What is common between meat-eating Eskimos, isolated highland Swiss
living on rye bread, milk and cheese; isolated Scottish island Celts
with a dietary of oat porridge, kale and sea foods; highland central
Africans (Malawi) eating sorghum, millet tropical root crops and all
sorts of garden vegetables, plus a little meat and dairy; Fijians
living on small islands in the humid tropics at sea level eating sea
foods and garden vegetables. What they had in common was that their
foods were all were at the extreme positive end of the Health =
Nutrition / Calories scale. The agriculturists were on very fertile
soil that grew extraordinarily nutrient-rich food, the sea food
gatherers were obtaining their tucker from the place where all the
fertility that ever was in the soil had washed out of the land had
been transported--sea foods are also extraordinarily nutrient rich.
The group with the very best soil and consequently, the best health
of all were, by lucky accident, the Hunza. I say "lucky" and
"accident" because the Hunza and their resource base unknowingly
developed an agricultural system that produced the most nutritious
food that is possible to grow. The Hunza lived on what has been
called super food. There are a lot of interesting books about the
Hunza, some deserving of careful study. (Wrench, 1938; Rodale, 1949)
Finding Your Ideal Dietary
Anyone that is genuinely interested in having the best possible
health should make their own study of the titles listed in the
bibliography in the back of this book. After you do, award yourself
a BS nutrition. I draw certain conclusions from this body of data. I
think they help a person sort out the massive confusion that exists
today about proper diet.
First principle: Homo Sapiens clearly can posses extreme health
while eating very different dietary regimens. There is no one right
diet for humans.
Before the industrial era almost everyone on Earth ate what was
produced locally. Their dietary choices were pretty much restricted
to those foods that were well adapted and productive in their
region. Some places grew rye, others wheat, others millet, others
rice. Some places supported cows, others goats, others had few on no
domesticated animals. Some places produced a lot of fruits and
vegetables. Others, did not. Whatever the local dietary, during
thousands of years of eating that dietary natural selection
prevailed; most babies that were allergic to or not able to thrive
on the available dietary, died quickly. Probably of childhood
bacterial infections. The result of this weeding out process was a
population closely adapted to the available dietary of a particular
locale.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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