The Food Pyramid is a Lie, Part 2 - The Evolution of Man

Before we get too far into this, I want to say that many of the things I am going to say here are not in any dispute scientifically. This stuff is well documented, peer reviewed, and as close to irrefutable as we can get, considering the circumstances. Of course the USDA and most governments disagree, but they will not provide quality scientific evidence to back their claims.

Starting at the beginning. The real beginning. When man evolved, distinguishing itself from its ancestors, its diet was made up of whatever it could kill or find growing wild. Man is naturally an omnivore, something that the vegans would love to argue with but can't, due to the presence of canine teeth. Those teeth didn't evolve to better separate salad from its stalk. Early man ate WHATEVER it could get its hands on. Until the discovery and development of agriculture, this state of affairs remained pretty much unchanged. Early man's meal choices were largely determined by what grew naturally and what it could kill. This is the definition of hunter/gatherer. This means that early hominids had a very seasonal diet. In summer, it's safe to guess that there were lots of greens, some berries, as well as fish and birds, and red meat. In fall, one would expect that fruits and nuts became a large part of the diet. In winter, northern populations would likely be restricted to entirely red meat and fat diets.

This is NOT bad for you.

Now, I don't have to simply speculate about this. I can prove it. The first true man, Homo habilis, is known to have eaten meat and bone marrow. We know this because we know they used stone tools to cut flesh from bones of animals. (http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/evidence-for-meat-eating-by-early-humans-103874273)

So early man was a true omnivore. According to the same Nature article referenced above, early man's diet consisted of "large quantities of fruit, leaves, flowers, bark, insects and meat", as well as "Tooth morphology and dental microwear studies suggest that the diet of some hominins may have included hard food items such as seeds and nuts, and underground storage organs (USOs) such as roots and tubers."

One thing that all of these food sources have in common, with the exception of fruit (which was seasonal) and the possible exception of roots and tubers (because we can't say for certain which roots and tubers were eaten), is that they do not contain large amounts of simple carbohydrates. This is important because that means that the bulk of the caloric intake of early man was made up of proteins and fats (especially in populations in Europe), with some natural sugars (fructose) and probably some starches (tubers and roots). It doesn't exactly require close scrutiny to see that this is almost a complete reversal from our modern diet that emphasizes carbohydrates and tells us that fats will kill us and red meat is bad for us.

Have you ever wondered about those populations of people who live in the WAY north? Inuit especially. There aren't a lot of greens, fruits, vegetables and berries growing on the shores of Hudson Bay, Greenland, or the north slope of Alaska. Those people and their ancestors live and have lived for upwards of 30,000 years on a diet consisting almost entirely of animal products.  A 25 year study was done of Inuit in the district of Upernavik, Greenland. Approximately 1800 people were included in that study between the years of 1950 and 1974. During that time, only 1 case of diabetes was found. Comparably, a random sample of Europeans would be expected to produce 9 cases of diabetes. These tests in Greenland were done on people who had grown up and lived a subsistence lifestyle, primarily feeding themselves by hunting. With the westernization of the Greenland Inuit diet, this changed. A similar study was done on various populations of Greenland Inuit between 1991 and 2001. That study reported that 9.7% of participants were diabetic. In 25 years, the diabetes rate of Greenland's Inuit went from 0.00056% to 9.7%. Like, WOW, man. And here's the reference: http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/25/10/1766.long

The question then, is what caused this? Inuit people, prior to the mid 1900s lived almost the exact same lifestyle that they had lived for tens of thousands of years. This gives us a very direct link to history, and a clear visual of those peoples' diet. We know what they ate in the 1950s, so we can know pretty much what they ate 10,000 years ago. It's safe to say that the Inuit diet has for a very very long time consisted almost entirely of fats and proteins. Well what happens when you start adding sugars and refined starches (carbohydrates) into that diet?

It's time that we talk about something called the glycemic index, and I'm going to simplify this somewhat so that it doesn't become boring. Everything you eat is broken down into something that your body can use for energy. Your body doesn't use a cheeseburger for energy, or even cheese or burger or bun. It has to be reduced to something that your cells can take in and use for energy. In the case of carbohydrates, they are (with the exception of fiber and some kinds of resistant starches) broken down into glucose. Different foods are broken down at different rates and into different amounts of glucose. The glycemic index is a scale that goes from 0 to 100 that measures the effect that a food has on your blood sugar levels. Pure glucose is 100. Table sugar, which is sucrose (sucrose if half fructose and half glucose), is about 68. If something has no carbohydrates and no sugar in it, like a steak (non-marinaded of course) it has an effective glycemic index (GI) of 0. A baked potato, on the other hand, has a GI of about 85. How can that be? Potatoes don't contain sugar? They don't have to. The starches in potatoes, refined flours, breads, grains, etc, are all broken down by your body, quite quickly, into glucose. This means that you will have higher blood glucose levels, and expectedly a higher glucose spike by eating a baked potato than you would from eating a similar amount of calories of table sugar.

So let's go back to our friends the Inuit of Greenland. For thousands of years, they consumed nearly no carbohydrates as part of their normal diet. Then along comes the western agricultural diet, heavy on grains and cereal products. Soda and potato chips are flown and shipped in and become snacks. What happens when we throw high GI foods at a people that have never eaten them? Their blood sugar spikes. Their body goes HOOOOLY MOOOOLY WHAT IS THIS, and floods their bloodstream with insulin to offset that huge spike in blood glucose levels. After a few years or maybe decades of this, they develop insulin resistance, and eventually diabetes.

So what does this have to do with you? A lot. The same thing is happening to you to some degree. Oh, you might have a better genetic resistance to diabetes, and you might be a few thousand more years removed from the time your ancestors gave up the hunter/gatherer lifestyle and became farmers, but that isn't sufficient time for Homo sapiens to evolve into an animal whose metabolism is geared towards running solely and primarily on glucose. For 99.8 percent of the evolutionary history of mankind, our bodies have found their energy primarily in fats and proteins. And thanks to our governments, the USDA, and some others, your body is powered by industrial agriculture and their products, primarily wheat, barley, and corn -- carbohydrates. This has significant health consequences and most of the general public knows nothing about them. Americans are getting fatter, we're getting diabetes, heart disease, and our life expectancy is actually shrinking. We're told it's because of this and that and sometimes we're even told that it's because of our food, here eat this bowl of oatmeal and you'll be healthier. But it's not true. That oatmeal won't make you healthier. Here take this cholesterol medication before you have a heart attack, never mind that there is zero scientific evidence that statin cholesterol medications reduce the risk of heart attack. It just treats a symptom that our society has been bludgeoned to believe is dangerous. What they won't tell you is that it's not that cheeseburger that's making you fat and raising your risk of heart attack. It's the bun and french fries that you ate with it.

Now, before you write me off as an Atkins disciple or some kind of nutter, understand that I'm not saying that the only way to eat is to have NO carbohydrates in your diet. Clearly there were many populations of early man who did eat carbohydrates in the form of fruits, berries, etc. You probably have genetic makeup to allow you to do this and thrive as well. Our bodies will not break down because of one piece of bread or an apple. But for a typical American, somewhere between 60% and 75% of your calories come from carbohydrates. I'm not going to flat out tell you that this is bad for you. I'm not going to tell you that this is hurting you. I'm going to ask you to use your own functioning brain and ask yourself what you think? So your health isn't what it should be, are you going to follow the advice of a government organization that exists to promote the consumption of agricultural products to decide what is best for your health, or are you going to look to history to see what your "natural" diet should be?

In Part 3, we're going to talk a little bit about what happens to your body when you eat something more in line with what it evolved to eat, and attempt to explain, without getting too complicated, the state of ketosis.