Digestion
It occurs to me that the human organism cannot possibly be designed for large amounts of grain products. Where on earth are we supposed to digest it? The mouth is small, the saliva production capacity limited, and gluten is an abnormality to many of us. In fact, I doubt we were designed (or evolved) to drink non-human milk; the closest mammalian milks to human are whale and pig, in terms of content (although of course Romulus and Remus were supposedly suckled by a she-wolf).
So what then is a healthy human diet based on what apparatus we have?
I think that there must be a major role for meat and fat. Why else do we have this big meat-protein digestive unit called a stomach? And why the concentrated fat emulsifier called a gall-bladder? I suspect that based on such considerations, the typical human should be eating a diet based on meat and fruit. Relatively few people have allergies to meat and fruit, compared to those with allergies or disabilities with respect to gluten and lactose.
Put another way, if you walked around in the wild, without the supposedly civilising benefits of a good oven, what would you eat? Probably grasses and leaves, fungi, fruit and meat. Tubers perhaps. But not the current deluge of baked goods, high in sodium (yes, because baking uses sodium bicarbonate) and other additives designed to make stuff that feels nice to the mouth but is artificial as hell to the gut. You don't find bread growing on trees.
Maybe we should ignore the pithy daft wisdom of the food pyramid which says eat more starch than anything else. Maybe a diet that prolongs life for Mediterranean people or Ainu is one that would kill other people. Maybe the Chinese really are adapted to eat rice.
Most horrifying, humans are obviously evolving towards a bread-based diet. Eventually, the sufferers of coeliac disease and lactose intolerance will perish from the earth and everyone will drink the breast secretions of animals and eat the overcooked remnants of artificially-cultivated grains. I laugh when I see people protesting about 'Frankenfoods'. Your ancestors, dear children, and you yourselves, have made foods a thousand times more artificial than these.
I mean, think about it, we COOK our food. This doesn't happen in nature. It is terribly unnatural. Worse, we sit around chewing the cooked cud that we don't have the ruminant apparatus for digesting. That's just disgusting.
So what then is a healthy human diet based on what apparatus we have?
I think that there must be a major role for meat and fat. Why else do we have this big meat-protein digestive unit called a stomach? And why the concentrated fat emulsifier called a gall-bladder? I suspect that based on such considerations, the typical human should be eating a diet based on meat and fruit. Relatively few people have allergies to meat and fruit, compared to those with allergies or disabilities with respect to gluten and lactose.
Put another way, if you walked around in the wild, without the supposedly civilising benefits of a good oven, what would you eat? Probably grasses and leaves, fungi, fruit and meat. Tubers perhaps. But not the current deluge of baked goods, high in sodium (yes, because baking uses sodium bicarbonate) and other additives designed to make stuff that feels nice to the mouth but is artificial as hell to the gut. You don't find bread growing on trees.
Maybe we should ignore the pithy daft wisdom of the food pyramid which says eat more starch than anything else. Maybe a diet that prolongs life for Mediterranean people or Ainu is one that would kill other people. Maybe the Chinese really are adapted to eat rice.
Most horrifying, humans are obviously evolving towards a bread-based diet. Eventually, the sufferers of coeliac disease and lactose intolerance will perish from the earth and everyone will drink the breast secretions of animals and eat the overcooked remnants of artificially-cultivated grains. I laugh when I see people protesting about 'Frankenfoods'. Your ancestors, dear children, and you yourselves, have made foods a thousand times more artificial than these.
I mean, think about it, we COOK our food. This doesn't happen in nature. It is terribly unnatural. Worse, we sit around chewing the cooked cud that we don't have the ruminant apparatus for digesting. That's just disgusting.
etched with acid at 8:40:00 am
4 Comments:
Most properly educated dieticians and health professionals (note properly educated - can't hardly say that of many of the Singaporean ones) actually now agree that the food "pyramid" should instead be more of a column with a bulge in the center for meat and fruits and veg.
In any case, it is my personal belief that centuries of eating rice (and many years of famine to boot) made us Asian people small and physically weak compared to our European and American counterparts. Not much of an adaptation if you ask me!
To quote a threadless t-shirt: "Meat is murder. Tasty, tasty murder." Heh heh.
Hey Ben, welcome back! *grin* I thought it would be fun to work it out from first principles, not just refer to the latest literature.
I think 'Asian' and 'rice-eating' is an overconflation since the noodle-eating North Asians can get pretty darn big, as can the more Slavic ones who have nothing to eat but trees and wildlife. :)
There's a good point about adaptation to small size though. Tropical people stay cool more easily if small.
None of you have parents who are anti-meat (animal protein saps calcium from the bones, apparently, or something like that) and pro-plant-protein (e.g. tofu), do you? Everything at home (for dinner, that is) is organic, too. Minimal herbicides / pesticides / etc. used on them, no GMOs, no preservatives, all grown as naturally as possible. Then there's the homemade "miso soup" that tastes nothing like the original Japanese one....
Then there's the thing about animal meat such as beef, which is made from cows, and how cows produce so much methane which contributes to global warming, and so if demand for beef is decreased, less cows will be reared for consumption, and the rate of global warming will be decreased as well.
In short: Largely vegetarian meals, which are organic at that, though they have to include some form of meat for me since I love it so much. Though I get the usual disappointed looks from the rest of the table because I'm eating meat. Haiz. Must result from coming from a family of doctors who are concerned when it comes to being healthy, I guess. Very health-conscious lifestyle, this is.
/Sorrows
Sorrows: The problem really is that in place of meat what can you eat without going back to an agrarian diet mixed with ARTIFICIAL levels of vitamin and mineral supplements? Frankly, the vegetarian lifestyle demands that you eat a range of foods that never before in the history of mankind have been gathered together in one place and at that level of development. And they have to fly them in too, thus polluting the atmosphere even more. :)
Post a Comment
<< Home