Thesis #21: Civilization makes us sick.
by Jason GodeskyThe Paleolithic was not an era of perfect health. The Neanderthals, for instance, show signs of trauma consistent with those of rodeo cowboys–suggesting a certain rough and tumble life with big game. They were certainly a few diseases in circulation, and of course things happened. However, the claim so often made by progressivists that civilization has made us healthier could not be more incorrect. Civilization has most definitely made us much less healthy, and in innumerable ways.
The first has been the introduction of the epidemic disease. Epidemiologists typically divide diseases into one of two broad categories: endemic and epidemic. Endemic diseases are always circulating in a population. Most members of the population have some immunity to it. Endemic diseases can be serious, but for the most part, they are accepted as a simple fact of life, as the population grows used to them. Chicken pox is endemic to most First World populations, for example. Formally, an endemic is an infection that can be maintained in a population without external inputs. Mathematically, an endemic is a steady state, R0 x S = 1, where every single individual who is infected passes the infection on to exactly one other person. If the rate of contagion is less than that, the infection will simply die out. If it is more, it will become an epidemic.
Epidemics are another thing altogether. Epidemics are new to a population, and so burn through it without meeting any immune response whatsoever. Epidemics burn themselves out quickly, but leave much mortality and suffering in their wake. Eventually, some will begin to develop an immune response, and eventually the epidemic will kill or infect everyone it can–leaving only the immune alive (with the exception of some minority protected by the “herd effect,” who cannot be infected because they’re surrounded by people who are immune). The Plague which ravaged Europe several times over was an epidemic; each iteration was slightly less devastating than the last, as each left a larger segment of the population with immunity. When an epidemic infects the worldwide population of a species, it is a pandemc.
The epidemic disease is something new, a gift of civilization. Most epidemics are zoonotic–they come from animals. That is how we become exposed to so many unfamiliar pathogens, because once a pathogen mutates sufficiently to jump the species barrier, what was endemic to our domesticates is epidemic to us. Chicken pox, easles, smallpox, influenza, diphtheria, HIV, Marburg virus, anthrax, bubonic plague, rabies, the common cold, and tuberculosis all came from animal domestication. If epidemic diseases did arise in the Paleolithic, they were short-lived: hunter-gatherer bands were too small, and had contact with one another too infrequently to allow an epidemic to spread. It may have wiped out the whole band, but it would die out there. Domestication brought humans into sufficiently close contact with other animal species to allow their germs to adapt to our bodies, created concentrated populations where diseases could incubate, and even provided long-range trade to export those germs, once fully developed, to other concentrated populations. In Guns, Germs & Steel, Jared Diamond points to these titular germs as one of the main reasons that civilization was able to destroy all other societies. By the time the conquistadors had set into the New World, smallpox had already wiped out 99% of the native population.
Civilization did not only introduce us to disease as we know it, though. It also introduced a novel way of life that was completely at odds with the evolutionary expectations of the human body. Humans remain Pleistocene animals; the short 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age has been meager time to adapt ourselves to such a radically different way of life. One factor that aided the spread of such disease was the rampant malnutrition that accompanied the Neolithic. Where foragers rely on a vast diversity of life that is nearly impossible to eliminate, and thus almost never starve, agriculture introduced the concept of “famine” to humanity be relying completely and utterly on a small number of closely related species. Starvation in the Neolithic was rather the norm. In “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” Jared Diamond wrote:
One straight forward example of what paleopathologists have learned from skeletons concerns historical changes in height. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunger-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5’ 9″ for men, 5’ 5″ for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 B. C. had reached a low of only 5’ 3″ for men, 5’ for women. By classical times heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant ancestors.
Another example of paleopathology at work is the study of Indian skeletons from burial mounds in the Illinois and Ohio river valleys. At Dickson Mounds, located near the confluence of the Spoon and Illinois rivers, archaeologists have excavated some 800 skeletons that paint a picture of the health changes that occurred when a hunter-gatherer culture gave way to intensive maize farming around A. D. 1150. Studies by George Armelagos and his colleagues then at the University of Massachusetts show these early farmers paid a price for their new-found livelihood. Compared to the hunter-gatherers who preceded them, the farmers had a nearly 50 per cent increase in enamel defects indicative of malnutrition, a fourfold increase in iron-deficiency anemia (evidenced bya bone condition called porotic hyperostosis), a theefold rise in bone lesions reflecting infectious disease in general, and an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, probably reflecting a lot of hard physical labor. “Life expectancy at birth in the pre-agricultural community was bout twenty-six years,” says Armelagos, “but in the post-agricultural community it was nineteen years. So these episodes of nutritional stress and infectious disease were seriously affecting their ability to survive.”
Over the course of millennia, we have gradually recovered from the enormous mortality of the Neolithic, to the point where most First Worlders now enjoy a quality of life just shy of our Mesolithic ancestors. That doesn’t mean our current diet is healthy, only that it is plentiful enough to keep us alive. Boyd Eaton called it “affluent malnutrition”–we eat a great deal of food, but what we eat is horribly maladapted to the human body. Affluent malnutrition is so lacking in basic micronutrients that many of us require vitamin supplements. Other criteria of affluent malnutrition include:
- Highly processed foods that are deficient in important vitamins and minerals
- Synthetic food compounds
- High in refined sugars
- High in saturated fat
- Deficient in fibre
- Mega-size portions
- High in calories
The human body evolved to expect a diet primarily of animals. Fat provided most of the body’s energy, and protein provided the necessary materials for the large human brain. Wild edibles provided vitamins and minerals in abundance. A single cup of crushed dandelion leaves contains more vitamin C than 2 glasses of orange juice.
Instead, some 99% of the world’s current diet is supplied by either wheat, rice or corn. Ben Balzer’s “Introduction to the Paleo Diet” outlines the main problems with these cereal grains and their adaptation to the human body:
Consider our friend, the apple. When an animal eats an apple, it profits by getting a meal. It swallows the seeds and then deposits them in a pile of dung. With some luck a new apple tree might grow, and so the apple tree has also profited from the arrangement. In nature as in finance, it is good business when both parties make profit happily. Consider what would happen if the animal were greedy and decided to eat the few extra calories contained within the apple seeds- then there would be no new apple tree to continue on the good work. So, to stop this from happening, the apple seeds contain toxins that have multiple effects:
- Firstly, they taste bad- discouraging the animal from chewing them
- Secondly some toxins are enzyme blockers that bind up predators digestive enzymes- these also act as “preservatives” freezing the apple seed enzymes until sprouting- Upon sprouting of the seed, many of these enzyme blockers disappear.
- Thirdly, they contain lectins- these are toxic proteins which have numerous effects. They act as natural pesticides and are also toxic to a range of other species including bacteria, insects, worms, rodents and other predators including humans.
Of course, the apple has other defenses- to start with it is high above the ground well out of reach of casual predators, and it also has the skin and flesh of the apple to be penetrated first. Above all though is the need to stop the seed from being eaten, so that new apple trees may grow.
Now, please consider the humble grain. Once again as a seed its duty is mission critical- it must perpetuate the life cycle of the plant. It is however much closer to the ground, on the tip of a grass stalk. It is within easy reach of any predator strolling by. It contains a good source of energy, like a booster rocket for the new plant as it grows. The grain is full of energy and in a vulnerable position. It was “expensive” for the plant to produce. It is an attractive meal. Its shell offers little protection. Therefore, it has been loaded with toxic proteins to discourage predators- grains are full of enzyme blockers and lectins. You may be surprised to learn that uncooked flour is very toxic…
Once again, it is a simple matter of adaptation. In fact, some varities of anthropoid have adapted to eating grain in the past, such as Paranthropus bosei; however, that is a variety that is unrelated to us. We are descended from the Australopithecus branch, which focused on scavenging while Paranthropus focused on grain, and died out. Humans lack the necessary enzymes to digest these cereal grains properly, the way birds do. Instead, they lead to a host of health problems–including, possibly, cancer.
Lectins–found in cereals, potatoes, and beans–have effects throughout the body as widespread and significant as our own hormones, but originating from outside our bodies, they react with our physiology in ways that are often quite harmful. They can strip off protective mucous tissues, damage the small intestine, form blood clots, make cells react as if stimulated by a random hormone, stimulate cells to secrete random hormones, make cells divide at improper times, cause lymphatic tissues to grow or shrink, enlarge the pancreas, or even induce apoptosis. In an editorial for the British Medical Journal titled “Do dietary lectins cause disease?” David L J Freed answers the question affirmatively, writing:
Until recently their main use was as histology and blood transfusion reagents, but in the past two decades we have realised that many lectins are (a) toxic, inflammatory, or both; (b) resistant to cooking and digestive enzymes; and (c) present in much of our food. It is thus no surprise that they sometimes cause “food poisoning.” But the really disturbing finding came with the discovery in 1989 that some food lectins get past the gut wall and deposit themselves in distant organs.
The question of whether or not the lectins in grain causes cancer is still open, but there is certanly a good deal to suggest it. Lectins are well-known to cause cancer-like reactions in colon cells in a test tube. Franceschi, et.al; “Intake of macronutrients and risk of breast cancer” (Lancet 1996;347(9012):1351-6) showed that while risk of breast cancer went down with total fat intake, it rose with carbohydrate intake, but the original study on a correlative “cause” of cancer remains the most compelling: Stanislaw Tanchou’s 1843 study that found a nearly perfect correlation between cancer in major European cities, and grain consumption. Tanchou predcted that no forager would ever be found with cancer, initiating a frenzied search to find the counterproof. Though no such forager was ever found, cancer often became commonplace among those same populations once they were settled into an agricultural lifestyle. Between the effects of grain and more recent environmental factors, it seems evident that the natural occurence of cancer among our foraging ancestors must have been negligible. In the modern United States, some 50% of men and 33% of women will suffer from some kind of cancer. Among foragers, we have significant difficulty producing even a single example.
There is also significant and widespread intolerance to grain. Writing of intolerance to the gluten in grain in “Why So Many Intolerant To Gluten?” Luigi Greco writes:
Having had over 25 years of variegated experience with gluten intolerance I find hard to imagine that the single most common food intolerance to the single most diffuse staple food in our environment might provoke such a complexity of severe adverse immune-mediated reactions in any part of the human body and function. The list is endless, but malignancies, adverse pregnancy outcome and impaired brain function are indeed complications above the tolerable threshold of this food intolerance.
Dairy is also a new and disastrous introduction to the human menu. All mammals lose their ability to produce lactase–the enzyme that breaks down the lactose in milk–when they reach maturity. At about 4000 BCE, a mutation occured in Sweden and the Middle East, allowing those populations to continue producing lactase into maturity. This was a useful adaptation in their societies, with their adoption of herds of domesticated cattle, and so the mutation spread. However, “lactose intolerance” remains the norm across most human populations. The prevalence of this bizarre mutation amongst the socio-politically powerful northern Europeans has led to a strange stuation where the normal state of affairs is referred to as if it were a malady. While humans with this mutation can digest milk, it remains something that the human body is ill-equipped for. Cow milk is tailor-suited for calves, just as human mlk is suited for human babies–but the requirements of cows differ markedly from humans. Consumption of cow milk has been linked to iron deficiency anemia, allergies, diarrhea, heart disease, colic, cramps, gastrointestinal bleeding, sinusitis, skin rashes, acne, increased frequency of colds and flus, arthritis, diabetes, ear infections, osteoporosis, asthma, autoimmune diseases, and more, possibly even lung cancer, multiple sclerosis and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The “Paleolithic Diet” is often referred to as a “low-carb diet,” which it is, and while it retains the weight-reducing properties of the more popular Atkins diet (since your body does not know how to turn protein or fat into body fat, but only carbohydrates), it is far more sustainable and conducive to long-term health than Atkins. Individuals on a Paleolithic Diet report not only dramatic weight loss, but less hunger, more energy, and even greater mental acuity. Even in civilization, taking up only the diet of a forager leads to dramatic improvements in health.
The “diseases of civilization” are so well known as to hardly bear repeating. While we work far longer hours than even the most overworked forager, our work is quite different. Affluent First Worlders are too busy working extraordinarily long hours sitting behind desks to exercise, while agrarian societies emphasize back-breaking labor for the torso, back and arms. A cursory examination of the human body’s construction shows that it is adapted best to one activity: walking. Whether hunting or gathering, most of a forager’s short work day consists simply of walking for hours at a time. The sedentism of First World life has led to a host of maladies.
At the same time, we suffer from the psychosomatic and mental disorders that are the result of such stressful lives. We are primates adapted to small, egalitarian bands, but we find ourselves locked into large-scale, hierarchical societies. Even primates that are adapted to hierarchy show signs of stress when they occupy the lower ranks–and theirs are hierarchies that are not nearly as pyramidal, as if to increase the number of stressed-out unfortunates as much as possible. Our personality and our ability to cope can allow us to survive such a maladaptive situation, but we feel it all the same, particularly with the constant, ever-escalating competitiveness of a civilization that must always grow or die. High stress is endemic to the civilized population. It has become the leading cause of death in the United States. At the same time, while one quarter of U.S. citizens suffer from some form of mental illness, one would be hard-pressed to find any examples of mental illness among foragers.
Indeed, even those maladies which we consider to be merely the onset of old age, such as frailty and senility, are difficult to find among foragers, suggesting that even these may be the result of a maladapted, civilized diet.
Pleistocene humans were not always in perfect health, but the natural state of health for most animals in the wild is far, far superior to that which we find ourselves in. Humans did not evolve to be unique in the animal kingdom for our sickly, malnourished, and weak forms. We evolved to enjoy the same level of health as every other animal, but for 10,000 years, we have lived contrary to human nature, creating a great deal of stress and mental anguish. We eat foods that are not entirely edible for us as staples, and in ever-increasing quantities to counterbalance their anti-nutritional effects.
Excellent article. Just a quick point, because this reminds me of something I wanted to post over on the shamanism thread. I have seen it mentioned by a Paleo diet researcher (Cordain) that schizophrenia may be related to grain consumption - apparently populations that don’t eat grains have very low levels of that condition. If that is so, it would mean we are wrong when we include schizophrenia as having some relationship with or relevance to shamanistic states - it’s just another of the many, many, many diseases of civilization.
Unrelatedly, how can I wean my loved ones away from these toxic Neolithic foods? Everyone believes pro-grain propaganda, and they just turn off when I try to explain this stuff. ‘You need grains for energy!’ etc. All made worse by living in a rice-based food culture. ‘You don’t eat rice? Weird!’
Aaaaaggghhhhh….
Comment by Eric — 3 January 2006 @ 12:56 AM
Hey Jason –
Nice!
A couple comments, first on endemic/epidemic diseases…
Wouldn’t it be appropriate to say that endemic diseases are as much, or even more, a gift of civilized lifestyles? After all, endemic diseases are generally epidemic diseases that have adapted to us, and us to them, to a degree that we can abide each other over the long term. (with flare ups). Besides that, it seems that endemic diseases would be virtually impossible to maintain in a population of 30 (or even 150)even if all you looked at were the math…
On the quote from “Introduction to the Paleo Diet”: I find it interesting that the skin of an apple is portrayed as a ‘barrier protecting the seed’ while the casing of a grain is considered to offere little protection… so we need to get right on that special tool to remove the apple skin, but we can crack open a grain of wheat with our fingers?
I’m not saying that the general argument is not valid… but there is an unfortunate tendancy for some of these paleo writers to twist things to suit thier needs. (They could have pointed out the indegestibility of the germ, for example, but instead they create a false frame. For shame.)
Janene
Comment by Janene — 3 January 2006 @ 9:34 AM
This was your best one yet, IMNSHO. Extremely well done.
I wanted to add one (or, rather, two) points.
It’s interesting to note how quickly the host of maladies that were introduced to the Americas burned through the populations. The first reaction is to wonder (1) Why the Europeans transmitted, but never received anything nasty, and (2) If smallpox and other nasty bits hit “virgin soil” in Europe and carried off a fifth to a third of the population a pop, howcumzit that 99% got lixivated by the same viruses in the new world?
The answer 1 is, as stated above, that most nasty bugs humans get are from animals - that’s why they burn through a population so rapidly. It’s bad business to kill off your hosts so rapidly that you can’t spread because they’ve all, well, died. But if you’re convinced your host is a pig or a cow, you don’t have much choice in the matter. Most off the “original” endemic diseases are actually human diseases; the rest come from domesticated animals. So when the natives didn’t have many (if any, in most cases) domesticated animals, there was nothing to “spread back” to the Europeans.
Number 2 is a little more interesting and complicated. Of course, a big part of the answer is that the societies were being hit by an enormous complex of diseases all at once. The second reason for the massive mortality rates from these diseases that previously only had a 33% maximum kill-off rating in virgin soil was that most Native groups in the Americas belong to one of four haplogroups, a sort of genetic grouping of (among other things) immune system responses. Eurasia and Africa, on the other hand, had and still have dozens, if not outright hundreds, of haplogroups. This means that if a disease comes through an area, it’s only going to find a maximum of four different ways to fight it. The limited number of haplogroups directly corresponds to the few groups that made their way to the Americas and populated it sometime between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago.
Once again, this article was fantastic.
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 3 January 2006 @ 11:30 AM
Well, there is an interesting counter-point to the direction of the germ flow here with syphilis. I saw a NOVA episode that made a fairly convincing argument that Europeans did get syphilis from the Native Americans … but among them, it was pretty close to a head cold. The puritanical culture of the Europeans prompted syphilis to mutate in order to find a better way to infect them, and became an STD. That mutation also made it more virulent, with its modern effects of, well, rotting your brain out. But it was originally airborne and fairly harmless. It was a puritanical attitude towards sex and all those stuffy, maladapted English clothes that made the virus mutate into a virulent, insanity-inducing STD.
So, the germ flow sometimes went the other way, but like Diamond pointed out, whoever has the domesticated livestock is going to have all the germs, too.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 January 2006 @ 11:44 AM
I haven’t read this report specifically, but there are a lot of way in which non-agricultural societies differ from our own. So I would think it would be very difficult to pinpoint the cause specifically to grain consumption based solely on that line of reasoning.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 3 January 2006 @ 12:41 PM
I’ve read somewhere that dental problems among hunter gatherers were much lower than agriculturalists. Actually, here is the quote:
“Hunter-gatherers presented low rates of dental caries but greater occlusal attrition and higher frequencies of alveolar resorption and antemortem tooth loss. The agricultural samples showed an increase in dental caries. Kennedy also felt his samples suggested that in South Asia the transition to agriculture was associated with increased porotic hyperostosis, caries, abscesses, dental hypoplasia, lines of increased density and a “broad spectrum of diseases”" Hunter, 1984
Comment by Lope — 3 January 2006 @ 3:04 PM
Absolutely. You don’t see wild animals with cavities or gum disease, do you? The primo, #1 cause of all dental problems is the acidic reaction of sugar in the human mouth. Humans simply are not adapted to eating sugar. When you shift to a carbohydrate (sugar) based diet, your mouth is constantly full of corrosive acids that eat away at your teeth and gums.
Hell, foragers don’t even need to brush their teeth, but as soon as humans picked up bread, it was all downhill. You see massive tooth decay and tooth loss in Egyptian mummies, for example.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 January 2006 @ 3:38 PM
I’m wondering what type of cow milk you’re referring to when you talk about all of the diseases associated with it. Obviously, the highly processed industrial waste that is advertised as milk is going to do what all industrial waste does.
What about raw, unprocessed cow’s milk? I know people who are lactose intolerant who can drink raw cow milk and not have any similar reactions to industrial waste. It’s also the same with raw goat milk, and any other dairy products that come form it.
Comment by Jarcnek — 3 January 2006 @ 6:43 PM
Hi Mike,
I can’t defend the thesis, as I have not read the research either. I would hope, however, that your point had already occurred to whoever conducted it, being a fairly obvious objection, and fatal if not contested.
That said, there is plenty of dud research floating about…
Comment by Eric — 3 January 2006 @ 10:05 PM
Re schizophrenia and grains again, to quote from the paper where I read this:
‘It has been more than 30 years since Dohan first formulated the hypothesis that opioid peptides found in the enzymatic digests of cereal grain gluten are a potentiating factor evoking schizophrenia in susceptible genotypes…In a meta-analysis of the more than 50 articles regarding the role of cereal grains in the etiology of schizophrenia published between 1966 and 1990, Lorenz concluded ‘In populations eating little or no wheat, rye and barley, the prevalance of schizophrenia is quite low and about the same regardless of the type of acculturating influence.’ In support of this conclusion are multiple studies which have shown that schizophrenic symptoms improved on gluten-free diets and worsened upon reintroduction. Furthermore, the incidence of schizophrenia is about 30 times higher in celiac patients than in the general population, and schizophrenics have elevated circulating IgA antibodies to gliadin.’
[Cordain, L. ‘Cereal Grains: Humanity’s Double-Edged Sword’ p57, online at http://www.thepaleodiet.com/articles/Cereal%20article.pdf
Comment by Eric — 3 January 2006 @ 10:36 PM
Regarding the milk question, a good website to check out is http://www.notmilk.com
Here is what it says about raw milk:
And organic milk:
Comment by Vicky — 3 January 2006 @ 11:46 PM
Of all the mammals in the world, only a mutant form of human can digest any kind of milk past puberty. Drinking the milk of any other species is bizarre, and has some pretty awful health effects.
Now, if you also pour all manner of toxins in it, yes, it is worse. If you pour cyanide into bat piss, that is worse. That does not mean that drinking straight-up bat piss is a good idea, either. It just means that the first idea was even worse.
If you are old enough to read this, then all milk is probably bad for you. Organic milk is only normally toxic, whereas factory-farmed milk is mega-super, make your spleen bleed toxic. Organic milk only looks good by comparison.
Why? Because you’re a person, not a cow. And milk is for baby mammals, anyway, which you probably aren’t anymore. It’s good for some animals–namely, baby cows. When you were a baby, human milk was good for you, but not anymore. But never was there a time when cow milk was good for you. Because you are not a cow. You are a human. Stop drinking the cow milk. End of story.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2006 @ 1:03 AM
Well, just a quick search turned up this article. According to this, “Many neurological complications may be associated with immune reactivity to antigens found in cereal grains. It is suspected that autoimmune processes are involved. Even autism and schizophrenia show susceptibilities to grain glutens that aggravate (or even cause) the conditions. There are clinical studies indicating that there is a rapid remission of schizophrenic symptoms by introducing gluten-free diets.”
That’s interesting. I always figured the lower levels of psychological disorders among non-civilized societies were due largely to lifestyle differences. I wonder how accurate this research is.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 4 January 2006 @ 1:58 AM
re: Milk…
the point would be better made if the LA Times had looked at milk that really WAS organic, and not at a product from the Horizon mega-corp, which is not much different from anything else you’d get in any Giant Eagle grocery–
“Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group, created a wave of controversy and media attention in the organic dairy industry in February when he filed complaints with the USDA against Horizon Organic, Aurora Dairy and a farm owned by Case Vander Eyk, Jr., alleging that these so-called “organicâ€? dairy companies were in fact engaging in factory farming operations. The Institute’s complaints asked the USDA to investigate whether these three farms were violating the law by milking a large number of cows in a relatively small setting, without legitimate access to pasture, and still labeling the milk organic.
Kevin O’Rell is Vice President of Research and Development for Horizon Organic, as well as Vice Chair of the NOSB. The Horizon Organic company is owned by Dean Foods, the nation’s largest dairy processor and distributor, and sells more organic milk than any company in the world. In his dual role as Horizon employee and NOSB member, O’Rell for the first time went on the record about this issue.”
there are also questions about the feed, etc.
http://wholelifetimes.com/2005/wlt2710/organicmilk2710.html
still, very interesting essay. but what happens to someone like myself who has put in almost 40 years getting addicted to dairy and grains? where’s the Hunter-Gatherer Recipee book?
Comment by Librarian — 4 January 2006 @ 3:48 PM
Two things.
First hing
About the schizophrenia. Are you all familiar with Ergotism? A fungus that propigates itself through infecting rye grain is the cause of this unwanted trip.
I could see how people who didn’t intend to have an acid-like trip might become schizophrenic, especially after repeated dose.
Even modern rye, with all their fancy fungicides, cannot fully prevent the spread of this fungus. And since the ergotamine akaloids aren’t as pure as LSD-25 would be, you’ve got potentially toxic doses.
St. Anthony’s Fire has been attributed to ergotamine poisoning, there are historical times where entire villages were thought to be mad.
But hey, don’t take my word for it…
The otherthing about milk and raw milk.
Raw Milk is said to contain lactase, but apparently, I googled it and that turns out to be false.
However, there is something really cool about the mutations that allow humans to continually drink milk:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance
the part I thought was neat was that Western cats developed the same mutation along with western people, while eastern house cats share their masters lactose intolerance…
Comment by TonyZ — 4 January 2006 @ 4:02 PM
If it’s got lactose in it, it’s not good for you. Granted, Horizon’s little better than ConAgra, but lactose is lactose and normal adult mammals can’t digest it.
This is a good start. I went paleo on Jan. 1. I’ll report in once I’ve stabilized.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2006 @ 4:04 PM
No grains at all would be ideal, but by soaking and/or fermenting grains you can eliminate many of the bad health effects. Here’s a good article about it (except the bit about cheese).
Comment by Ran — 4 January 2006 @ 4:39 PM
Jason, above you said if you’re human, you shouldn’t be drinking milk, end of story.
Well, that’s pretty insensitive to the 6000-year history of lactase-producing human adults.
you’ve got to let the throttle ride every once in a while, man. If you keep punching it you might end up with leaks in your engine block.
If you want to be smug like the scientists on CSI, I encourage you. Breathtaking intelligence is insipiring. Heavyhanded I-said-so’s only blemish your record.
Of course, I can agree with this statement:
Comment by TonyZ — 4 January 2006 @ 6:00 PM
Just because you’re one of the small, mutant population that is capable of drinking milk doesn’t make it a good idea. All that development gave such people was the ability to drink it, not the ability to do anything useful with it. If I got a mutation that allowed me to drink mud, it wouldn’t make drinking mud a good idea–it would just make it a non-fatal idea. There’s lots of non-fatal ideas that aren’t good ideas.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 January 2006 @ 6:33 PM
There is nothing wrong with exploiting a mutation. I think that our milk mutation probably originated for a good, evolutionary reason. People were living in areas where there was nothing to forage for. They ate anything they could. The survivors developed the milk mutation. People who aren’t dead yet haven’t eaten anything to kill them.
Now on to milk…
Our current milk-drinking culture is a by-product of pasteurization and refrigeration. People didn’t historicallly drink raw milk because it was always warm and sour. Who wants to drink that? In certain cold climates with caves, some people developed techniques to control the growth of bacteria in milk and created yogurt and cheese.
Raw yogurt and raw cheese is very popular in Europe. Raw milk is not. I notice that no one ever cites statistics involving deaths of Europeans due to raw milk.
Pasteurization kills the milk. That is why it has expiration dates and must be chilled. It is dead and decomposing. Raw milk is still alive. It is no more or no less likely to be contaminated by samonella or listeria than anything else from a farm. I think that here in the US our standards are just so lax that contamination is the norm - that is why we pasteurize.
Comment by JohnD — 4 January 2006 @ 10:02 PM
Mutations arise for completely random reasons. They proliferate for good, evolutionary reasons. In Sweden and the Middle East, 6kya, they provided agricultural populations an invaluable food source to keep them alive, so the mutation proliferated. It became so prevalent in India, that the use of cows for dairy led to the development of beliefs about the sacred cow.
As I’ve often said, given a few million years, humans would become adapted to civilization. The proliferation of the lactose tolerance mutation is one example of that.
However, my point here is that our adaptation to dairy as a food source is still incomplete. We’re adapted enough to be able to use it, but not well. Lactose intolerance is the norm, but even those who don’t suffer from lactose intolerance suffer a whole host of problems of problems. Apart from decomposition and issues of contamination by pesticides and other pollutants is the basic, inescapable fact that cow milk is adapted to cow physiology–not human physiology. Perhaps in a few tens of thousands of years we could adapt to make use of cow milk the same way we do meat, fruit, or nuts, but that will not be for tens of thousands of years.
Or, we could just eat the enormous, delicious buffet that nature has naturally bequeathed to us as an enormously adaptive omnivore.
We can eat almost anything on the planet … so naturally, we found the few things we can’t eat, and built a civilization on them.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 January 2006 @ 12:02 AM
Any ideas about how to eat paleolithic without all the crap that goes into meat production? I’ve been vegetarian for a long time now, so I haven’t been checking ways to find healthy meat. Would kosher sources be best?
Comment by scruff — 5 January 2006 @ 11:23 AM
Hey –
Organic all the way. Its gotten easy enough to get — especially if you have WHole Foods in your area. I can get ground beef from them for only a dollar or two (per pund) premium.
Janene
Comment by Janene — 5 January 2006 @ 12:21 PM
Organic means nothing as above studies attest.
Raise, hunt, forage, or grow your OWN food.
do you get it, your OWN food? That’s the point, no middle men. From the food to your belly, with a kiss of flame, perhaps…
Or try not to get depressed about your taker lot. Cause if it’s in a grocery store, it’s still tainted with Taker Karma. No matter how well the product is greenwashed.
Whatever is under the yellow sun is for you to eat. What ever is under the blue hum of incandescent lighting is what’s holding you back.
Comment by TonyZ — 5 January 2006 @ 5:57 PM
Tony - First of all, the USDA organic label itself means nothing. But other labels (that the USDA is desperately trying to destroy) DO mean something. And there are a number of farms that hold themselves to high environmental standards, out of a genuine desire to help.
It would be nice if we were all capable of hunting and gathering right now. Unfortunately, most of us live in cities and are restricted by jobs (not enough time to learn), money (not enough money for the books/classes), and location (too far away from wild areas to make foraging a part of our day-to-day lives). Or maybe we just shouldn’t eat anything until we’ve learned to hunt and gather…?
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 5 January 2006 @ 6:08 PM
Yes, Tony, but scruff asks a very good question. It’s too much to just ask someone to run off into the woods tomorrow. What are the little steps we can take, that add up to a big change?
Scruff, eating paleo isn’t something they make easy. I’ve been doing it since Jan. 1, but it can be done. Factory-farmed meat is awful, but at least it’s still meat. Under all the pesticides and what not, there’s still food in there–somewhere. My own feeling is that factory-farmed meat is probably better than organic milk, so that’s where I make my compromise with the realities of my checking account.
I don’t think kosher would help anything whatsoever. Kosher and halal aren’t about meeting standards that are related in any way to health, environmentalism, or even human evolution–they meet arbitrary cultural taboos that are largely without rhyme or reason. So, eat kosher if you’re Jewish and you want to connect to that. Beyond that, I fail to see any benefit that kosher food could possibly have over anything else.
As Janene said, there’s always organic meat. Next best thing to something you killed yourself. Though, with the amount of meat you eat on paleo, organic meat may be cost-prohibitive.
But ultimately, Tony’s right. The ultimate goal is to hunt and gather your food. But along the way, probably the best thing you can do for yourself is to get your body off the maladapted civlized diet and at least feed it the general foods to which it is accustomed. If you really want to do it well, organics are better, but they cost more. If you can’t afford organics, my own view is that it’s better to eat factory-farmed food than organic non-foods, like milk or cereal grains.
Then, go camping more often.
Maybe go fishing a little more often.
Ever want to learn to hunt?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 5 January 2006 @ 6:10 PM
Oh, I understand what the ultimate goal is. It’s just that if I tried to do that right now, I’d die of my own incompetence. Maybe next week
Comment by scruff — 5 January 2006 @ 8:39 PM
Whilst we’re destroying those nasty Taker milk memeplexes, let’s be sure to properly endorse the One Right Way to eat.
Comment by Chuck — 6 January 2006 @ 12:52 AM
Who said anything of the kind? There’s an unbelievable diversity in forager diets–any kind of meat, red meat, white meat, dark meat, waterfowl, fish … any kind of fruit or berry … leaves, roots, flowers, nuts …
It’s not ethically wrong, but if you eat poison, or something you can’t really digest, then it’s not going to be healthy. That’s not promoting a “One Right Way,” that’s understanding basic biology. As I said above: “We can eat almost anything on the planet … so naturally, we found the few things we can’t eat, and built a civilization on them.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 January 2006 @ 1:13 AM
I forgot eggs, insects, crustaceans, snails, mushrooms … there’s way, way too much to list. We’re omnivores, there’s damn little we can’t eat. Pretty much just cereal grains and the milk of other mammals (which, really, is always off-limits, I mean, it’s a different species, fer Chrissakes!)
Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 January 2006 @ 1:17 AM
Jason is merely pointing out a Wrong Way to Eat.
You can probably eat unhealthy amounts of any type of food in any society in any place in the world. But civilization is remarkable because this unhealthy diet is intrinsic and necessary for its sustenance.
Comment by Devin — 6 January 2006 @ 6:33 AM
I just wanted to say that the above arguemnt is pretty worthless. Especially when you go on to say that eggs and nuts, etc, are ok to eat.
Eggs are adapted to embryonic bird physiology. Nuts are adapted to embryonic tree physiology.
The question isn’t what the food is adapated to, the question is what Humans are adapted to eat.
JimFive
Comment by JimFive — 6 January 2006 @ 10:46 AM
I don’t see that anyone addressed this. From what I recall the answer is that exposure to cowpox conferred some immunity to smallpox.
Comment by JimFive — 6 January 2006 @ 10:56 AM
Eggs are adapted to embryonic bird physiology. Nuts are adapted to embryonic tree physiology.
The question isn’t what the food is adapated to, the question is what Humans are adapted to eat.
Well, except that out of milk, eggs, and nuts, only one is produced for the specific purpose of being consumed. Cows, being cows, have evolved to produce milk based on what’s good for a bovine physiology. They unfortunately neglected to take our needs into consideration. To get the same benefit from cow milk that is enjoyed by, you know, cows, the human body would have to adapt to digesting it just like it did eggs and nuts. And while that may not be entirely outside the realm of possibility, it would probably take a little more than a few thousand years.
Comment by Mike Godesky — 6 January 2006 @ 1:48 PM
It seems like at least I’ve learned that 30 percent of humans are lactose(lactase) persistent, rather than 70 percent of the population being lactose intolerant.
I’m a little annoyed because I was lied too about Raw milk having lactase in it. But it illustrates to me that green liberals have not completely escaped using non facts as persuasive arguements.
Well, I have to say, I’m slightly against baby steps. I’m a fan of walking upright.
You see, when america sent food to a place for the first time, and kept sending it, its almost as if the previous way of life was gone forever. So when america quit sending that food, they starved even more. Many peoples just forgot how to get food sustainably because they were turned on by the food provided for them. Gee, humans forgoing work for no work… never heard of that….We don’t rationalize how we are manipulating mythic cultural belief holarchies when we feed the hungry
So if a way of eating, thus a way of life, is gone within minutes after the first “provided” meal, then the only thing standing between you and real food is effort, not time.
Baby step ideology stems from the fact that things take a certain amount of prescribed time to happen.
But food can change by the meal.
you could go to WalMart, buy a rifle, and get you some food, today.
Where’s the baby steps in that?
I’m not ignoring the background information it takes to get there, but I will henceforth treat any adult learning of tracking, and other skills as remedial, not forward-moving. This is because I was raised with these skills as a child and am now a forwardly mobile human because of this. We all have skill sets that make us adult(or comfort us in the idea of being adult). But a particular skill set that would set right our food problem is taught to every eager Boy Scout who is willing to learn it.
As to where I want to be, moving forward is a matter of action, not an educational endeavor. So is it understood that if you didin’t learn this stuff as a child, it is your duty to learn it for your children?
So if you are not standing in a palce of action, then you need to enroll yourself into remedial education. Not all forgot that which was left behind in the Great Forgetting. You shall see in deep reflection that pyramid food production has not suceeded in becoming the one right way.
I am not an active hunter or an extremely avid fisher(I do have a license in two states) and that is not because of lack of desire, it is because I do not have a home. What sense in hunting deer with no freezer to store it, or people to share it with?
Being transient has taught me much about the world, but it is not the way of life that I will evetually choose.
You must own your land
then you can own your food
then you can own yourself
There, those are the adult steps in the development of adult Tribal consciouness. Everything before is prep work (those remedial baby steps for those who need it) everything after the three steps is the reclaimed creative life that praying to the pyramid has stolen from us.
Comment by TonyZ — 6 January 2006 @ 2:45 PM
Just a quick question about the forbidden foods on the paleo diet: If it’s so bad for us, why does it taste so good? All of our typical “comfort foods” contain neolithic ingredients: macaroni and cheese, red beans and rice, mashed potatoes, ice cream, chocolate, etc. Is it purely cultural, or are their other factors? I’ve read about opioids in dairy and wheat gluten; is there something similar in other grains, potatoes, and beans?
On the other hand, as you pointed out in the aticle, dark, leafy greens are one of the most nutritious foods we can eat. Yet, most of them are bitter and yucky. I like spinach and broccoli, but turnip greens, dandelion, and brussel sprouts are too strong for me. It just seems odd that the foods that taste the best are the ones that are the worst for us, and the foods that taste the worst are the most nutritious.
Comment by Vicky — 6 January 2006 @ 3:03 PM
Dear Vicky,
Taste is relative.Some here would attest that I could take food you absolutely hate and turn it into the best meal you ever had.
Comment by TonyZ — 6 January 2006 @ 3:09 PM
I would agree with that tony, absolutely.
Comfort foods are generally foods that make you feel good when you eat them, yes?
Somehow or another, I’ve turned my snack of sliced up (and sometimes baked) apples with cinnamon and raisins into a mighty fine comfort food.
Healthy and perfectly paleo acceptable.
spices and what not are acceptable on the paleo diet as well, so those leafy vegetables, while not tasty to everyone, can quickly become rather tasty with a little bit of tweaking.
But like Tony said, taste is relative.
We grew up on grains and those sort of comfort foods.
It’s about making an adjustment.
And once you knock out a lot of sugars and salts out of your diet, taste seems to change.
Comment by Miranda — 6 January 2006 @ 3:37 PM
This is, without a doubt, the single best line I’ve ever read about human food consumption. The only thing that I don’t like about it is that I didn’t think of it first.
It’s not a matter of what’s designed for humans, it a matter of, “What can humans successfully and healthily eat?”
Well, just about f***ing everything. Including grains. And milk. And brie. And brie and avocado and baguette sandwiches, which I have lovingly named, “Fat Sandwiches.” Try it. They rock.
But, for the short hand, “Just about f***ing everything.”
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 6 January 2006 @ 4:14 PM
No, that’s exactly the point, Chuck. We’re not adapted to eating grains, or drinking milk.
For example, in the article I talked about the lectins in grain. Now, birds are adapted to eating grains, and they have enzymes in their bodies that react to the lectins to neutralize them. Humans are not adapted to eating grains, so we have no such enzymes, so instead lectins result in all the deliterious effects I iterated in the article, namely,