agrarian

Human Health Quadrants
02/19/2010 - 20:41

 

I made this last week hoping to use it as a tool to talk with people about paleo and other alternative diets. It can be often be difficult because so many people tell me that foragers are not healthy and that our modern life is the best. They have images from National Geographic of impoverished "primitives"  and the "didn't they only live to be 30" meme in mind. Often they will tell me that they are so glad for modern life because if they had been born back then they would have died because they need a C-section or had some horrible case of strep throat. 

They aren't really separating environmental issues from food. In much of modern middle class America, our environment is low-risk. Notice that I didn't say better. There are plenty of things wrong with our environment ranging from over-sanitation to lack of sunlight. In fact there might be chronic low grade risks in the modern environment from environmental contamination, too much light, etc. But we generally don't have to worry about risky childbirth, lions, tribal warfare, malaria, tuberculosis, hunting accidents, and all kinds of nasty things that are out there in the wild. 

Our hazards are largely caused by an inappropriate diet that leaves us with obesity, diabetes, cancer, IBS, GERD and other diseases that are almost exclusively present in modern society. The standard american diet leaves us in quadrant III, not worrying about lions, but worrying about blood sugar and BMI instead. Pairing nutrition appropriate for human beings with the benefits of modern life allows us to move to quadrant IV. Notice I include Whole Foods Vegan there. I certainly believe you can lose weight on such a diet, I just don't believe it's an optimal diet. A truly optimal diet like WAPF or paleo allows the possibility of raising truly healthy children with well developed teeth and bones. Personally veganism also wasn't adequate to help me heal from GERD and my teeth weren't in such great shape afterwards either. But I'm throwing a cookie here to vegans that at least don't eat processed crap, vegetable oils, and sugar. They are better off than most, especially if they are utilizing fermentation of grains, legumes, and vegetables. A vegetarian diet that includes fermented dairy and eggs is even closer to being appropriate nutrition for our econiche. 

Modern Hazda Forager

You'll notice that modern hunter-gatherers have less appropriate nutrition and a harsher environment than their paleolithic predecessors. Civilization has pushed them into unwanted land that less oppressed foragers would have shunned. They also struggle with diseases introduced by outsiders.

Nomads and agrarian peasant cultures are also relatively healthy. They are eating neolithic foods, but they have been eating them long enough to know how to derive nutrition from them and minimize their antinutritional factors through fermentation and soaking. Lots of people look at these cultures and think "oh, well I guess their genes adapted to agriculture and it's OK for me to eat this Nutrigrain bar since my ancestors were agrarian." Nope, most of the adaptation was not genetic, but technological. People figured out that if they fermented and limed their corn they didn't have malformed bones. I tell people who are skeptical of paleo to go ahead and eat grains, but at least embrace the technology so many of us have forgotten that allows us to not poison ourselves with them. So many people read about the Tarahumara made famous in Born To Run and think that their health means some boiled corn on the cob is superfood. Wrong- the Tarahumara soak and lime their corn.  

Himba pastoral herder

I don't do grains much myself because while these technologies these traditional societies came up with are amazing, they don't completely rid grains of their problems. Most of these cultures still preferred meat and ate grains and legumes only because they couldn't afford it. Traditional agrarians aren't fat or diabetic, but their height and bone structure just doesn't approach that of coastal foragers from the studies I've read.

Regardless, this chart isn't any sort of rigorously scientific study- we could probably argue for days where to place things, but it's a decent matrix for separating appropriate nutrition from other factors. That's definitely only one part of the picture, but it's a very important part. The other pieces are important too- sunlight, community, loving child rearing, a not too sterile environment,  and being physically active for example. But dealing with the diet is a great first step. 

Comment?: 2
Wild Fermentation
02/18/2010 - 16:10

Learn how to use fermentation to get the most out of your food. And Sandor ferments pretty much everything in this book. A huge variety of valuable information for anyone.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1931498237?ie=UTF8&tag=trevresa-20&linkCode=as2...
Comment?: 0
Simple Steps For A Better Diet
02/16/2010 - 13:02

Outside Magazine recently had one of their reporters try the Paleo Diet for Athletes. His cholesterol improved, but he felt hungry and irritable, which caused him to ultimately dismiss the diet. I think one of the problems with The Paleo Diet for Athletes is that is doesn't do a complete paradigm shift. Eating lots of lean protein and continuing to fear fat is actually not a paleo diet.

I don't believe that paleo diet is a magic diet that I want everyone to follow. However, I do believe thinking about diet in terms of human evolution is extremely valuable. Many of my close friends and family members aren't going to be paleo any time soon either whether it's because they oppose eating animals or because they can't imagine breakfast without oatmeal. Luckily, I think there are simple steps anyone can take to improve their diet using evolution as a lense.

  • Rethink fat. So many people think saturated fat is the villian and soybean oil is going to save us from heart disease. Reading Gary Taube's Good Calories Bad Calories is a good way to allay your fears that fat is the problem. Follow up with Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient by Jennifer McLagan to learn about the health and culinary benefits of fat. Learn about how real food nourishes and fake foods kill with Nina Planck's Real Food. If you are interested in the health of your brain, skin, and other vital organs you can read about the importance of omega-3 fatty acids in The Queen of Fats by Susan Allport.This is also a good time to look at the vegetable oils on your shelves as elucidated by this post in Mark's Daily Apple and deciding which ones are industrial junk and which ones are
  • Banish junk! Whether you are a committed vegetarian or interested in paleo, you can benefit from ditching doughnuts, candy, cookies, chips, and other junk. Sugar Shock by Connie Bennett is a good primer on the problems with sugar. The Whole Soy Story tells you why boca burgers and soy milk might not be such great choices. Explore the drawbacks of grains, particularly gluten, in Going Against The Grain by Melissa Smith. Learn about the consquences of industrial food in The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

  • Think about food evolutionaily! Rethink your perception of paleolithic peoples and hunter-gatherers by reading Jared Diamond's essay The Worst Mistake(FREE) and Weston A. Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration(FREE). Learn about and try the paleo diet. There are many good books that you can start with like The Primal Blueprint or Neanderthin. Plus there are tons of free web resources ranging from blogs to Paleohacks. Question whether "inevitable nuisances" in life like acne, heavy periods, stomach upset, constipation, etc. are inevitable or caused by diet. Try the paleo diet if you can and see if your health improves, maybe you can ID foods that cause problems.

  • Hmm....I don't think this diet is for me, since grains/dairy does't bother me enough, I don't want to eat much meat, etc.. That's OK: you can still benefit from thinking about food evolutionarily. Reducing junk is one big step, but you can go further by reudcing the potential hazards of neolithic foods and unlocking their full nutritional potential through traditional preparations like fermentation and culturing . Learn more about this in the great cookbook Nourishing Traditions or the more vegetarian-friendly Full Moon Feast and Wild Fermentation (more here). You can also simply benefit by improving food quality- eating more nutritious foods like kale, yams, bone marrow, seaweed, grass fed meat, and wild fish. Get rid of boneless skinless chicken breasts and eat pastured pork belly or oysters instead. If you chose to eat grains, then ditch the plastic packaged store-bought bread and learn about fermenting and soaking traditional grains to unlock their nutrition. Follow blogs that promote traditional nutrition like Kelly The Kitchen Kop or The Nourishing Gourmet.

I write this from personal interest. While my boyfriend is interested in health, he doesn't see the need to go paleo and he really doesn't like eating meat. But it's very easy for us to eat nourishing meals together with things like pumpkin soup, sauteed mushrooms, buttered yams, pickled carrots, and garlic kale. Admittedly, I try to steer him away from things like Boca Burgers/soy milk and towards alternatives like homemade fermented dosas, properly soaked beans and farro, and traditional sourdough bread, but those things are delicious, so it doesn't take much convincing.

Comment?: 7
I can haz calories
01/20/2010 - 00:39

 

Someone on a forum was going on and on about grains being A.O.K. because traditional societies like the Japanese or some of Weston A. Price's healthy cultures ate them and were not obese. I think he misses the point, but also underscores a very annoying misconception. Many of my friends have told me that they have no need for anything like the paleo diet because they are skinny and always have been. 

But last time I checked skinny does not equal healthy. There are all kinds of health problems a skinny person can have and new studies show that within a single person insulin sensitivity may vary. Skinny programmers chugging Mountain Dew might be lucky enough to have belly fat tissue that is not insulin sensitive, but they might still be damaging other organs.

A paleo diet is about avoiding diseases of civilization. Obesity is just one of those diseases. I think well-planned veganism can do wonders for improving weight, cholesterol, and other basic measures of metabolic syndrome, but I do not believe it is the diet that brings out the best in the human body. I did raw grain-free veganism for time and like many people I initially felt good, probably because of all the wheat and dairy I wasn't eating, but eventually I just felt diminished. I alternated between fruit-induced sugar highs and extreme fatigue. I mainly just felt hungry. I realized that vegetables just don't have many calories and you have a choice of eating massive amounts of sugar from fruit or massive amounts of omega-6 fatty acids from nuts. I feel the paleo diet has the optimal amount of nutrients, in the best ratios, and in forms that are easily utilized by the human body (bioavailable). That's important, because many of us have damaged our bodies with junk and we need to do more than avoid obesity, we need the nutrients to repair. 

Many other raw vegans, including The Raw Model, a popular raw blogger, have found that their health has improved dramatically since they added animal products.

Societies like the Japanese avoided many problems by eating a diet low in total calories, but they did not reach their potential for height and bone development until fairly recently (incidentally as consumption of meat and fish has increased). It's the same with many agrarian societies: they aren't obese, but they aren't completely healthy either. There is plenty we can learn from peasant diets, but we can do better than peasants who worked a backbreaking day on very little in the way of calories. 

I think a sugar-free vegan or agrarian diet is certainly a step in the right direction and an agrarian diet can be made optimal with the careful addition of small amounts of meat and fish and by the fermentation of grains, dairy, and legumes. But the animal component of the diet has to be foods like liver and sardines, not skinless boneless chicken breast.

In the end people can go on and on about fruits and vegetables, but that's not where the calories are. The big question is where you are going to get the calories and whether you want to burn sugars or fats. Plants might enhance your health, but your fuel is going to make a bigger difference. I encourage anyone who hasn't read Good Calories, Bad Calories to get a copy or at least check out the detailed notes. 

 

Comment?: 0
The Traditional Nutrition Diet
01/16/2010 - 17:11

While paleo dieters eat diverse diets that can include a wide variety of vegetables, the main dish is usually meat. While I think this diet is an optimal one, good meat is expensive and some people just don't feel comfortable eating lots of meat from an ethical, visceral, or spiritual standpoint. My father is a big proponent of paleo, but my mother has told me she doesn't want to eat so much meat. 

This comment on Whole Health source got me thinking about those people:

To restore health, we move our nutritional approach back through time. First stop, Mesolithic. With the elimination of anti-nutrients (wheat, etc.) and the increased variety of food, nutrition becomes near optimal for most. Fat-soluble vitamins are at sufficient levels, either through the inclusion of specific foods (seafoods, organ meats) or supplementation. 

This move to Mesolithic nutrition would likely resolve the vast majority of nutrition-driven health issues in the world today, essentially returning us to the lifestyle and health observed by Dr. Price in the 30's.

I have the limitation of illness, so my attempt to eat traditionally prepared grains and dairy products was not successful, but many people can thrive on this diet, which is espoused by the Weston A. Price Foundation. 

 

 

For people interested in improving their diet this way, I recommend these books:

Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon is a seminal cookbook and textbook on the value of preparing grains, legumes, and dairy the traditional way, as well as getting an abundance of fat soluble vitamins. To get these you only really need to eat a very small amount of high quality animal fat in the form of organ meats, oily fish, and raw dairy. 

Full Moon Feast by Jessice Prentice is another great cookbook that adds on spiritual, social, and local aspects to eating traditionally.

Real Food by Nina Planck is a book that does a great job of spreading the word that eating traditionally is vital for the health of future children. 

Why Some Like It Hot by Gary Nabhan or anything by Gary really. He is a big proponent of traditional crop varieties and much of his work is about how devastating it has been for native peoples to lose their traditional diets. 

These books provide a wealth of valuable information no matter what traditional diet you follow. I own them and use them often. 

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