The ultimate diet for any animal is the one designed by nature. Any competent veterinarian could tell you this. Sadly, many human doctors and nutritionists appear to be totally blind to this simple fact.
For almost our entire 2.4 million-year history, humans lived as hunter-gatherers. We lived on foods that could be eaten either raw or with a minimum of preparation. Think freshly killed meats, wild vegetables, fruits, berries and nuts. Around 10,000 years ago, human history changed forever. With the adoption of farming, the human diet underwent a massive and fundamental change in a relatively brief space of time. It went from a high-protein regimen based on meats and wild vegetation to a high-carbohydrate pattern based on cereal grains. Remember, this food source was essentially alien to the human digestive tract in its natural state.
Around 150 years ago, our diet underwent another radical change. New technologies allowed for the wide-scale production of sugar, refined flours and extracted vegetable fats. This led to the proliferation of highly processed, calorie-rich but nutrient-poor “convenience” foods.
To top it all off, perfectly healthy animal foods such as meats and eggs were denounced by health “experts.” Cereal grains and other low-fat foods were promoted as the epitome of healthy eating.
The end result is that we humans now get the bulk of our calories from foods that were alien to the human digestive tract for 99.7 percent of its evolutionary history. The Food and Agriculture Organization has found that Americans now get over three-quarters of their calories from staples that were non-existent during the Paleolithic age. Cereal grains now account for 22 percent of calories. Potatoes make up 3 percent. The others: Sugar and other sweeteners (18 percent), vegetable oils (17 percent), dairy products (11 percent) and alcoholic beverages (4 percent). Nutrient-dense staples like meats, eggs, nuts, fruits, vegetables and seafood once furnished nearly all of our calories. They now provide a mere 20 percent of our daily energy intake.
Why is this so bad?
Because to function optimally, our bodies need a plentiful supply of amino acids, vitamins, minerals and trace elements. Our primary source of these elements is the food we eat. But most people shun the nutrient-rich foods we evolved on and instead eat processed foods with poor nutrient content.
Contrary to the claims of health authorities, cereal grains, whether whole or refined, are nutritional weaklings. They contain no vitamin C, no vitamin D, no B12, no vitamin A and (with the sole of exception of yellow maize) no beta-carotene. Cereal grains and legumes also contain high concentrations of substances that researchers refer to as anti-nutrients. Among these are phytate (a substance that binds to minerals and reduces their absorption by the body), pyridoxine glucoside (which has been shown to reduce the availability of vitamin B6 by 75-80 percent), substances that impair vitamin D absorption, and lectins (which may impair healthy immune function and promote leaky gut syndrome).
White flour, highly pervasive in our food supply, has a pathetically low micronutrient content. While it contains relatively high amounts of potassium and phosphorus, it contains miniscule amounts of calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, copper, folate and vitamins B1, B2, B5, B6, E and K. White flour contains no vitamin A, D or B12. Enrichment of flour significantly boosts the iron, folate and vitamin B3 content, and also produces small increases in vitamins B1 and B2. But it does nothing to counter the numerous other nutritional shortcomings of this common staple.
In addition, white flour and finely ground whole-meal flours rate very high on the glycemic index (GI), producing sharp and rapid rises in blood glucose levels. Such rapid spikes in blood sugar are best avoided. They result in wild blood sugar swings that can play havoc with your mood, energy levels and appetite. Repeated on a long-term basis, such spikes in blood sugar set the stage for type 2 diabetes.
Foods made from white flour also have very poor satiety value, says the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In other words, they encourage the consumption of excess calories and increase the likelihood that you will end up overweight.
If you think the nutritional profile of white flour is bad, wait until you get a load of the sugars. Along with vegetable oils, these are the second major source of calories in the American diet. These sweeteners have virtually no micronutrient content whatsoever. They provide nothing but pure calories. Like processed flour, these refined high GI sweeteners send blood sugar levels soaring.
The overwhelming majority of vegetable oil consumed in the U.S. is in the form of soybean oil. Aside from excessive linoleic acid and modest amounts of vitamin E and K, soybean oil contains virtually no other vitamins, minerals or trace elements. And a number of animal and human studies show that linoleic-rich oils like soybean worsen one’s nutritional status by decreasing the absorption of iron, zinc and copper.
Cereal grains, sweeteners and vegetable oils account for a staggering 57 percent of calories consumed in the U.S. It’s little wonder that chronic degenerative disease is rife in modernized nations like America.
Animal foods contain important nutrients that simply cannot be found in plant foods. The list includes carnitine, creatine, carnosine, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), vitamin B12 and (in the case of fatty fish) the critical long-chain omega 3 fatty acids EPA and DHA. Vegetables, nuts and fruits, meanwhile, typically feature antioxidant contents that cereal grains could not even dream of matching.
If you care about your health, start giving modern-day pseudo-foods the cold shoulder. Choose the most nutrient-rich staples you can find. Model your diet on that of our ancestors, who ate fresh meats and non-cereal plant foods.
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