Chapter 24: The Philosophy of Food and Health

November 25, 2014 Darryl Penneyfruit and vegetables, fruits and vegetables, Medicinal Mushrooms, vegetablesLeave a comment

Chapter 24: The Philosophy of Food and Health

I have heard that humans excrete potassium and retain salt. Animals use salt licks and I can appreciate why our bodies retain salt (sodium chloride) because it is difficult to find in the wild, However, it has been suggested that because we ate fruit, and fruit is high in potassium, we excreted the excess potassium, but we evolved from the fringe of fruit eating monkeys that were forced to eat roots and vegetation and spend more time on the ground because they could not compete with the fruit-eaters. So, our ancestors were ready for life on the ground and, presumably retained the potassium excreting ability.

Fire has been used for cooking for 400,000 years and our teeth have become smaller as a consequence of less chewing etc. because cooking tenderised food, Intertwining another thread into this little derivation, how did our ancestors cook? It has been mentioned that hot rocks were used to heat water in skins, and each new heated rock from the fire, introduced some wood ash into the food, which contains potash (potassium compounds).

‘Earlier studies have shown that the dominant elements of wood ash are calcium, potassium, magnesium, silicon, manganese, aluminium, phosphorus, sulphur, iron, sodium and zinc.’ (Www.ScienceDirect.com, Ash properties of Pinus halepensis, S. Liodakis, G Katsigiannis, T Lymperopoulou)

Thus, it is conceivable that we excrete potassium because of our long association with cooking, also, mushrooms may have been a major food, see below, and they are rich in potassium. If our teeth have evolved to decrease in size, it is possible that we have evolved to excrete potassium, or reinstated the ability. From these attractors set 10,000 years ago, we have to translate in time to the present and compare today’s food.

Modern food is high in sodium because it enhances flavour cheaply, preserves, panders to our addiction for salt, is always available on the table etc. Taking it further, vegetables are cooked in water, into which the soluble vitamins and minerals etc pass, and the water is thrown away. Sodium is increased in the diet and potassium is decreased. Compare the hunter/gatherer, where the food, and water that it was cooked in, is eaten. Extra salts from the wood ash are inadvertently added, and that addition is a wide range of elements that are left when the volatile components are burnt off. Humans are the only animals that use fire and gain their minerals that way. Fire even promotes health, apart from warmth, protection etc. Truly a gift of the Gods!

But, I hear on TV that nutritional experts are telling us that dietary supplements are unnecessary and that plenty of fruit and vegetables will give a balanced and sufficient diet. Clearly, if the above, where wood ash is added, is likely, the statement ‘balanced and sufficient diet’ is clearly a half-truth, without the other deficiencies of modern vegetables and fruit, see below. Wood ash is a multi-mineral supplement for our ancestors!

So, what is the prediction? It is no use deriving the above if we don’t use it, and making a prediction sharpens the point and allows us to incorporate and simplify the organization of the mind. So, it is apparent that a proportion of the current population is going to suffer problems, and while there is much more to be fine-tuned, the above starts us on the trail of the ‘obesity epidemic’ of the developed world. But first, the change to farming 7000 years ago, affected the Natufians to the extent that their average height dropped 4 inches from that of the hunter/gatherers in the same region.

So, moving modern cooking back to the Paleolithic, the answer is apparent. Eat stews and take a multi-mineral supplement. But this is only one attractor! As previously outlined, a vast variety of food was consumed and our population tended to reside in multi-niches for insurance against food scarcity. The food was gathered daily as it would not ‘keep’ and we gained from the exercise that went with collecting it.

Even the ‘chop and three veg’ that was considered good food in the past is poor compared to the above, and the take-away lifestyle is laughable, when considered similarly. The thought struck me that the vast majority of people won’t change, but perhaps these ideas are necessary for those interested in restarting evolution and wanting to form a Forever Club, see later.

(2) Fruit and vegetables

Half-truths abound in the media, and half-truths are the marketers’ stock-in-trade, because they want to you buy their product. Marketers are interested in profits, not your health, and even fruit is not produced to help us, but to help the plant distribute its seed. The tomato plant is toxic, but its fruit is not, because the tomato plant wants its fruit to be eaten, and to this end, when the seed is ripe, the tomato turns from green to red to bring it to animals’ attention, and at the same time, it becomes palatable.

We are being manipulated by plants! The red tomato is offered as food and the aim is to have it eaten to spread the seed. The bait is the sugars that are to be found in the ripe fruits of most fruits . Nectar is offered to bees within the flower to spread the pollen in the same way. As we are being manipulated by the plant, the eating of fruit may not be in our best interest!

In fact, monkeys are successful in living on fruit and as indicated above, our ancestors were those that couldn’t compete with the fruit-eating monkeys and we were forced into the vegetables. Vegetables are that part of the plant that the plant does not want eaten and so the plant fills those parts with phytotoxins as a defence against being eaten. We use the phytotoxins in our own defence mechanisms, and many organisms accumulate toxins to make themselves unpalatable to predators.

So, this derivation indicates that we should eat vegetables and forgo fruit, especially as fruits and vegetables have been bred to be bigger, which means that the phytotoxins are reduced as the skin area to volume is reduced. This effect is probably lower in berries like blueberries, raspberries and Alpine strawberries, because they are less developed for the market. Ordinary strawberries are much larger than Alpine strawberries and, I believe, are highly sprayed during production. In fact, spraying food plants to inhibit insect damage, reduces the natural phytotoxins because they aren’t needed, and so are not produced!

Fruits in general, in my opinion, should be avoided, but there are other factors and a list of one author’s super-fruits is given, but the point is made that some of the fruits are listed because the seeds are eaten, and it is not in the plants interest to have its seeds eaten, unless they pass through the animal undamaged. If the seeds do pass through unscathed, they are rewarded with a dollop of fertilizer!

So, fruits such as Alpine strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, Godji, berries, figs, pomegranate etc could be valuable because of the seeds, but other fruits are part of traditional foods and these are the foods that we evolved with and we are likely to use their phytotoxins for our own use and include dates, plums, grapes, apricots, quinces, pears, apples, pomegranates, and the berries.

(3) Fruit of the forest.

‘The fungi and, in particular, the mushroom have components that can contribute to human wellness and mitigate threats and assaults that render the human body vulnerable to several life threatening diseases including cardiovascular ailments, cancer, metabolic disorders (diabesity) and neurodegenerative disorders. Mushrooms have been used as medicines by humans for 5000 years or more (Halpern, 2007). Mushrooms – an unexploited resource of numerous bioactive components including polysaccharides, terpenes, flavonoids, alkaloid, nucleotides, lipids, vitamins, protein, amino acid and minerals can have many beneficial effects on human systems (Wasser & Weis, 1999).’ (Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms for Sub-health Intervention and Prevention of Lifestyle Diseases, Vikineswary S. and Chang S. T.)

Mushrooms are a good source of food and by observation I have not seen them eaten by animals, presumably because many mushrooms are poisonous. In fact, I have read the comment of a specialist in the field of fungi that he would not eat a wild mushroom, but only when it was bought from a supermarket. Mushrooms were used by early man and that leads to the idea that the mind had to be based on a large enough brain to reliably distinguish the safe varieties.

Those people that made a mistake would have made a large number of people sick or dead by adding poisonous varieties to the cooking-pot, and thus there would have been pressure to grow the brain to take advantage of such a useful resource. Mushrooms are found throughout the year, are not eaten by animals, dry themselves easily, can be eaten raw, can be eaten at any stage, unlike fruit that has to ripen when the seed is mature, is found in rich valley soil, easily collected etc. In fact, so valuable was the mushroom that it had to derive toxins to keep animals away, and thus probably contributed to our brain development.

‘They have a high content of several vitamins particularly of Bs and D, minerals (potassium, phosphorus), and also a high content of some trace elements, especially of selenium which is regarded as an excellent antioxidant.’ (Edible and Medicinal Mushrooms) Notice that mushrooms may have been a significant food and high in potassium that we are able to excrete. Also, vitamin D was required so badly that our skin lightened and (possibly) hair became blonde to decrease absorption of sunlight. The darker skinned people tend to have black hair.

Further, mushrooms are high in selenium, and some books state that Brazil nuts are also high in selenium, but they are not found in Europe. So, looking at our blonde Europeans that need vitamin D to such an extent that they change appearance so drastically, we may be sure that mushrooms were highly sought after, especially as they dry so easily. In modern times cod-liver oil is used to prevent rickets in the north of Europe, and presumably mushrooms were used in ancient times.

Selenium is a trace element that was tested in recent times as a cancer preventative, and was so successful that the trial was stopped as it was thought unconscionable to deprive the control group of the benefits of selenium supplementation.

When I was a child, I had very light blonde hair and I have noticed this tendency to be white blonde in members of my family and have always wondered why Anglo children have much lighter coloured hair which darkens as they grow older. I have always rationalized this as looking ‘cute’ lessens their chance of being left behind! After all, kids can be a nuisance at times! But, in the light of the above, it is sensible that mid Europeans require large amounts of vitamin D for growing bones and they make less of it because their bodies are small and the skin area is small. This current theory of mine may be true or may be false, but it brings together more patterns that mesh together and that is what my brain has evolved to do.

(4) Foods that fight cancer.

The cancer epidemic, like many other so-called diseases needs a solution that can be put into our mind and remembered because it ‘fits’ and is so logical that is will never be forgotten. I believe that the body can prevent cancer, or at least prevent it becoming a threat to us. ‘Pathological studies have found microtumours that had never been clinically detected hidden in the tissues of an overwhelming number of people who died from causes other than cancer. In one study, 98% of individuals had small tumours present in the thyroid, 40 % had prostrate tumours and 33% had breast tumours; obviously, tumours in these organs are normally detected only in a far smaller percentage of the population’. (Foods that Fight Cancer, Preventing and treating cancer through diet, R. Beliveau & D. Gringras, p 57)

‘Most brightly coloured fruits are important sources of a class of molecules known as polyphenols. Over four thousand polyphenols have been identified; they are especially abundant in such substances as red wine and green tea, as well as plants such as grapes, apples, onions, wild berries. They are also found in several herbs and spices, as well as in vegetables and nuts.’ (p 69)

‘Many of the phytochemicals showing the highest levels of cancer prevention activity are present only in a few very specific foods (figure 20). The isoflavones in soybeans, the resveratrol present in grapes, the curcumin in turmeric spice, the isothiocyanates and indoles of broccoli, or the catechins in green tea are all anti-cancer molecules occurring naturally in a very select group of foods. In other words, if it is true, generally speaking, that fruits and vegetables are part and parcel of a well balanced diet, we must also take phytochemical content into account in the context of a diet designed to reduce the risk of cancer.’ (p 71)

The above paragraph outlines a number of concepts (or attractors) that need a prediction and it suggest to me that ‘the highest levels of cancer prevention activity are present only in a few very specific foods’ leads to eating a very wide selection of foods, and further, these foods should be spices, herbs, camellia leaves (tea) and probably a wide range of the leaves of common plants that could be brought into the herb category. In other words, what I call an ‘antioxidant mix’, is sprinkled (ground in a blender) on my food before serving, along with turmeric and pepper.

Further, ‘synergy is also often involved in indirect mechanisms. The foods that we eat on a daily basis, for example, contain a host of molecules without any anti-cancer activity per se, but which can nevertheless have a considerable impact on cancer prevention: by increasing the quantity (and thus the potential anti-cancer activity) of another anti-cancer molecule in the bloodstream, by slowing down its elimination, or by increasing its absorption (Figure 36). One of the best examples of this indirect synergy is the action of piperine, a molecule present in pepper. Piperine increases by a factor of one thousand the absorption of curcumin (Figure 38); this allows the amount of curcumin present in the body to achieve levels sufficient to modify the aggressive behaviour of cancerous cells. (p 202)

Cancer is a problem in our basic cellular structure and evolution has provided the solution, in my opinion, as indicated above. It is a compound problem, but there appear to be three basic ‘platforms’ holding it in check and these are firstly, the ability of the bacteria (now our cells) to repair DNA damage. that occurred in the harsh conditions of the reducing atmosphere before the ozone layer formed. Secondly, better control of apoptosis through food, where cell death is initiated by the body’s processes, and thirdly, certain foods stop the growth of tumours by denying blood vessel growth (anti-angiogenesis). Some books go as far as saying that cancer, heart ‘disease’ etc are preventable diseases.

(5) Cooking.

‘In 2006 nine volunteers with dangerously high blood pressure spent 12 days eating like apes in an experiment … Their diet included peppers, melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, grapes, dates, walnuts, bananas peaches, and so on – more than fifty kinds of fruits, vegetables and nuts. In the second week they ate some cooked oily fish, and one man sneaked some chocolate. The regime was called the Evo diet because it was supposed to represent the types of foods our bodies have evolved to eat. Chimpanzees or gorillas would have loved it and would have grown fat on a menu that was certainly of higher quality than they could find in the wild….. The aim of the volunteers was to improve their health and they succeeded. By the end of the experiment their cholesterol had fallen by almost a quarter and average blood pressure was down to normal. But while medical hopes were met, an extra result had not been anticipated. The volunteers lost a lot of weight – an average of 4.4 kg (9.7 pounds) each’ (Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Richard Wrangham, p 16)

This quotation warrants a few remarks, firstly, it is in line with my ideas of a wide ranging diet that is principally fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and a small amount of cheese and fish. Secondly, it cured the problem of high blood pressure, and blood pressure measures the elasticity of the arteries and that is a measure of the health of the body. The more elastic the arteries, the lower the blood pressure. Thirdly, the diet is ‘natural’ in that it was eaten by our ancestors, but is ‘artificial’ in that it comes from a wide variety of habitats that would not be accessible without modern commerce and transportation. Fourthly, it shows that excess weight is possibly a symptom of the way that we eat.

This book supports the idea that cooking was one of the principal reasons for the evolution of Homo Habilis to Modern Man by decreasing our digestive system, increasing our brain size, decreasing jaw and tooth size by softening our food through the process of cooking our food.

There is much more on this interesting subject that will have to wait till a later date, and this small amount was added to ‘flesh out’ the inter-connectedness of life.

(6) Added benefits from fibre.

The purpose of the digestive system is to break down the food into its chemical components and absorb them into the body. The lower parts of the gut contains bacteria that work on the fibre that we can’t digest.‘In the large intestine, the passage of the digesting food in the colon is a lot slower, taking from 12 to 50 hours until it is removed by defecation. The colon mainly serves as a site for the fermentation of digestible matter by the gut flora. The time taken varies considerably between individuals.’ (Wikipedia, Human digestive system, large intestine)

‘The essential function of fermentation is the regeneration of NAD+ for gylcolysis so ADP molecules can be phosphorylated to ATP. The benefit of fermentation is that it allows ATP production to continue in the absence of O2. Microorganisms that ferment can grow and colonize in an anaerobic environment. Microorganisms produce a variety of fermentation products. The products of fermentation of cells are waste products of the cells, but many are useful to humans.’ (Microbiology demystified, Tom Betsy and Jim Keogh, p 97)

The modern diet, with an emphasis on carbohydrates and meat and a down-playing of fibre causes the colon to forgo its purpose in evolution, which is to convert un-digestible products into absorbable and useful ones through the use of the gut flora. If the lower digestive system were not useful, or even necessary, we would not have evolved it because of the extra weight etc.

The colon evolved to process the by-products of food that we evolved to eat and is part of a chain of digestion. If we eat a ‘modern’ diet with low levels of fibre, the colon is not producing the energy or chemical products that we evolved to use and, presumably need to stay healthy. Another reason to use the diet found in the Palaeolithic diet described above.

(7) Arsenic and rice

“It is the diets that comprise of numerous sources of rice or rice based products, such as in macrobiotic, vegan, gluten and dairy intolerance regimens that the cumulative inorganic As exposure is likely to be highest and thereby of greatest concern.”

Dr. Andrew Meharg from the Institute of Biology and Environmental Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK and investigator in all 3 above mentioned studies graciously agreed to answer some questions about arsenic and rice.

Why does rice contain higher levels of inorganic arsenic than other cereal grains?

Rice is grown under flooded conditions that lead to high mobilization of soil arsenic into the plant.

What other foods are likely to contain inorganic arsenic?

Seafood has high arsenic, but the species present are organic, which have low toxicity, unlike inorganic arsenic found in rice.

Is there any data available on the threshold level of tolerance for inorganic arsenic? In other words, what amount of inorganic arsenic must be consumed on a daily basis long term in order to cause health problems?

At the low levels found in foodstuffs it is a chronic carcinogen – at higher doses it is an acute toxin.

Are there more arsenic poisonings reported in countries like China and Japan that presumably would have a higher per person rice intake than the general population in the U.S.?

This type of epidemiology takes decades to research, and the problem has just been identified – only detailed study will link food intake from arsenic to observed cancers. Based on US risk assessments, elevated cancers due to rice consumption should be observed.

Are there any steps that can be taken to reduce the inorganic arsenic levels in rice?

Yes. 1. Growing aerobic rice – cultivated under none-flooded conditions. 2. Source rice from low arsenic regions. 3. Breed rice for low arsenic. 4. High water to rice volumes and discarding the water during cooking moves a large portion of the inorganic arsenic.

What recommendations do you have for individuals with celiac disease who may consume a lot of rice and rice-based products?

Switch to using other grains if possible, or at least to not have such a strong dependence on rice products, and source rice from low arsenic regions

(www.glutenfreedietician.com)

The quotation above, suggests that modern convenience foods such as grains are marketed for usefulness and not necessarily for health, and this is in line with the comments about ‘improved’ varieties of fruit and vegetables, above. I believe that the Palaeolithic diet, with sensible modifications for our time is the best bet for the future.

Chapter 20: The Overweight and Obese

November 13, 2014 Darryl Penneyfruits and vegetables, nutrients, obesity epidemic, Paleolithic diet, vegetablesLeave a comment

Chapter 20 The Overweight and Obese

There is an ‘obesity epidemic’ in the developed world, where 60% of adults are obese or overweight, so why don’t we look at that problem a little closer. For the individual we will need to consider more attractors, and the main ones, it will be found, are exercise, food and state of mind. This statement is ‘giving the game away’ because I want to approach the problem from the direction of helping the overweight and obese solve their problem. This is the ‘obvious’ way to proceed and it does explore some of the factors. More elegant solutions to the problem will be indicated later in the chapter.

From the previous chapter, there is a simple answer, and that is, we need to live the way that we were designed to live, the way our genes expect us to live. But the Paleolithic provided the three crucial inputs, above, where the food was natural, fresh or dried, we had to walk long distances every day to get it and the mind was concentrated on finding enough food and avoiding predators etc. The modern world has changed, so let us look at how we could possibly ‘fix’ the obesity epidemic.

Letter to the Editor:

I would like to mention a (possible and simple) logical ‘cause’ for the obesity epidemic of the developed world. Modern ‘foods’ and snacks are designed to sell and are packed with the ‘addictive’ elements of salt, sugar/carbohydrates and fat instead of the nutrients that our body demands and as found in the hunter/gatherer lifestyle that our genes are designed for. Sixty per cent of the adult population is overweight or obese. We all suspect that if these people ate ‘properly’ and exercised ‘sufficiently’ they would not have a problem. But, what part of the body causes (indeed forces) us to eat these snacks that are not good for us?

The ‘seventh sense’ of the mind says ‘eat more’ to get that nutrient that is in shortest supply to keep the body working. ‘Processed’ food does not contain the ratios of nutrients found in a Paleolithic diet, so the brain functions in a ‘drought’ scenario and tells the body to eats as much as possible to try to get the missing nutrients. Literally, the body is faced with a life and death situation, which is why it is so hard to lose fat! The causal fact is that the mind is concerned, even screaming that the body is dying from lack of nutrients and it does not know what to do but eat more!

Removing or reducing body fat requires eating less and the brain’s thinking goes deeper into ‘survival mode’! Dieters, effectively (and literally), ‘lose’ their will‑power. In doing so, the body, of course, ingests excesses of the nutrients that the body was not designed to handle. Paleolithic animals, fruits and vegetables had not been bred (or fed) to contain large amounts of certain nutrients, such as salt, sugar/carbohydrates and fat. Consequently the body stores the resulting overabundance of nutrients that it has, to the mind, ‘lucked’ upon in a drought!

On a personal note, I consume 30 different seeds, nuts and fruit in the morning and 30 different vegetables, herbs and spices in the evening. I suggested a change to my dancing partner’s breakfast and her (long‑term) repetitive strain injury to her elbow cleared up, her hair is growing longer and her skin has improved. Also, her speech problem has improved to the extent that I do not need to ask her to repeat things. Is this improvement in speech a case of the ‘seventh’ sense, bringing her mind back to the ‘normal’ childhood nutrition levels (of 40 years ago) or due to the fact that she is now, literally, ‘in the spotlight’ on the dance floor!

This proposed ‘solution’ to the ‘obesity epidemic’ is simple, but indicates that hospital food, as a ‘cure’, may not be of sufficient ‘quality’ to be an answer for the majority of the obese. The obese, in particular, are costing the economy, the welfare system and the health system enormous amounts of money, so why not try this simple method?

Regards from a reader.

Taking this letter as a starting point, for simplicity, the seventh sense is the changing of our thinking as our food supply changes, and has been discussed previously. Its reference here is that with an improvement in diet, our thinking changes to the period when we last enjoyed that diet. There can be little argument that processing food destroys or removes nutrients. This mismatch of nutrients to fats and carbohydrates means, as stated above, the body is forced to consume extra nutrients. Unfortunately, people want to do what they want to do, but often do not realize the chain of events that their actions entail. The approach above is a rational solution using previous information, but is it the best solution?

So, what was life like in the Paleolithic? No refrigeration meant that food had to be harvested daily with much walking to get it, areas near the cave or camp would have been picked over and carefully ‘farmed’. Food species in the wild are sparse on the ground and only a proportion can be harvested if the supply is to renew itself. As groups moved around, different herbs and vegetables would be collected. Notice that vegetables, familiar to us were ‘undeveloped’, small and sparsely growing. Vegetables were herbs and herbs were vegetables with no excess storage of nutrients above what was necessary for the plant to survive. Outside skins were thick and full of phytotoxins to stop insects from chewing through. A larger proportion of the vegetable was fibre, and so, much fibre would be ingested in order for the body to access the nutrients. Today’s vegetables have been bred to have thin skins and large stores of nutrients. Pesticides protects the plants, so skins have thinned through lack of attack by insects etc. Less fibre means less food for microbes and less variety of chemicals available for us to absorb.

Further, fruits were smaller and performed the function for which they evolved, to have the minimum of flesh to entice the animal to eat it to spread the seeds. In particular, the pomegranate contains masses of seeds with each seed surrounded by a sac of juice and the nutrition (for humans) comes mainly from eating the seed, which is not the aim of the tree! Another fruit that has been cultivated for a long time with nutritious seeds is the fig. An attempt has been made to rank fruits in terms of nutrition and other factors (Superfruits, Paul Gross) and (in decreasing order): Mango, Fig, Orange, Strawberry, Godji, Red grape, Cranberry, Kiwifruit, Papaya, Blueberry, Cherries, Raspberry, Seaberry, Guava, Blackberry, Black Current, Date, Pomegranate, Acai and Prunes.

Looking at pollutant impacts in modern times, ‘transport of chlorinated hydrocarbons, mercury, and many radionuclides is predominately through the atmosphere – so they rapidly achieve a global distribution and rain down all over the planet. These substances are generally relatively insoluable in water but are absorbed onto particles and dissolve in lipid, such that they are readily taken up by the phytoplankton at the base of the food chain, grazed, and rapidly transported into deep water via the grazers’ fecal pellets or their vertical migrations…. However, mercury pollution appears less tractable, since it is released largely as a by-product of coal burning, waste incineration and smelting ores. Although mercury use has decreased, the anthropogenic contribution to the global environment is still about twice its natural inputs.’ (The Silent Deep, Tony Koslow, pp 155-156)

What was the diet likely to be in the Paleolithic? ‘Terns … eggs … mussels … limpets, and tide pools of anemones … clams (The Valley of Horses, Jean M. Auel, p 10) … pluck leaves, flowers, buds, and berries while travelling … digging stick to turn up roots and bulbs (p 13) … dried apples, some hazelnuts … grain plucked from the grasses (p 18) alfalfa and clover … sweet groundnuts … milk-vetch pods … edible roots … buds of day lilies … currents have begun to turn colour … new leaves of pig-weed, mustard, or nettles for greens. Her sling did not lack for targets. Steppe pikas, souslick marmots, great jerboas, varying hares … giant hamster … low flying willow grouse and ptarmigan (pp 21-22) hare … wild carrots (p 53) trout … blueberries … apple tree … cherry tree is full … sunflower seeds …hazelnut bushes … pine trees are the kind with the big nuts … start drying greens. And lichen. And mushrooms. And roots… Coltsfoot tastes salty, and other herbs can add flavour. (pp 91-92) picking grain from the tall einkorn wheat. Emmer wheat grew in the valley, too, and rye grass …(p 125) willowbark tea … fresh peeled thistle stalks and cow parsley, and the first wild strawberries. (p 387) collecting grains of broomcorn millet and wild rye … two row barley, and both einkorn and emmer wheat.’ (p 433)

There is the question of ‘correct’ thinking, because, as we all know, except for a few people with disabilities, the majority of people that do not over-eat and exercises adequately will not become over-weight. This, of course will only happen if people know that they are eating ‘proper’ food, and the paragraph above indicates that a (very) wide selection of foods were eaten So, people have to know what is ‘appropriate’ food and that requires education. However, the government allows processed food to be sold and does not educate users in schools. Unless this is done the obesity epidemic will always be with us.

Similarly, most people hate to exercise, and yet exercise is necessary. The basic logic of life is simply ‘use it or lose it’ or conversely, ‘need it then grow it’ because no animal (or plant) can afford to carry around excess baggage, simply because it makes them less efficient and more vulnerable to predation. However, humans are not subject to predation and the obese and over-weight are with us. This brings us to the core reason for the epidemic, which is a lack of survival of the fittest.

The norm of the population is changing and the only way that the trend can be reversed is education to put everyone on a level playing field. The TV game shows such as ‘Biggest Loser’ provide a monetary goal to lose weight, but what happens after the game is over, do they revert? Where do people learn how to succeed? There has to be training that takes into account food knowledge, a way of life that provides exercise and the determination to stay thin.

At the moment, fat people are attracted to fat people because of an attraction to a group of people that eat the same way, do not exercise enough and think the same way. How can good information be passed down through families when parents are unable to balance their lives. One can only wonder where we, as a race are going, so let’s look at other derivations.

To this point, as mentioned above, we are trying to ‘improve’ the overweight and obese and have found ourselves in a messy situation. If we apply a logic to the derivation, the situation rapidly clarifies into a solution as stark as survival of the fittest, for example, under a Superman games or super-eusociety, women choose to have children using the IVF system from men who are clearly superior and most probably slim. Women that are too overweight or obese to be able to, or do not wish to rear children are automatically excluded, and the fitness, mental staunchness etc. of the population increases over time. The payoff to a person that is ‘successful’ in eating ‘properly’, exercising ‘properly’ and having a ‘proper’ state of mind is, as shown in the previous chapters has the chance of a (possibly much) longer, happier life with genes that pass into the (far?) future under these systems!

However, this is not a perfect world and so let’s look at a worst case scenario. The majority of adults (currently 60%) are overweight or obese, so what will happen to them? In terms of survival of the fittest, they will die out and their genes will be lost. Sounds obvious, but it doesn’t tell us who will be the winners, and how it will probably come about. The Law of Life indicates that we use the logic which underpins our society which started not in the Neolithic (10,000 years ago) but 30,000 years ago, well before farming started. This is where survival of the fittest broke down and population climbed because of a fortuitous run of good climatic conditions.

But first the concept of Survival of the Weakest, or perhaps better, the Survival of the Waiters! ‘Gibraltar was not a very nice place in which to live during the Victorian era…. period between 1873 and 1884… The detailed records allowed Larry to work out where children under the age of one year, many of whom died from weaning diarrhoea, had lived. From a detailed house-by-house survey carried out in 1879 he could determine whether the child had come from a house with a cistern, well, both, or neither. His results were stunning. As we would expect, childhood mortality during normal conditions was highest among the poorer people who only had access to the worst water and it was lowest among the better-off ones who could get water from wells and cisterns… severe drought limited access to good drinking water … he found that it was the poorest people who survived best under these conditions! These people were used to coping with the strain of having to survive drinking bad water all the time so when drought hit, they felt the effects least of all. As long as years were wet, wealthier people were fine, but as soon as things got bad they simply could not cope.’ (The Humans Who Went Extinct, Clive Finlayson, pp 19-20)

‘Those on the edge had to constantly adapt to variable conditions; they were jacks of all trades and could even stay put when conditions worsened. In fact if such conditions persisted it was these jacks (or innovators) that fared best, their numbers augmented and their geographical range expanded.’ (p 20) ‘These super-survivors could deal with the risk of an unpredictable supply of food or water better than any others of their kind so that when climate changed and made matters worse all round, it was they and their offspring who fared best. The earliest form of risk management seems to have involved living on the edge of two or more habitats or in a patchwork of habitats… this allowed them to exploit a wider variety of foods than if they lived in a single habitat.’ (p 215) ‘Further, the starting point was not the Fertile Crescent of 10 thousand years ago but the Russian Plain and its 30-thousand-year-old Gravettian culture.’ (p 216)

Well, the ‘successful’ people who were our ancestors and survived the multiple climate changes in Europe, survived because they ate a wide range of food, as mentioned above, when I listed a few of the wide range of foods available in the Paleolithic. A wide variety of food is the basis of our success and that ties in nicely with the above. When an upheaval, of some description, occurs, the survivors will be those who eat a wide range of foods, because there will be more food available in those niches that improve with the climate change!

‘In 2006 nine volunteers with dangerously high blood pressure spent 12 days eating like apes in an experiment …. And ate almost everything raw. Their diet included peppers, melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, grapes, dates, walnuts, bananas, peaches and so on – more than 50 kinds of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. In the second week they ate some cooked oily fish, and one man sneaked some chocolate. The regime was called the Evo Diet because it was supposed to represent the types of food our bodies have evolved to eat. Chimpanzees or gorillas would have loved it and would have grown fat on a menu that was certainly of higher quality than they could find in the wild…. The aim of the volunteers was to improve their health, and they succeeded. By the end of the experiment their cholesterol levels had fallen by almost a quarter and average blood pressure was down to normal.’ (Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Richard Wrangham, p 16)

It seems strange, but our ‘strength’ in surviving infections is enhanced by the food that we ingest because we use the phytotoxins in the food, that the plants use to defend themselves against attack, we use to protect ourselves. For example, ‘resveratrol, a polyphenol compound found in red wine activates sir2 in yeast, mimics the effects of caloric restriction.’ (The Genetics of Human Longevity, Warren S. Browner, Arnold Kahn, Elad Ziv, Alex Reiner, Junko Oshima, Richard Cawthon, Wen-chi Hsueh, Steven R. Cummings) This paragraph is alluding to the comments earlier that ‘I consume 30 different seeds, nuts and fruit in the morning and 30 different vegetables, herbs and spices in the evening’.

The patterns for survival are coming together. Living a long time when the going gets tough and when food is scarce, eating a (very) wide-ranging diet as a safeguard against the tough times and keeping the body supplied with the necessary phytotoxins etc, the seventh sense that moves our thinking into the ‘correct’ pattern for the local conditions and Survival of the Waiters points to the survivors of the regular bouts of climate change.

So, what have we derived? Again the simplicity of the logic points to the fact that the over-weight and obese peoples’ genes do not have a place in the future, and ‘the answer lies in the way in which we got to the present, not as evolutionary superstars but as pests that invaded every nook and cranny that became available.’ (The Humans Who Went Extinct, Clive Finlayson, p 214)

The derivation above of the Survival of the Waiters is simply recognition of the existence of the gene pool that is set up by having two sexes. A result of this is that those without the genes struggle on the edges of society, until eventually a change occurs such as climate, change in predator, innovation that brings these genes that were not suitable into their own and a change occurs within the population. Modern living and modern diets are (literally) killing off those that do not have the willpower to succeed in that environment and is leaving the field to those that do. Again it is a tragedy for the individual, but the group or population is automatically maintained.