Evolution & Nutrition
Indigenous peoples have no diabetes—because their bodies have adapted to the diet their ancestors have eaten for millions of years. This insight raises important questions about our modern diet.
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Food is such a complicated thing. When you visit a zoo and walk past the peccary enclosure, you might notice a sign describing the animal, its behavior, and its natural diet. Really, it doesn't matter which species we're talking about. The fact is:
Animals eat what's available in their environment, largely in the form they find it.
For peccaries, that means roots, fruits, nuts, seeds, small (dead) animals, and insects. Remarkable, isn't it? This could actually describe the diet of a human living in the wilderness—the way we've lived for over 99.5% of our evolutionary history. You can be certain that such humans also get out of bed without coffee, are capable and healthy.
Instead, we're looking at a society of complainers. Who even knows complete health anymore?
When you examine study results, you might conclude: eating, i.e., consuming food, makes you sick. After all, hot off the press comes another study showing that advanced diabetes can simply be reversed—essentially healed—through strict calorie restriction, i.e., eating less. This finding isn't new. And another study shows that with a fasting protocol—also eating less—you can slow cognitive decline (Alzheimer's and the like) in animal models.
In fact, evidence is mounting that a body functioning autonomously ... works quite smoothly. That's why fasting is a remedy. The body, in its original state, functions. Only, life dictates that at some point we need to source energy and nutrients from our environment. That's called eating.
And for most of us: the moment we open our mouths and consume food, the body becomes sick.
The joke is: that's completely normal. For precisely this reason, evolution exists. And over two or three million years, it shaped humans so that certain foods are no longer toxic to us. That's called adaptation. Genetically appropriate eating. Since peccaries have eaten the same thing for hundreds of thousands of years, they're simply fit and healthy.
It's different with humans. Humans broke with evolution at the latest in the 20th century. Since then, they drink isolated sugar and eat cake made with refined grain. The double sin now is that a European eats rice from Asia, chocolate from America, and mango from India and Polynesia. Nothing against these foods, but strictly speaking, a European organism doesn't know these foods.
That's why there are always such amusing developments—like the Mediterranean diet. Supposedly particularly healthy. Yes, certainly for people in southern Europe. But for people in colder climates?!
Quite new is the Southern European Atlantic Diet. This dietary pattern, originating mainly in northern Portugal and Galicia, is based on "high consumption of fish, seafood, grains, potatoes, legumes, fruits, dairy products, and vegetables. Meat, preferably lean meat, is consumed in moderation, as are eggs and wine." This is supposedly the ideal diet for people there—scientists jumped on it and promptly found that this diet protects against disease. Well, well!
Back to diabetes and cognitive decline. Of course, an Aboriginal person doesn't have diabetes. But they face a drastically elevated risk if they move to a modern city. It's so dramatic that Australia has major efforts to educate indigenous peoples and people descended from Aboriginal Australians about this. Of course, someone living indigenously in the Bolivian rainforest has a drastically lower rate of cognitive decline. "The prevalence of dementia in this cohort is among the lowest in the world." – All thoroughly studied.
And of course, they're healthy for that very reason: they live the way humans have always lived. Without coffee and cake at 3 PM. Without chips, without Snickers. Without Nutella sandwiches. For many, apparently, that's particularly hard to understand. So this week we offer the following "caricature": Why the peccary is healthy.
