Did Nature Program Man/Woman To Eat Specific Foods

Did nature have a diet program for humankind? Boyd and Konner in their 1985 report agreed that such a program may have existed, at least by implication, when they wrote, “From about 24 – 5 million years ago fruits appear to have been the main dietary constituent for hominids”. And might I add, fruits did not create overweight and obesity problems for our prehistoric ancestors.

• For almost 20 million years, as far as the records can show, prehistoric men and women ate mainly fruits to maintain their health, growth, activity and reproduction. The large variety of fruits and the ease of reaching them provided our prehistoric ancestors with the required protein and essential amino acids to maintain life. The question is, what transformed man into a meat eater?

• Human anatomy and physiology are poorly adapted to the processing of a meat diet. The gastric juices of humans have less active antiseptic and germicidal properties, thus eating raw meat would have caused prehistoric man severe abdominal discomfort, and was the reason they ate mainly roots, barriers, fruits, nuts and grains.

• The fact that raw meat had to be cooked to denature the protein, melt the fat and break down the fibrous tissues to make it palatable, easily chewable and digestible suggests that man did not eat a significant amount of meat until he was able to harness fire about 500,000 years ago. Before then man was almost entirely a herbivore.

• The jump from being a herbivore to a carnivore might have been forced upon man by climatic changes, or a natural disaster that destroyed the forest along with the fruit bearing trees. A large fire could have done that leaving in its wake charred animals. With their main food supply destroyed, and starving, prehistoric man ate the charred animals, and found them to be palatable. After that they increasingly included meat in their diet.

• Natural carnivores like lions and tigers are anatomically and physiologically adapted to processing a meat diet. They have short intestinal canals, strong secretions of hydrochloric acid to quickly digest and expel the waste products of the meat they consume before putrefaction - the catalyst for degenerative diseases - can occur.

• The intestinal track of humans is 4 times longer than that of a lion or tiger. While the natural carnivore’s intestinal track is smooth to dissolve meat quickly and pass it out of the system, man’s intestinal track is corrugated to keep food as long as possible in the intestines until all nutrients are extracted from it.

• Because man’s intestinal track is poorly adapted to processing meat, it takes too long for the waste product of meat to pass out of the intestines allowing putrefaction to occur. This results in toxemia, which is the beginning of degenerative diseases like obesity, gallstones, colon cancer, hypertension, stroke, heart disease, gout, tooth decay, piles, peptic ulcers and hardening of the arteries.

• In spite of the known health risk, having eaten a diet including flesh foods for more than half a million years and enjoyed it, it is understandable why man is not in a hurry to return to a totally vegetarian diet; not to mention the deficiencies of iron, vitamins B12 and D that tend to result from a vegetarian diet.

• Meanwhile, the human anatomy had changed in response to eating cooked foods. Our jaws and teeth have become smaller, and our stomachs have shrunk. These changes have made man less adapted to living entirely on fruits, vegetables, roots and nuts; and suggest that man will continue to eat cooked flesh foods in the foreseeable future, in order to more easily extract the protein and essential amino acids necessary to maintain life.

• In addition to animal protein, man is consuming increasing amounts of salt, sugar and saturated fat. The consequences of the consumption of such high calorie diet are all around us. The rates of obesity are rising in the general population. The percentage of children who are overweight has doubled in the last 20 years. The percentage of adolescents who are obese has tripled in the last 20 years.

• We have a war on our hands, and it’s a war against ‘calories’. A calorie is a unit of energy. A food with 250 calories means that your body will derive that much energy from eating or drinking it. The body needs calories for energy, but if you eat more calories than you can burn through activity, the excess calories are converted to fat that lead to overweight and eventual obesity.

• Certain thyroid problems and genetic factors are involved in weight gain and obesity, but their effects are magnified by the quantity and type of foods we eat. Work with your nutritionist on healthy food choices, appropriate portion sizes and new ways of preparing food.

Effective weight control is a function of vigorous physical exercise on the one hand, and the amount of daily calories intake on the other. Check your daily recommended calories intake and take the necessary steps to maintain a healthy weight. The control of calories intake through our food choices may well be Nature’s diet program for humankind.