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Just as individual genetics
and environmental conditions influence your nutritional requirements,
millions of years of evolution have also shaped your need for specific
nutrients. The implication? Your genes which control every function
of your body are essentially the same as those of your early ancestors.
Feed these genes well and they do the job keeping you healthy. Give
these genes nutrients which are unfamiliar or in the wrong rations and
they can go awry, ageing faster, malfunctioning and becoming diseased.
According to S Boyd Eaton MD, one of the foremost authorities on prehistoric
diets, modern diets are out of sync with our genetic requirements. He
makes the point that the less you eat like your ancestors, the more
susceptible you will be to diseases of civilisation. To chart the right
direction for improving your current or future nutrition you have to
understand and often adopt the diets of the past.
The Origins of Life
It is written that the chemical reactions which lead to the first forms
of life some 3.5 billions years ago were most likely triggered by 'Free
Radicals'. Because free radical oxidation was so destructive, anti-oxidant
defences including vitamins developed soon after to ensure the survival
of life. Over the next several million years it appears that many more
molecules amino acids, lipids, vitamins and minerals formed and helped
construct countless forms of life. In turn, these life forms became
dependent upon essentially the same group of nutrients.
There is evidence that 99% of our genetic heritage dates from about
40,000 years ago and 99.9% of our genes were formed before the development
of agriculture about 10,000 years ago.
From Yesterdays Genes to today's Diet
Prior to agriculture, all people were hunter gatherers; they gathered
various fruits and vegetables to eat and hunted animals for their meat.
Until they began cultivating grains and livestock, they rarely, if ever,
drank milk beyond infancy or ate grains. With the spread of agriculture,
people shifted from nomadic groups to larger societies to enable them
to tend the fields. Culture and knowledge flourished. People also began
consuming large amounts of milk, grains and domesticated meat.
The diet changed even more dramatically after the Industrial Revolution.
From about 1900 whole grains were routinely refined removing much of
their nutrient value and refined sugar became common place. Reflecting
on the changes in 1939 nutritionist Jean Bogert said:
"The machine age had the effect of forcing upon the people within industrial
nations the most gigantic human feeding experiment ever attempted".
This statement does not even take into account the further modernisation
of the last 60 years which has seen increased use of chemical preservatives,
the launch of designer processing, eradication and most recently, genetically
modified food! It could be said that the many dietary changes over the
past 10,000 years have out-paced our ability to genetically adapt to
them. The vast majority of our genes are ancient in origin, which means
that nearly all our bio-chemistry and physiology are fine tuned to conditions
of life that existed before 10,000 years ago. Looked at in another way,
100,000 generations of people were hunter gatherers. Five hundred generations
have depended on agriculture, only 10 generations have lived since the
start of the industrial age and only two generations have grown up with
highly processed foods! The problem is that our environment has changed
but our genes have not. Small wonder we have so many new diseases of
civilisation?
Source
A Williams, Editor, Nature's Own
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