Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Sustainable Health

What is important for the "sustainability" of our health?

Some experimentalists over at BBC think we should go back to the diet of our ancestors before agriculture (over 10,000 years ago). The argument is that agriculture is relatively new in our evolutionary history, and perhaps our bodies have not evolved to process the large amounts of grains, dairy, and grain-fed meats agriculture provides.

They decided to test their "evo diet", which basically means eating wild fish, game-meat, nuts, fruits, and vegetables, by feeding 10 subjects this diet for 12 days. In the end, their cholesteral went down by an average of 23%! (note that all the subjects of this study originally ate mostly processed and high fat foods so there was lots of room for improvement).

Obviously processed foods, refined sugars, and meats fattened on grain are new enough that our bodies have not had time to adapt. The question up for debate in my mind: should we really eliminate grains like wheat and rice?

Decide for yourself:
The BBC's Study
The Evolutionary Diet
Human Diet Timeline

1 comment:

Corinne said...

Jon has been trying this diet for three days now, and already his blood pressure has dropped 10 points! It's possible this is completely due to the fact that his diet now has no added salt, and the large amount of fruits and vegetables means he has lost some weight.