At Darwin’s Table

The Paleo Diet paradigm specifies that we as humans evolved to eat a diet high in protein and non-saturated fats, and low in carbohydrates – with most coming from vegetables and fruit. This diet is considered as optimal for our health and is based off of the observation that 10,000 years ago, at the start of the agricultural revolution, humans settled and their diet became largely grain based. At this time humans got shorter, skinnier, and their bone health deteriorated markedly, providing evidence that the Paleo Diet was the way to go. However, one caveat is that this would be expected in any population that gives up on fat and protein and starts to almost exclusively consume grains. This does not suggest that grains are bad per se but rather that they are bad when they are all that is consumed. With fat and protein missing from the diet, you would expect huge health consequences and the overall health of the population to drop. But as new foods were found, new cooking methods developed, and new ways of raising or growing food discovered, you would expect the health to begin to return to normal. This type of bottleneck is often seen in many animal species that need to adapt to new environments. Since leaving the dietary ways of paleolithic ancestors, other traditional societies began to consume foods not on the Paleo menu, but still showed the same levels of good health with no modern diseases of civilisation – heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome etc. 

One obvious example, which I will talk about today, is the Massai, a nomadic tribe in Kenya and Tanzania. These are african pastoralists and in my opinion seem to be the missing link between hunter gatherers and agriculturalists. Hunter gatherers never farmed or grew their food and always, well, hunted and gathered. On the other end of the spectrum we have the agriculturists which typically grew their own food and remained ’settled’ in one location. The pastoralists seem to sit somewhere in the middle. They did grow their own cattle, but were herders, and so would move the cattle to greener pastures as required. Thus, they neither hunted (but they did gather), nor did they remain settled in one spot. What this group predominantly consumed was the milk, blood and meat of the cattle. This diet was 60% fat and half of this was saturated fat. Below you can see a video of some Massai tribal members drinking the blood of cattle. 

This group showed exceedingly good health, with no modern diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer, and had extremely health blood lipid profiles. Scientists believed that this group probably developed some genetic adaptation that allowed them to consume this diet. But then they found that when tribal members of this group settled in towns or cities, and began to consume a modern diet, they found that their cholesterol sky rocketed and their children were born skinnier and shorter and were far less healthy. Can we see the connection? This is strikingly similar to the hunter gatherers that settled after the agricultural revolution and suddenly became shorter, skinnier and worse off in health. This brings up two interesting points for me. The first is that when any civilisation begins to subsist solely on one type of food (ie refined carbohydrates) a decline in health results. This is what seems to be happening in the west with most of our food becoming increasingly carbohydrate based. Everything is made of corn, even cows, and so we are making the historical mistake of relying on a specific food source, which has ultimately lead to our decline in health.

The second point I would like to make is that populations can be exceedingly healthy on foods that were not typical of the hunter gatherer diet. Massai live largely off milk, a substance not found in diets of hunter gatherers, as well as been high in saturated fats. One important difference to note is that the nutrient composition of the milk of Massai cattle, which feed on grass, would be very much different than the processed, homogenised, pastereurised milk of today. In fact, a recent study in Europe attempted to show that milk was bad because it caused allergies. So to prove this theory they measured the amount of allergies in farm children and compared them to city children, thinking that they would find more allergies in farm kids that drank more milk. WRONG. What they found was that farm children had 70% less allergies than the city children and when they looked at the diet the major difference was that these children were drinking farm milk, not processed milk. One reason for this can be shown in the omega 3/omega 6 ratio of grass fed vs grain fed cows seen below. 

                      From http://www.eatwild.com/articles/superhealthy.html

You can see that the milk from grass fed cows has the favourable 1:1 ratio of omega 3: omega 6 which is shown to reduce inflammation and reduce the chances of getting many of the modern diseases of civilisation. Another example is dairy products, those from grass fed cows taste delicious, and they have a bright yellow color that is visible proof of their bonus supply of the anti-oxidant carotenes. Then compare it with the gross orange colour of cheese from grain fed cows and everyone can notice the difference. When I went to do my post doctorate in the USA for one year I was amazed and disgusted at how orange the cheese was and how processed it tasted. 

So perhaps the question is – are we adapted to eat a wide range of foods? Just because we did not eat the food during our evolutionary past does not mean that it will not be beneficial for our health. The obvious example I have brought up is saturated fats. Published research by Dr Loren Cordain has shown that approximately 10-15% of the total fats eaten by hunter gatherers were saturated fats. Yet, the French paradox, the Massai, as well as Anna at against the grain, the modern forager and mark from marks daily apple, are testimony to the fact that humans can survive on this source of fats with negligible health risks. 

Michael Pollan, in his book ‘In Defence of Food’ states this very eloquently. 

Various populations (have) thrived on diets that were what we’d call high fat, low fat, or high carb; all meat or all plant; indeed, there have been traditional diets based on just about any kind of whole food you can imagine. What this suggests is that the human animal is well adapted to a great many different diets. The Western diet, however, is not one of them

I think he brings up a good point. Eat whole foods and eat a diverse range. So as a result I want to test this theory. For the next two weeks I will eat a diet high in protein and fats, and will include saturated fats and some whole grains. I will keep my carb limit around, or below, 150g and will only eat unprocessed whole grains, not the highly refined dangerous types that are the typical fare of today. This same rule applies for saturated fats. Only those that are not a part of junk food and are REAL food. Of course no processed oils either – only olive, avocado and fish oils.  During this process I will make a mental note of how I am feeling and any changes I notice. At the end I will make a decision based off of my experience on whether these are foods that I wish to add to my diet.

Food

So I am very excited about this project of mine and there is nothing more I love than some self experimentation/exploration. As far as I can see its win/win. Either I realise at the end of two weeks that I feel worse off and I havn’t lost weight, and so learn that whole grains and saturated fats are not for me OR I realise that whole foods, in whatever shape or form, are ok for our (my) genome. So to start my self discovery I went and got supplies. I bought some whole wheat flour, oats, butter and non-homogenised farm milk. 

One interesting thing I learn’t today is that New Zealand has stricter regulations on the processing of flour than most countries. For one, bleaching flour, is banned. Also the grinding process is a lot more efficient and we typically get about 75-80% of the entire wheat in white flour, which is a lot higher than in the USA. Regardless, I am not having white flour, I am having the full whole wheat flour, as I want to keep it as unprocessed as possible. Additionally, we also only have grass fed cows and so having to try and find grass fed meat is a non-issue as that is all there is available. But this is the point! I don’t know everything and am constantly learning everyday. So, if anyone notices that I am doing something they think is whacky please let me know, I would really appreciate all the help, advice, criticism, encouragement and praise I can get (hint hint). 

So what did I eat? For breakfast I made some porridge with a banana and the real non-homogenised milk. The milk was creamy and delicious. The oats tasted weird, probably because I havn’t eaten them for a long time. They certainly sat in my stomach for awhile too. But despite the huge carb hit, I didn’t have cravings afterwards and I was able to keep going until about 2pm before eating again. 

Next up I started baking some whole wheat bread for lunch. Basically this consisted of whole wheat flour, yeast, honey, salt and water. Once cooked it came out really really well!!

Because I had already had a big carb hit I didn’t want to overdo it. So I only used a third of the bread I made (which wasn’t much and I ended up using about 70g). The picture you see is the remaining bread that I have stored away until tomorrow. I made a hollandaise sauce, which consisted of mashing a knob of butter into an egg yolk, and placing it into a glass bowl above simmering water (if your doing this make sure that the bowl does not touch the water – it cant get too hot). I added the juice from a lemon, and then I slowly added little knobs of butter (up to about 50g). I poached some eggs in the simmering water at the same time, and when finished served the eggs, and hollandaise sauce, over some sliced tomatoes on the whole wheat bread. 

By this time my carb count was getting towards 100g. So I decided for dinner I was going to have a chicken pot roast. I had put a whole chicken into a slow cooker in the morning, with some olive oil, and I let it cook all day. At about 5pm I got it out and it was literally falling off the bone. Not quite the desired result as I wanted to roast it in the oven for another 20 mins to crispen up the skin and serve a tomato sauce over it. But because it was falling apart I had to just combine it to the tomato sauce. The tomato sauce consisted of the juices from the chicken, some whole tomatoes that I boiled and removed the skin, an onion, bayleaf, garlic, spanish olives, rosemary, salt and peppercorns. It kind of doesn’t look as good as it tasted. But it tasted good. How could it not with all that fat right?

Nutrition