2 — First Principles of Human Nutrition

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Episode Transcript

This is the Eat Ancestral podcast number two.  So it seems like humans, by and large, have forgotten what to eat. Especially modern humans living in the more 'developed' and technologically-advanced civilizations on Earth right now. There's a lot of bickering that goes on over the finer details. We've got carnivores, we've got vegans. and everything in between. The modern nutrition guidelines are as clear as mud. And most people can't make heads nor tails of the situation. And so I think that's the price we've paid for prioritising the minutiae over some more fundamental truths on the topic. And that's what I'm here to offer you today are some first principles of human nutrition. What we should be eating and why. And I've tried to strip back as much of the unnecessary details as possible, and really hone in on a higher-level, strategy-level perspective on human nutrition, so hopefully, this simplifies things for you. I think the best place to start is to just talk about how humans have a lot in common. You know, we've been given this very progressive idea these days, that we're all unique snowflakes, and what works for one person does not work for another. And to a certain extent, that's true. There's a lot of individuality here. But at the end of the day, humans as a species, we are not so different you and I. We share a common history, a common biology, physiology, anatomy, anthropology, and more. And from these areas of hard scientific inquiry, I think we can construct some nutritional first principles that apply across the board, to all humans, regardless of our race, or ethnicity, or ideology, or location, or physical activity, or whatever. That's the point of something like foundations or first principles. And if we can't agree on these principles, and if we don't understand these ideas, then I don't think we'll agree on or understand anything. So this is the place to start, we have a lot in common. We are all homo sapiens. And we should be able to figure out what our species is more suited to eating.  Okay, so first principle on my list here of nutritional first principles. Humans are omnivores. So homo sapiens, that's you, and our earlier hominid ancestors have consumed a mixed diet for millions and millions of years. This means that we can safely consume a lot of foods from each of the plant, animal and fungi kingdoms. However, we must remember that all of our food options are certainly not equal. Some foods are going to be of high quality, so rich in energy and nutrients, and only minimal preparation is necessary. Other foods are going to be of lower quality and can be mildly indigestible, or even lethal, particularly if you don't know how to prepare them. So there's a spectrum here, low quality to high quality foods. And we have to be aware of how to prepare things. Fortunately, for us ancestors have done a lot of the heavy lifting here, and documented food preparation methods long ago. Unfortunately, most modern humans, and the corporations to whom we've outsourced a lot of our food preparation to, have completely forgotten the need for them. Or, in the case of corporations, straight up ignored them because they don't add to the bottom line. But anyway, the moral of the story here is that humans are omnivores. We can eat a bit of everything, if we do it, right. Okay, let's go one layer deeper. So humans are omnivores, but our anatomy would indicate that we have a specialisation. So number two on our list of first principles is that humans need animal foods. I know that's not a popular idea these days. And this is probably a parting of the ways for some people. I wish you luck. Enjoy the broccoli. But if we look at our specialisation, our anatomical specialisation, it seems to be favoured towards eating animal foods, especially meat. Now anthropologists will tell us that humans have evolved away from the diet and lifestyle of our gorilla, and chimpanzee cousins, who live in the trees and mostly plants and fungi, and towards a lifestyle of hunting large game animals, which brought with it a diet rich in animal foods. There's a good argument here, to suggest that this departure from the trees is what made us human, and is what gave us a bigger brain. So something to consider there. And as our species has spent, now, millions of years depending on a high intake of animal foods, our physiology has evolved to expect them and actually to need little else. And if we take a look at it, in animal foods, we find all of the nutrients the human physiology needs in order to thrive. But the same cannot be said for plants and fungi, which is why this principle is written the way it is. It seems like we need animal foods. But we don't necessarily need plants and fungi. You can be a healthy carnivore. Whether or not you can be a healthy plant based person is still up for debate, I guess. But we don't really have much evidence for that. Many human cultures have followed animal based diets. Our extremely modern culture seems to be trying to go the other way. But, you know, there are many examples here: the Inuit, and the Eskimo. Sorry, the Inuit or the Eskimo. I don't know what name they prefer. And the North American Indians have both been observed to live long, robust, healthy lives, maintain good reproduction, and most importantly, in something Western civilization has not managed to do, remain free of chronic disease. Yet they almost exclusively, have been observed to eat meat. There's another group called the Hadza, who live in modern day Tanzania, one of the last remaining hunterer-gatherer tribes on the planet. They prefer animal foods, and they barely eat vegetables. So we have some good examples of, not just studies, but actual people, generations of people who have lived on these diets and seem to be doing a hell of a lot better than us. And it might seem strange, but we've just been sold a lot of untruths about meat over the last 50-100 years. When we take a look at it, pound for pound animal foods like red meat are much more satiating and nutrient rich, and the nutrients are more usable, or absorbable by the body, by the human body compared to plants and fungi. So there's a lot here to unpack. But basically, when you keep all of this in mind, it seems that, like most of our human ancestors did, the majority of our daily energy and nutrient requirements should come from animal foods. Again, this is the way our much healthier ancestors ate for an extremely long time and our physiology, our anatomy seems to be well adapted to it. Another way of thinking about it is that your body expects you to behave this way. So a couple of side notes here, I know these questions will come so i'm going to pre-empt them. Saturated fat and cholesterol, you might be wondering, what about those? Well, turns out they are essential nutrients. If you look at human breast milk, which is unequivocally agreed on as the gold standard for human nutrition, it is a rich source of both saturated fat and cholesterol. So that should tell you all you need to know. Your own mother's biology is not trying to kill you. This notion stems from the Lipid hypothesis or the Diet-Heart hypothesis, which was popularised in the 1950s and 60s by some wanker in the United States, and it was nothing more than a hypothesis. It ignored cultures like the French, who eat loads of saturated fat, and tried to put together something that sort of made conceptual sense. Fat clogs the arteries, like fat clogs a drain pipe. But yeah, you're not a you're not a drain pipe. So yeah, it turns out swapping out butter for margerine and vegetable oils, just dug the modern disease hole even deeper. So I wouldn't worry about those saturated fat and cholesterol turned out to be health foods. Side note number two, if you get your animal foods from the right sources, and you spend enough money on them, and they're of high enough quality, it's far more ethical and sustainable, than your plant-based buddies have probably been telling you. More on that later.  Okay, number three, on our list of first principles of human nutrition. Humans enjoy eating plants and fungi. So while we don't absolutely need the plants and fungi, eating only animal foods does seem kind of boring. And all about you, but I've tried this. And to me, it seems like it's just nice to have variety. We're only here for a certain amount of time. There's something about novel tastes and textures. Nothing wrong with a bit of mouth pleasure. And as well, if you think about this in an evolutionary sense, if you've ever been hunting, you'll know that some times you come back empty handed, which means you got to find something else to eat. So maybe you'll pick some fruit, or dig up some tubers, or whatever else, climb a tree, steal some honey from the bees, whatever it is. So while we don't absolutely need to eat plants and fungi to survive, to thrive, seems like a lot of us enjoy them. So let's talk a little bit about your options when it comes to plants and fungi. Fruit seems well-tolerated, is evolutionarily consistent, and when it's in season, it's delicious. Just note the many modern fruits are much sweeter than those our ancestors ate. And that we have this almost unnatural access to certain fruits at certain times of the year due to modern supply chains. So I would suggest that if you are, for example, living in North America or Northern Europe, and you're eating bananas in the dead of winter, that that is perhaps not consistent with what our ancestors experienced. And so perhaps not such a great idea. Moving on, fungi seem to get on reasonably well with humans. The culinary varieties of mushrooms add great flavours to dishes, especially when paired with meat, ironically. Others are medicinal or psychedelic and some mushrooms are deadly. So choose them wisely. In terms of vegetables, they offer us a an easy way to diversify our diets, but be aware that they can become problematic if we overeat them. You know, maybe don't eat potatoes at every meal, especially if you're not strength training and you know, actually deserving of them. So another thing to note here with vegetables, and this is the case with grains, seeds, nuts, legumes, beans, many foods from the plant and fungi kingdoms. They can cause digestive issues if we don't prepare them properly. So this is important because chronic damage to the gut leads to things like autoimmune disease. So we need to be quite careful here. We can leverage some ancestral food preparation methods like fermentation, for example, think about something like sourdough bread here, to reduce the risk of digestive upset and improve the nutritional profile. But it doesn't completely eliminate these problems. At the end of the day, there's no free lunch. Plants and fungi, like animals don't necessarily want to end up on your dinner plate. They have their own ways of dealing with predation. They might not have fangs and claws and things, but they have their own defence weapons–they have chemicals. And giving you a bellyache is just the beginning. So for humans, it seems that plants and fungi are of lower quality food, they are lower quality food options. They require more preparation, they lack the energy and nutrients that animal foods offer. And the things that they've been touted to be essential for, like plant fibre, doesn't actually seem essential at all. Again, refer to actual humans, not just epidemiology, and data, actual humans who have lived for countless generations on diets devoid of these things don't seem to exhibit nowhere near the same level of things like colon cancer, which they are touted to prevent in the Western world so it doesn't seem very essential to me. And unbeknownst to most people, there are many foods for the microorganisms living in your gut. So just be aware, plant fibre, perhaps not so essential, after all. Anyway, moral the story here with this principle is that humans enjoy eating plants and fungi, and usually well prepared and well tolerated plants and fungi. on an individual basis. Eat them for pleasure and variety, but don't become plant based. That usually doesn't end well.  Alright, last principle on our list here number four is that humans do not fare well with modern highly processed foods. So thus far, the food we have been talking about is the kind that comes from the land or the ocean. It does not come from factories. From factories, we get something that my one of my favourite authors Michael Pollan likes to describe as 'food-like substances'. These modern factory foods are one of the primary causes of the global ill health that we are dealing with today. And that's because they are hyper-palatable, meaning that they hijack your appetite and satiety mechanisms in the brain. They are highly processed, stripped of a lot of nutrients, they're often highly toxic, with the inclusion of things like trans fats and vegetable oils, and additives and preservatives and all sorts of shit. And they are simply devoid of any complex biological structure that you will find in real food made by Mother Nature. So I would advise you to avoid avoid them at all costs.  Okay, that's it for us today. Here's a quick summary of the first principles of human nutrition. Number one, humans are omnivores. We can eat a bit of everything if we do it right. Number two, humans need animal foods. In animal foods, we find all of the nutrients that we need in order to thrive. But the same is not true for plants and fungi. Number three, humans can enjoy a variety of plants and fungi, if tolerated and prepared properly. Number four, humans do not fare well on modern, highly processed food like substances. If you adopt these principles, I think you'll discover a much more enjoyable and reliable way to eat in order to build robust health and well-being. It's also a much simpler way to think about food, so that you can leave all the bickering over the minutiae behind you, and just to follow in your ancestors' footsteps. So I hope that was useful, please let me know. Until next time, my name is Ben. And this has been the Eat Ancestral podcast. Take care. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai