Fairy tales read to one as a child used to begin, ‘Once upon a time’, and end, ‘and everyone lived happily ever after’. Once upon a time in prehistory, before man began agriculture, he lived in the wild, he ate what he could find or successfully hunt, and if there was insufficient he moved elsewhere. Within modern times there have been societies that lived in this way, and various surveys have shown that they, and therefore our ancient ancestors, lived, almost, but not absolutely, free of today’s chronic degenerative diseases. However the incidence of such conditions increases sharply once these people begin to assimilate Western culture and lifestyle.
The Inuit (Eskimos to me as a child) when living according to their original traditions, were practically free of cancer. A Dr. Leavitt, physician on a whaling ship searched for cancer among the Inuit of Canada and Alaska. It took him 49 years, from 1884 to the first confirmed case in 1933 to find cancer. Schaefer (1981) reports that breast cancer was virtually unknown among the Inuit in earlier times, but was one of the most common forms of malignancy by 1976 (by which time many Inuit were living on a modern Western diet). In 1994 Eaton and others analysed the factors involved in women’s reproductive cancers and developed a model that indicates that up to the age of 60 the risk of breast cancer in Western women is 100 times the risk level for pre-agricultural, hunter gatherer, women. There is a similar pattern for the other culprits, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease etc. The question now is, can we reverse this? If we don’t then it appears that we are on a path towards ever increasing physical disability, a deeply unfortunate situation. What is different in the conditions of life, the overall environment of hunter food gatherer and our 21st Century selves? The greatest divergence is in the diet. To understand the significance of this we need to go back to the origins of man. A type of pre-man, a hominid may have been on earth as long ago as 4 million years, and during that time have evolved to what we are today. But 4 million year is a very short time in the evolution of life. Some 600 million years ago vision and brain evolved in the sea, long before reptiles and mammals existed. The human brain still uses and depends on the same marine nutrients today, those that made brain development possible.
Man has been designed by evolution, as has his diet. He is a part of an environmental system which on one level is very simple and on another one of great complexity. On the simple level, we can say that as hunter food gatherer he lived a healthy almost disease free life eating entirely from nature. We know that, as an omnivore he ate fish, meat, insects, eggs, rodents, and plants. Sometimes there was great variety. In temperate Europe it is estimated that he used about 150 different kinds of plant and even in the African Kalahari desert the bushman has knowledge of the uses of some 85 plants. It is a reasonable supposition, other things being equal, that if we continued to eat as our ancient ancestor on a wild diet we would also be almost degenerative disease free. However that is clearly impossible. There are far too many of us and we are fed through modern agriculture. So where has today’s system, which puts us at high risk of developing degenerative conditions of one kind or another, gone wrong? Frankly, everywhere. A selection of wild foods gives a natural balance of carbohydrates, proteins and fats, together with, and most importantly, an amplitude of minerals and vitamins. Those wild foods were positively health giving. Given availability, early man would have eaten what he fancied.
Mrs. Caveman would not have said to him ‘Watch your waistline, dear’. On wild foods he would not have got fat. He would not have told his woman that he needed more tomatoes in the evening cook up as he had learned from his neighbour in the cave down the hill that tomatoes were good for his prostate gland. The foods he ate would have kept his entire system functioning properly.
Nowadays we grow and raise food for quantity, not quality, and essentially for profit. It is the changed nature of food from that which existed in the wild that is the problem. The human genome having designed itself through evolution is adapted to wild foods and not those to which we now subject it.
So what are the differences? Take (1) grains, (2) meat, (3) fish, (4) vegetables, (5) fruit and (6) sugar.
(1) Grains. Early man would not have eaten much grain. In his day they were grasses with heavy seeds. They are a product of agricultural improvement and now of modern agriculture. Wheat and rice are the two chief grains. We do not eat the whole grain as our ancestor would have. Modern milling eliminates the wheat germ and the outside layer, the bran, thereby depriving ourselves of valuable nutrients and fibre.
Artificial water soluble fertilizers force feed the plant which means that it does not take up minerals from the soil as it will in a naturally fertilized soil.
Application of pesticide sprays, some of which are systemic, remain in the plant.
The net result is a food of diminished nutritive value which may contain toxins. We have not evolved with a natural ability to get maximum health giving benefit from grains reduced in this way, yet it is from this that our daily bread is made.
(2) Meat. The meat of an animal or bird raised in the wild or under natural farming conditions is differently constituted from that of those produced by factory farms, force fed on grain products. The carcase of beef in the wild would have only 5% fat.
A modern intensively reared beef carcase is 30% fat. But that is not the only change. In the wild the balance between non essential Omega 6 fatty acids, and the essential Omega 3’s is 3 to 1. In modern beef the ratio is 50 to 1. Thus a Western diet is short on Omega 3’s which have a crucial role in brain, arterial and heart function and in vision. Also the cooking oils, canola, soybean and corn which the Americans produce cheaply and in quantity are Omega 6’s and add further to the imbalance.
(3) Fish. The Omega 6 and 3 ratio in fish is altered by fish farming in the same way, although by less, as intensive animal raising. Wild fish remains as the ancestors found it, but we don’t eat enough.
(4 & 5) Vegetables and fruit. Again we do not eat enough. Conventionally produced, these contain less minerals and vitamins than their wild precursors, and often have absorbed pesticide residues which they pass on to us.
(6) Sugar. From cane or beet, refined sugar, devoid of minerals and vitamins plays a controlling role in our diet. Our ancestors did not have it.
Preservatives, colorants, salt, taste enhancers, and other additives of no nutritional value are added to factory made foods. We do not choose well. We love white bread and rice, sugary cakes and biscuits, alcohol and soft drinks, all of which, in their production have had valuable nutrients removed, nutrients upon which our immune and other systems depend.
We cannot revert to the life of our early ancestor, but Nevis is theoretically in a good position to reverse the trend. The sea around us yields fish. Our grazing animals are not grain fed, there is an abundance of different grasses and herbs to choose from. We could easily grow organically more fruit and veg. We could eliminate soft drinks. We could utilise only whole grains grown organically, ie having no pesticide residues and a better mineral and vitamin content. We could all learn to cook well and to take a pride in it. We have an educable population, a good communication system, a school meals programme, but do we have the interest or the will? Not much sign of it yet. Nevis could be a first to regain comparative freedom from non communicable diseases, but this will not happen unless all leaders and persons of influence make the necessary change in lifestyle a national priority, then indeed it could be said, ‘And they all lived happily ever after’.
Syndicated columnist
