100 Million Years of Food (33 page)

5. EAT WHAT YOUR ANCESTORS ATE

In societies where people lived on particular diets for hundreds or thousands of years, their bodies gradually became adapted to these diets, acquiring enzymes to process starches, in the case of Europeans and East Asians; to process seaweed, in the case of Japanese; and to process milk, in the case of northern Europeans, pastoralist African and Middle East groups, and northern Indians. High levels of calcium may be a risk factor for prostate cancer in populations that had little exposure to dairy. If your ancestors didn't consume much starch or dairy, neither should you. The take-home message: Eat what your ancestors ate.
1

6. EAT SUSTAINABLY

Unfortunately, when we eat meat and fish cheaply, we do so by passing on the environmental costs of pollution and plant-cover degradation to future generations. The best way out of this mess is to eat more of the plants and animals that are adapted to our local environments and decrease our reliance on foreign, poorly adapted plants and animals. In many parts of the world, there is an abundance of plants and animals that people used to eat but later generations became squeamish about. In North America, acorns, deer, bear, moose, beaver, fish, waterfowl, and insects used to provide valuable sustenance, but European immigrants to the region rejected or forgot about these foods; kangaroo presents a similar dilemma for Australians descended from immigrants; insects are rejected in most of the developed world, and even tracts of the developing world. That's a shame, because wild plants and animals are generally better nutritional choices—for example, the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids is higher in wild foods—and more environmentally sustainable. Moreover, wild animals arguably live happier, more natural lives than their farm compatriots.

In the Americas, insects used to be a huge part of the ancestral diet because there weren't any big domesticated mammals around; they're still popular in much of the developing world. Insect protein is palatable. In Thailand, they can't import enough crickets to satisfy their demand. Pound for pound, insects consume fewer calories than mammal livestock because insects are cold-blooded. They also suck up less water and emit fewer greenhouse gases than livestock. Also, if you're worried about animal cruelty, the nervous system in an insect is far less developed than in a mammal.

7. GET AS MUCH SUN AS YOUR SKIN TYPE REQUIRES

Our ancestors were continually exposed to the sun. The most obvious manifestation of this is our body's dependency on skin exposure to sunlight to produce the correct amount of vitamin D. It's true that skin cancer is an opposing risk, so rather than getting burned on the weekend or hitting a tanning booth, the best thing to do is to spread out your exposure to the sun throughout the year and throughout the week, which allows people with tanning skin types to develop protective natural tanning. At the ends of the skin-type spectrum, people with light skin should be judicious in the intensity of sun exposure (think northern Europe), while people with dark skin should seek as much sun as practical. Solar radiation likely has an effect in reducing the risk of various types of cancers, such as breast cancer. Popping vitamin D pills or eating vitamin-D-rich food is not a great solution because scientists don't know how much vitamin D is required by the human body, or even if vitamin D is the main benefit from solar exposure; moreover, getting too much vitamin D may boost the risk of certain cancers, including prostate and colon cancer.

A final consideration with respect to sunlight is that in temperate regions of the world, cold weather may increase the risk of dying, independent of sunlight exposure—in other words, temperature is also an important factor in maintaining health.
2
Of course, in very warm locales, heat waves can be dangerous as well. In both cases, the elderly are most susceptible to the dangers of extreme temperatures. Thus if you are in your later years of life, want to optimize your health, and have the option of relocating, living somewhere where the temperature is congenial is a major health consideration.

8. GET SAFE GERM/PARASITE EXPOSURE

If you suffer from hay fever, food allergies, or other common immune system disorders, you can likely lay part of the blame on lack of sunlight (see the previous point) and the massive hygiene drive that started roughly one hundred years ago. Because our ancestors evolved with constant exposure to parasites like bacteria, viruses, and scores of tiny invertebrates, our immune systems are dependent upon parasitic exposure to calibrate properly, just as our teeth require hard foods, our feet require solid contact with ground, and our eyes require copious natural sunlight to develop properly. But parasites are no laughing matter, because many kinds of parasites can and will gladly finish us off; malaria, for example, kills 660,000 people worldwide each year, far outgunning the current deadly outbreak of Ebola. The challenge is to get enough exposure to parasites so that our immune systems develop properly, while avoiding mass epidemics due to unvaccinated children and adults. Studies of therapies employing parasites such as pig whipworms are currently undergoing FDA-scrutinized trials in the United States. There is a good case to be made that many antibiotic treatments are unnecessary and deplete the intestinal tract of helpful bacteria, so patients (and parents of children) facing antibiotic treatments should discuss with doctors which antibiotic treatments are necessary. Cesarean births may reduce the transmission of helpful bacteria from mothers to infants via vaginal secretions, so mothers should discuss with doctors the pros and cons of C-section deliveries and consider the use of swabs to apply vaginal smears to newborns.
3
Other options include spending more time in rural settings such as farms and traveling to developing countries.

9. COOK AT LOW HEAT

When a side of beef is roasted, a slab of salmon seared, a sliver of bacon fried, or a cube of tofu sautéed, a chemical process known as the Maillard reaction results in delicious browning of the cooked food (similar to caramelization). However, fatty or protein-rich foods cooked under high heat generate AGEs (advanced glycation end products). AGEs are also produced naturally in the body, but the concentration of circulating AGEs can be elevated through intake in industrialized diets. Like teenage pranksters, AGEs wreak havoc by binding to cell receptors, cross-linking and hence changing the shapes and functions of body proteins, and generally promoting oxidation damage and inflammation. Possible adverse health effects of AGEs include hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis), anemia, Alzheimer's disease, cataracts, cirrhosis, bone brittleness, muscle stiffness, loss of grip strength, slower walking speed, kidney disease, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and lowered life expectancy.
4

Concentrations of AGEs can be altered enormously by different cooking techniques. Raw foods contain the fewest AGEs. Cooking using traditional, low-heat methods (boiling, steaming, stewing) produces slightly elevated levels of AGEs. High-temperature, dry methods of cooking (broiling, roasting, deep-frying, grilling) and food processing rack up the greatest yields of AGEs. Noxious AGEs are also highly prevalent in hamburgers, soft drinks, crackers, cookies, pretzels, doughnuts, pies, Parmesan cheese, pancakes, waffles, and other processed foods.
5

10. REMEMBER: FAD DIETS DON'T WORK

Foods are one of the few things that we can easily alter in our lifestyles, and it's commonly believed that foods comprise the basis of our health—i.e., “You are what you eat.” Not surprisingly, people gravitate toward various kinds of miracle diets and “superfoods” in the hopes of achieving a quick fix to health problems like obesity, diabetes, and cancers. However, eating more meat, or more dairy, or more fruits and vegetables, or more raw food, or less fat, or following any other dietary alteration has rarely provided relief from chronic diseases. There are two reasons for this lack of a quick dietary fix: 1) Our bodies are designed to thrive on a wide variety of foods, in the form of time-tested traditional diets. 2) The major factor underlying chronic disease is disruption in our physical lifestyles, particularly the absence of movement, so adjusting our diets to compensate for the lack of physical activity rarely achieves our desired goals. The final message: Eat good food, keep moving, and let your body take care of the rest.

 

ENDNOTES

INTRODUCTION: WHAT SHOULD WE EAT AND HOW SHOULD WE LIVE?

THE IRONY OF INSECTS

THE GAMES FRUITS PLAY