
 We have seen how the New Stone Age farmers “improved” the breed of the pig, cow, and sheep. Quite inadvertently, these improvements changed the nutritional qualities. The flesh became much fatter, increasing from just 4% fat to 25% fat. Also, the type of fat changed from certain kinds of polyunsaturated fat to various types of saturated fat. We now associate the consumption of beef, pork, and lamb with cancers, heart disease, high cholesterol, and cardiovascular diseases

In the next chapter we will examine this link. The goat, which has remained popular with many simpler farming cultures, has not been subjected to the same processes of intensive breeding and has largely escaped this unhealthy transformation. Its meat is low in fat (just 2%), half of which is harmless monounsaturated fat. Most meats of wild origin have a similar fatty acid composition, in conformity with the Savanna Model

Similarly, wildfowl and wild fish are just fine. Poultry, particularly chicken and turkey, tend to be fattier and contain more of the unhealthy fats. The breast (white meat) of the bird is the best, when it has the skin and fat removed, and free-range chickens tend to be leaner and healthier. Duck and goose are also fatty birds, but their fats are semi-liquid at room temperature, indicating a low saturated fat content. Eggs have more “good” fats if they come from chickens who have ranged freely and eaten a diet natural to their species. Fish have more “good” oils if they are wild or have at least been fed correctly on the fish farms

PROTEIN-RICH FOODS OF PLANT ORIGIN Protein-rich plant foods fall into two broad classes, nuts and legumes. Their protein content is comparable to that of lean beef steak—20% to 25% and sometimes more. In contrast, an egg is only around 13% protein. Nuts are often called “tree-nuts” to distinguish them from the peanut, which grows underground and is a legume

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 Nuts
 In Chapter 1, we saw how the mongongo nut was a great standby for the San. There were many other nuts too, including those of the baobab tree, the ochna, and the soapberry tree. However, the nuts that we know today have come from all over the world. Almonds, walnuts, pistachios, and chestnuts are all native to the Fertile Crescent and were domesticated early during the farming revolution

The Brazil nut and the cashew nut are native to South America, the pecan to North America, and the macadamia to Queensland in Australia, and all of these nuts have become familiar to us in the West. They are often processed in various ways, notably by roasting and salting, which improves shelf life and taste, but it is not a nutritional improvement

Legumes
 We saw too that the San consumed foods called “beans,” notably the tsin bean. These are podded seeds that belong to the pea family, similar to the legumes. However, the class of legumes known as “dry beans” first entered the food supply of humans only 11,000 years ago with the Farming Revolution. Lentils and chickpeas are indigenous to the Kurdistan area and their cultivation spread rapidly to other civilizations in Egypt, India, and China. Those peoples then developed local varieties—for example, the soybean in China, the fava (or broad) bean in Egypt, and mung bean in India. Across the Pacific, the new civilizations in Central and South America were developing the native kidney bean, pinto bean, haricot bean, and lima bean. These beans, together with the fava bean and mung bean, all come from the genus (a grouping of species) Phaseolus and form the class of legumes that we think of as “beans.” Unlike the case with grains, consumers in the developed world have not taken up the use of beans (Phaseolus) with enthusiasm: in the U.S., consumption is around 7 pounds per person annually; in Europe, it is 5 pounds annually. We will see that this is not a bad thing

Soy comes from a different genus of legumes called Glycine. Even though soy originated in China, consumption there was minimal. According to K. C. Chang, editor of Food in Chinese Culture, the total soy protein intake in 1930s China was no more than 5 grams per person weekly. In Japan, consumption has increased slowly since those days, but even now soy protein intake is still only a modest 8 grams per day, according to Chisato Nagata, a researcher at Gifu University School of Medicine, in Japan.(23) In America, soy was unknown until about 80 years ago, when it was introduced to feed cows. Then, in a promotional campaign reminiscent of Kellogg’s breakfast cereal marketing wonder (see Chapter 2), just since 1970 Americans have been taught to eat soy. Consumption has been doubling every 12 years. The publicity touted soy as a meat substitute with supposed health benefits and vegetarians and vegans have enthusiastically adopted soy in all its forms—tofu, soy burgers, soy yogurt, soy milk, soy cheeses, and so on. Their consumption can reach a massive 70 grams per person How We Eat and Its Consequences 65 daily. Even the average consumer is unwittingly consuming soy as soy flour is added to all kinds of processed foods

When we buy a pack of dried beans or lentils, the label warns that the contents must be thoroughly boiled. This tells us that, in their raw natural state, legumes are poisonous. Our savanna ancestors could not even boil water, let alone cook legumes, so humans never developed resistance to the poisons in them. However, even after boiling, legumes still contain harmful substances, slow-acting poisons that disrupt the harmonious working of the body. According to their variety, beans and lentils can provoke immune depression, malignant tumors, red blood cell disruption, pancreatic problems, intestinal disease, and allergies. Soy contains at least 15 allergens, of which three are considered “major” by researcher Hideaki Tsuji of Okayama Prefectoral University, in Japan. (24) Soy is also strongly linked to cancers, (25) senile dementia, (26) thyroid disorders, (27)  pancreatic problems, (28) and disrupted hormone function

MILK GROUP
 The San tribe hunter would track an antelope for several days to get close enough to shoot it with poisonous arrows. We can be certain that neither the San, nor our Pleistocene ancestors, ever got close enough to a mother antelope to suckle its teats. Such a feat only became possible after the farming revolution with the domestication of farm animals. Even so, not many societies made much use of this unusual idea

It took the special circumstances encountered by the nomads of the Russian Steppes to change that. They were early Europeans who lived in the treeless plains of what is now the eastern Ukraine. By 4000 B.C., these people had learned to keep herds of horses, cattle, sheep, and goats. However, under the sparse conditions of the steppe, a migratory way of life became necessary. The animals consumed the grass faster than it could grow, so the herders had to keep their animals moving in search of new pastures and, as a consequence, abandon planting. This was the first time that human beings learned to live largely from their animals. In practice, this meant consuming the only renewable resource: milk, cheese, and other dairy products. To do that, they had to tame mother animals that had just given birth to a calf to allow milking by human hand. By about 2000 B.C., the herders had mastered their techniques and, constantly in search of new pastures, these nomads infiltrated much of northwest Europe, carrying the practice of dairy farming with them

In this way, Slavs, Germans, Scandinavians, and Anglo-Saxons became dairy farmers too, focusing on the cow. Some parts of southern Europe adopted, in a minor way, sheep’s milk and goat’s milk. Roquefort cheese is made from sheep’s milk in Toulouse, France, and the Greeks use goat’s milk to make feta cheese. To the east, the Mongols took up the practice of dairying with the yak (a kind of massive ox)

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 Other nomadic tribes stumbled upon the use of milk too. About the time the Ukrainians were carrying dairy farming to Europe (4,000 years ago), another herder, Abraham, was setting out from present-day Iraq for his “land of milk and honey” in Palestine. However, neither the Israelites nor for that matter the Egyptians, Greeks, or Romans made an industry out of dairying

Just 500 years ago, Mongol invaders (the descendants of Genghis Khan) brought dairying to the fringes of their empire in northern India and Persia. A little later, the English, Germans, and Scandinavians brought dairy farming to North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Nevertheless, it comes as a surprise to us in the West to discover that, as dairy consumers, we are in a small minority. A large majority of the world’s population (some 5 billion out of 6 billion people) had no idea about dairy until the last 50 years. These non-milk drinkers lived in vast swathes of territory, from Africa to southern India, from China to Japan, and from Latin America to Polynesia. The regular consumption of dairy foods, even today, only applies to a minority of people on the planet— those mostly living in the industrialized West

Interestingly, when in recent years Western dairymen entered these untapped markets, they hit upon an unexpected difficulty. The new, potential consumers thought that dairy consumption was a strange practice and found that it often disagreed with them. We now understand that dairy products can be a problem

For example, the San are uniformly intolerant of the lactose in milk and this applies in some degree to everyone on the planet. Lactose intolerance gives rise to allergies, headaches, bloating, colon diseases, and many other disorders

The unhealthy properties of milk fat are now mostly accepted. We are told that fat-free milk is good for us and it is even better to stay away from cream, butter, and ice cream. For many years now, the connection between these foods and high cholesterol, heart disease, strokes, and hardening of the arteries has been well known. Scientific findings show that dairy consumption from any source (cow, goat, sheep) and in any form (including skimmed milk, cheese, and yogurt) is associated with a number of serious, slow-acting diseases, including osteoporosis, high cholesterol, cancers, allergies, heart disease, and obesity. The notion that dairy products cause osteoporosis is so contrary to conventional nutritional dogma that it needs solid justification. In chapter 4, we will look at the scientific background to these assertions

It has been noted that the Germanic peoples, the ones who adopted dairy farming early, seem to tolerate milk quite well in their early years. We find, however, that childhood tolerance to milk wears off. Germanic senior citizens are just as vulnerable to milk intolerance as everybody else. This is one of the few instances that we know of where a human tribe has evolved an adaptation to a new food. We now suspect that early dairy herders must have suffered a very high percentage of weanlings dying from a bad reaction to milk. The ones that survived had a genetic makeup that allowed them to live through the 

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experience and pass their genes on to their descendants. Even so, such people still suffer, like the rest of the population, from the slower-acting diseases caused by dairy foods

FATS AND OILS
 The term fat and the term oil mean essentially the same thing. A fat is simply an oil that is solid at room temperature. Fats (oils) fall into three classes: saturated, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated. In nature, any particular fat (oil) is a cocktail of all three classes. As a rule of thumb, if it is solid (fat) at room temperature, then the chief component is saturated fat

We have seen that the food supply of the African savanna was very low in fat. It was never available on its own and the foods themselves did not contain much. The San really loved to eat the warthog, which had a relatively high fat content of around 10% (but still a lot lower than red meat’s 25%). The other major source of fat was the mongongo nut. The situation remained much the same throughout history until well after the farming revolution. It was not until a few thousand years ago that domesticated animals, notably the pig, were bred porky enough to yield a fat that could be separated out. This kind of fat is lard, whereas fat from cows and sheep is known as tallow. Even so, it was only in certain places and certain levels of prosperity that farming peoples had the luxury of free animal fat in cooking. Traditionally, Chinese, Indian, and Japanese cooking is done with water, not fat

Butter is also an animal fat, so the first dairy farmers were among the first to have fat as a separate entity. Several thousand years later, it was the same people (mostly northern Europeans) who, in the Middle Ages, discovered more efficient ways to raise livestock. This was the first time that a large group of humans had an abundance of meat and fat throughout the year. Fatty cuisine, utilizing cream, lard, and butter became the norm in Germany, Central Europe, and England

These same peoples then brought the animal fat habit to North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Animal fat consumption in U.S. was already strong in 1909 at 34 pounds per person per year; by 2000, consumption had accelerated to 42 pounds annually

Meanwhile, in the southern parts of Europe and in the Near East, early farmers had domesticated the olive. The earliest recorded occurrence is from the Greek island of Crete around 3500 B.C. (29) Its cultivation was important to the ancient Greeks and Romans and they spread it to all the countries bordering the Mediterranean

Fresh olives are extremely bitter and must be treated with lye (a strong alkali leached from wood ash) before they can be eaten. Today, olives are grown primarily for olive oil. The Greeks first extracted the oil simply by heaping the olives on the ground in the sunshine and collecting the oil as it dribbled out of the ripe fruit. Now it is pressed out, but in the first pressing not a lot of pressure is used so that the bitterness stays behind; this is known as “extra virgin oil.” Greece 68 Deadly Harvest