Eat no evil

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If I ate more it would make my mother very happy. However, it may be healthier to eat less. The monkeys above are about the same age, but the one on a calorie restriction diet looks far better. His diet, however, sucks. A similar human named Vyff “eats once a day, usually a lean chicken breast poached in water, some steamed broccoli or squash and maybe a glass of fresh orange juice.” The reason, I think, is that humans have – as in many things – gone a bit too far.

Basically, we’re eating too much, and bad stuff. The high quantities of starch, sugars and fats we consume put a lot of strain on our bodies. Heart disease and obesity are now much bigger killers than starvation. How did this happen?

Prehistory

To quote Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel:

Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunger-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5′ 9” for men, 5′ 5” for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 B. C. had reached a low of only 5′ 3” for men, 5′ for women. By classical times heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant ancestors.

Among other things. Hunter gatherers are in many ways healthier, happier and more fit than their agricultural descendants. They have a more balanced diet, exercise more and are less prone to famine and shortage. This is not to say that I don’t like the modern world, but one consequence of building an artificial world is that it’s taking us a few millenia to catch up to the balance built into the natural world.

History

History is all about the headlong rush towards progress. Constant improvement, development, etc. The point, however, is that we haven’t got there yet. It’s kinda like when you mess up your room to clean it, or tear down a house to renovate it. Things kinda suck for a while. All the promise of modern technology has yet to be realized and in the meantime it often increases inequality and decreases quality of life.

That is, the benefits of technology (like agriculture) often accrue to a certain class which lives like kings. Under agricultural serfdom, the kings and things would literally get the grain and the serfs would get a pittance. This did lead, however, to a gradually accumulating future where people could be doctors and lawyers and artists, this opportunity gradually accruing to more people.

However

However, hunter gatherers don’t necessarily eat less. This caloric restriction actually goes a bit beyond, but that may make sense given our more sedentary lifestyles. Personally, I do try to eat a bit less and skip dinner. Monks, for example, generally only eat two meals a day. However, this tends to cause social problems. Dinner is probably the most social meal, but also bad for you cause the food tends to sit. In Sri Lanka, also, a two AM meal is also popular (Pilawoos, Sugar Burger), which is the worst possible from a digestive viewpoint.

More to the point, for any meal Sri Lankans heap on the rice and act hurt if you don’t accept. This leads to b’ath bada (rice belly), gastritis, etc. Sri Lankans don’t get fat per se, but we get pot bellies and men especially tend to drink and eat themselves into oblivion. I think I’ve digressed but the point is that we should basically eat a bit less. To quote another article, eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

Posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 in Behavioral Economics, food, Health, Nature.