past to improve our future health*
Posted By _Dr John Briffa_ On January 1, 2010 @ 8:14 pm In
_Diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome_, _Food and Medical Politics_, _Healthy
Eating_, _Unhealthy Eating!_, _Weight Loss__
<http://www.drbriffa.com/blog/2010/01/01/editorial-reminds-us-of-the-importance-of-looking-to-our-nutritional-past-to-improve-our-future-health/print/#comments_controls>_
My last post here detailed just a few relatively easy-to-apply lifestyle
changes that might make good New Year resolutions. One of them, was to
eat a 'primal' diet – essentially a diet based on the foods we've been
eating the longest in terms of our time on this planet. The record
suggests that for the vast majority of our time here we've subsisted on
a diet made up of animal foods (e.g. meat, fish and eggs), fruit,
vegetables, nuts and water. The exact make-up of the diet would have
varied according to precise location and environment (e.g. relatively
more animal and less plant food further from the equator), but what our
ancestral diet most certainly did not contain was piles of grain and
dairy products, along with things like refined vegetable oils, refined
sugar, artificial sweeteners and processed, chemicalised fats found in
many foods including margarine.
Just a couple of days ago in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
was published an editorial which reminds us of the potential importance
of getting back to our nutritional roots [1]. In this editorial, the
authors make the point that our genetic make-up was selected for
behaviours and an environment (including diet) for humans appearing in
Africa between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago. Now, since that time,
certain adaptations have taken place (e.g. skin colour and the retaining
after infancy of the milk sugar digesting enzyme lactase by some of the
human population). However, as the authors point out, "core biochemical
and physiological processes have been preserved" [2].
As humans migrated around the globe and cultures changed, the authors
argue, our diet and activity changed in a way that made it impossible
for genetic evolution to keep pace. The result? Complex degenerative
diseases including atherosclerosis (the usual underlying process in
heart disease and stroke), several forms of cancer, obesity and type 2
diabetes.
According to the authors of the editorial, few would deny that
conventional nutritional advice is not working. And they suggest that
what would help would be a more rapid shift in thinking towards a diet
that gets us closer to "humanity's biological baseline". They quote a
recent scientific paper [3] which asserts that "It is difficult to
refute the assertion that if modern populations returned to a
hunter-gatherer state then obesity and diabetes would not be the major
public health threats they now are".
As we enter a new decade, perhaps more than any other time in history do
we need a radical rethink of what truly constitutes a healthy diet. For
too long now we have been 'fed' the idea that the low-fat, high-carb
diet is king. The results of this persistent public health message, and
our acting on it, appear to have been an unmitigated disaster judging by
the soaring rates of obesity and diabetes we've seen in westernised
cultures.
Enough is enough. There is more than enough evidence, I think, to
demonstrate that looking to our nutritional past will be how we can
improve our health and the health of future generations.
*References:*
1. Eaton SB, et al. Diet-dependent acid load, paleolithic nutrition, and
evolutionary health promotion. Am J Clin Nutr 30 Dec 2009 [epub ahead of
print]
2. Smith E, et al. Universality in intermediary metabolism. Proc Natl
Acad Sci USA 2004;101:13168-73
3. O'Rahilly S. Human genetics illuminates the paths to metabolic
disease. Nature. 2009;462:307-14.
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Article printed from Dr Briffa's Blog: *http://www.drbriffa.com*
--
Norma Bridge, Dip ION FdSc
Essentia Nutrition
+44 (0)7791 890 541
www.essentianutrition.co.uk
Member of the British Association for Applied Nutrition & Nutritional Therapy (BANT)
Nutrition Therapy Council Registered Practitioner (NTC)
Dip NT Clinical Studies Tutor - Premier International
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