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A theory of diet and weight The main reason that people give up special diets after a while is that they simply can’t do them any longer. Why? Because diets are by definition for the short term. Do you see any other living creature going on a diet? Of course not. The only non-human that may be on a diet are animals and birds we keep as pet. Dieting is a very human-specific activity. So the question to ask is this. How is it that human beings who can solve the most complex problems go so wrong in something as basic as food choices? Why do people spend billions of dollars each year on diet products? And why is it that obesity is growing despite increased awareness? The answers do not lie in simple diet plans. Part of the answer lies in our human evolution. For thousands of years human species evolved and survived in the most demanding environment. To ensure that we did not die off as a species, we have evolved to eat across the widest variety of foods. In some ways, we were so fragile yet gifted with the need to survive, that our bodies were built to adapt to the most rapid changes in food availability. Most living species live on single food groups or items. Humans, on the other hand, not only can develop a taste for foods that they have not eaten before but actually have the genetic capability to endlessly experiment with food choices. Without this ability to taste new foods, and adapt our bodies to new food sources, we would have been eliminated as a species long ago. Today most of us can eat meat, fish, grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, dairy. But it was not always like this. There existed a time when our ancestors ate mostly meat ( protein), fruit and some vegetables ( mostly root). Many did not have access to dairy products nor did they have the ability to cultivate and farm. Should we eat like our ancestors? In recent years there is a call by some to eat what is known as Paleolithic diet. This stone-age diet was the diet of the hunter/gatherer. The theory makes a good reading but the advocates are missing an important point of our evolutionary history. It is that at each stage of our dietary development, our ancestors were responding and adapting to a need imposed on them. If we did not have the genetic capability to discover, taste and assimilate new foods, we would not be here as a species today. So when human started looking beyond the limited food provided by their hunting and gathering, it was in response to a compelling need. So great was our ability to eat and survive on new foods, that we continued to grow in numbers even during the most challenging times. While other creatures which depended on a single food type or item died or survived in limited numbers, we moved on. Animals, birds and aqua life learned the benefits of seasonal migration so they could find food and survive until the seasons changed in their native land, human beings expanded their food choices in their immediate surroundings. Was agriculture a giant blunder? The advocates of Paleolithic diet argue that the discovery of farming and agriculture were a big mistake for which we are still paying the price. Are they right? No. They are quite wrong. Without agriculture and the ability to grow, harvest and store grains, we would have fought a very simple battle with animals sharing our areas of living and most likely have died or stopped progressing. Agriculture freed us from the need to hunt and gather. It allowed us to devote our time to more human pursuits. We would not be where we are without agriculture. Those who argue that we never really adapted to eating agricultural produce are wrong because they are denying the very thing that makes us unique as humans.The ability to eat and survive on new foods quickly. Compared to the hunter/gatherers, the people who began to farm lived longer and better. So having learned to survive in periods of extremely limited food supply, how did we get to a stage where we are unable to take care of ourselves when there is so much available all the year round? The answer to our present day obesity may lie in one word- abundance. It seems that if there is one condition that evolution has not prepared us for, it is the condition of abundance and uninterrupted supply of food. Learning from famine, disaster and disease, we evolved to survive on whatever was available. Often in limited quantities. It was not like there was meat all year long or that there was enough grain through the year. So we ate what was available and we learned to adapt our bodies to new food groups. Rare becomes common For a species that evolved to eat across the widest variety of foods, we have in the past 50 years or so become dependent on the smallest number of foods. And we have made common what was once rare. Where honey was treasured in most cultures because it was so rare and tasteful, the modern equivalent of honey i.e sugar is all too easily available and consumed. While we evolved to survive in tough conditions, we as a species never anticipated that there would be a time when food supplies would never run out. In the distant past our ancestors would push their bodies to accept the least digestible food if needed, we now eat the most easily digested food. So dependent have we become on the processed and prepared food, that most of us would not survive a season if there was no supermarket. The sugar epidemic We over-consume sugar. Historically almost all cultures had times of feast and festival. Typically these coincided with the start or the end of a harvest or a great hunt or a great achievement that benefited the community. If sweets were consumed in any artificial form, it was during these special occasions. The feast was usually followed by period of some days of rest and then by a season of hard physical work. In a whole calendar, there would perhaps be no more than 2 weeks during which people at specially prepared food rich in fat and sugar. We now eat more sugar in 2 weeks than our forebears did in a whole year. We are eating against our evolutionary conditioning. It may be that in a few generations we would learn to live with obesity and we would genetically adapt to obesity without harmful health problems. But that is a big if. The carb debate While we need carbohydrate for energy and health, what we do not need are the simple breads, refined rice and grain, and sugar-rich foods. These are empty calories that put our bodies under great strain. Cutting back on rice, pasta, breads, cookies, chips etc,. will force us to look for the natural sources of carbohydrate calories. Evolution conditioned us beautifully to flourish on protein (meat, fish, chicke etc), vegetables, fruits and nuts and only the smallest amount of unrefined grains. Let us eat the way we once did before the miller and the baker took control of our lives.
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