eli5 why we have such complex dietary requirements. Did our ancestors thousands of years ago have extremely well balanced diets?
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the issue is in the past we didn’t have processed artificial shit you could just guzzle down and gorge upon. you only ate what was available in the wilderness and many things were not common or were difficult to obtain. you wouldn’t always have ten pounds of sugar in basically everything.
s’why when your health goes to shit they recommend a whole foods diet. literally if you couldn’t go out in the forest and find it, don’t eat it. at the most functional level that’s really what we all should be eating like. but shit food tastes good and monkey brain want more.
the issue is in the past we didn’t have processed artificial shit you could just guzzle down and gorge upon. you only ate what was available in the wilderness and many things were not common or were difficult to obtain. you wouldn’t always have ten pounds of sugar in basically everything.
s’why when your health goes to shit they recommend a whole foods diet. literally if you couldn’t go out in the forest and find it, don’t eat it. at the most functional level that’s really what we all should be eating like. but shit food tastes good and monkey brain want more.
Peanuts are an interesting example with a few theories surrounding them. Firstly they differ from their wild cousins which I’m not sure if they have the same allergens.
Plants naturally form toxins to reduce or select which animals move what part of them and how. Animals evolve to overcome these toxins, but this evolutionary arms race is separate from histamine reactions, which are of no evolutionary value.
One school of thought says that potential allergies become full allergies in the first years of life. If you grow up with peanuts you don’t develop the allergy. Our ancestors would have had a fairly similar diet through their lives.
Bread is an example of a new phenomenon where over processing has lead to something our ancestors never had to deal with. Of course people died of their immune system over reacting, but this is insignificant compared to disease and lack of resources.
Well there was no freezing/shipping of foods from the other hemisphere so they ate local food. There were no factories producing packaged food and companies like Kraft processed food or in some cases creating food from chemicals.
So they lived off the land. However, they also had far lower life expectancy due to diet, healthcare, living conditions I don’t think they were better off and maybe life was more stressful. Availability of food is a stressful situation.
Peanuts are an interesting example with a few theories surrounding them. Firstly they differ from their wild cousins which I’m not sure if they have the same allergens.
Plants naturally form toxins to reduce or select which animals move what part of them and how. Animals evolve to overcome these toxins, but this evolutionary arms race is separate from histamine reactions, which are of no evolutionary value.
One school of thought says that potential allergies become full allergies in the first years of life. If you grow up with peanuts you don’t develop the allergy. Our ancestors would have had a fairly similar diet through their lives.
Bread is an example of a new phenomenon where over processing has lead to something our ancestors never had to deal with. Of course people died of their immune system over reacting, but this is insignificant compared to disease and lack of resources.
I’m not a nutritionist, but I think people vastly overestimate what we need to survive, or even to be reasonably healthy.
In his book Two Years before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana recorded that he and the other sailors on his whaling ship ate nothing but salted beef and hard tack (flour and salt), and they were in better shape than those on land with more varied and traditional diets. He noted that after 6 months or so scurvy would set in, but according to him even a few bites of an onion or potato would be enough to reverse the symptoms. It should be noted that these men led very physically demanding lives.
The food pemmican is supposed to maintain people indefinitely, and some inuit and western (European) explorers are reported to have done so. This was a mix of lean game meat, suet or a saturated fat, and dried berries such as blueberry.
There’s also an example of an overweight Scotsman (I forget the name) who went a few months on only water, salt, and vitamin tables in order to lose weight.
I’ve heard that butter and potatoes will sustain a person indefinitely, but don’t know if it’s been tried.
Well there was no freezing/shipping of foods from the other hemisphere so they ate local food. There were no factories producing packaged food and companies like Kraft processed food or in some cases creating food from chemicals.
So they lived off the land. However, they also had far lower life expectancy due to diet, healthcare, living conditions I don’t think they were better off and maybe life was more stressful. Availability of food is a stressful situation.
I’m not a nutritionist, but I think people vastly overestimate what we need to survive, or even to be reasonably healthy.
In his book Two Years before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana recorded that he and the other sailors on his whaling ship ate nothing but salted beef and hard tack (flour and salt), and they were in better shape than those on land with more varied and traditional diets. He noted that after 6 months or so scurvy would set in, but according to him even a few bites of an onion or potato would be enough to reverse the symptoms. It should be noted that these men led very physically demanding lives.
The food pemmican is supposed to maintain people indefinitely, and some inuit and western (European) explorers are reported to have done so. This was a mix of lean game meat, suet or a saturated fat, and dried berries such as blueberry.
There’s also an example of an overweight Scotsman (I forget the name) who went a few months on only water, salt, and vitamin tables in order to lose weight.
I’ve heard that butter and potatoes will sustain a person indefinitely, but don’t know if it’s been tried.
Peanuts are an interesting example with a few theories surrounding them. Firstly they differ from their wild cousins which I’m not sure if they have the same allergens.
Plants naturally form toxins to reduce or select which animals move what part of them and how. Animals evolve to overcome these toxins, but this evolutionary arms race is separate from histamine reactions, which are of no evolutionary value.
One school of thought says that potential allergies become full allergies in the first years of life. If you grow up with peanuts you don’t develop the allergy. Our ancestors would have had a fairly similar diet through their lives.
Bread is an example of a new phenomenon where over processing has lead to something our ancestors never had to deal with. Of course people died of their immune system over reacting, but this is insignificant compared to disease and lack of resources.
Well there was no freezing/shipping of foods from the other hemisphere so they ate local food. There were no factories producing packaged food and companies like Kraft processed food or in some cases creating food from chemicals.
So they lived off the land. However, they also had far lower life expectancy due to diet, healthcare, living conditions I don’t think they were better off and maybe life was more stressful. Availability of food is a stressful situation.
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