Deadly Harvest: The Intimate Relationship Between Our Heath and Our Food (27 page)

Finally, in regard to essential fatty acids, wild plants show a roughly equal balance between linoleic acid (23%) and alpha-linolenic acid (16%). Most cultivated plants that Americans eat are notoriously poor in alpha-linolenic acid. However, there is one plant that grows as a weed all over the southern United States; one that the ’49ers of the California gold rush consumed so much that it was dubbed “miner’s lettuce”—that plant is purslane. It contains 8% fats, of which 50% is omega-3 oil.
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Here, we finally uncover the last secret to the Cretan diet: they were one of the few peoples eating a proper balance of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids, thanks to the high volumes of purslane they were consuming. It is no coincidence that the San also ate the same plants in our African homeland.

Fruits

Modern fruits have, by and large, quite different characteristics to those of our African homeland. Dr. Milton finds that wild fruits as eaten by primates and our ancient ancestors do not have a Technicolor, super-sized, and plump appearance. They have a much higher seed-to-pulp ratio and are less sweet, they have a high roughage content composed of woody seeds and fibrous strands, and they have higher protein levels, micronutrient levels, and pectin (a soluble fiber) levels. As eaten by primates in the jungle, they frequently contain tiny insects and larvae, which are eaten inadvertently.
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Wild fruits (and plants) are much richer in micronutrients than cultivated ones—particularly in minerals (notably iron, copper, and calcium) and the vitamins C, E, and K, beta-carotene, and folic acid. Dr. Milton
estimates the vitamin C intake of a human-size ape to be 2–6 grams.
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Contrast that with the recommended dietary intake of 60 mg for an adult human, or 100 times less! Research indicates that wild plants are also much richer in the millions of other “background” micronutrients essential to good human health, such as bioflavonoids, terpenes, phenols, carotenes, and many more.

Dairy Products

We’ve seen how dairy products are implicated in a wide range of diseases. For example, the milk sugar lactose is an antigen undermining our bodies in many subtle ways. There is now a huge body of knowledge linking milk and dairy consumption to an incredible range of diseases. In addition to lactose, the proteins in milk (casein and lactalbumin) are among the most powerful allergens known. Casein also raises cholesterol levels.
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In a controlled study on autistic youngsters, Dr. Ted Kniker found that when dairy is eliminated from the diet, there was dramatic improvement.
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The Nurses’ Health Study, begun in 1976, is a national survey of more than 121,000 female registered nurses, 34 to 59 years old, which analyzes diet and health data every two years. In a stunning counterblast to conventional wisdom, lead researcher Diane Feskenich found that those nurses who drank two or more glasses of milk per day were 40%
more
likely to suffer hip fractures than those who drank less than one glass.
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Here we have the explanation for why Norwegian women suffer more from hip fractures than Spanish women: traditionally, Norwegians are high consumers of dairy products, Spaniards hardly at all.

Dairy consumption is also linked to cancers of various kinds. As part of the Physicians' Health Study, epidemiologist June M. Chan investigated the connection between dairy products and prostate cancer in a large group of male U.S. physicians. Compared with the men who consumed less than half a serving of dairy products daily, men who consumed more than 2.5 servings had a 34% higher risk of developing prostate cancer.
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Cancer researcher Eduardo De Stefani found that Uruguayans consuming dairy products increased lung cancer risk by 2.5 times.
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Researcher Helena Liljeberg Elmstahl found that dairy is linked to abnormal insulin levels.
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Dr. Guy Abraham, a professor of gynecologic endocrinology at the University of California, sees a connection between dairy consumption and premenstrual tension.
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Dr. Honglei Chen, of the Harvard School of Public Health, finds that men have an 80% increased risk of Parkinson’s disease with dairy consumption of all kinds.
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Gastroenterologist A.M. Riordan of Cambridge University found that remission rates for Crohn’s disease were doubled when both dairy and cereal were excluded.
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Milk fat (butter and cream), while good for baby cows, is not good for humans. It raises blood pressure and cholesterol, hardens the arteries, and increases heart disease and the risk of stroke. Even the fat-free varieties are not safe: milk lactose and milk calcium alone are enough to calcify arteries, the most dangerous form of arteriosclerosis.
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Many people think that yogurt is healthy and that organic milk is best. They believe that milk from other species such as goat, buffalo, sheep, camel, or even humans is superior. In fact, the drawbacks to dairy from cows apply equally to dairy products from all these other creatures, and that includes yogurt, buttermilk, cheeses, and milk, whether full fat or non-fat.

Meat, Poultry, Eggs, and Fish

The problem with so-called red meats—beef, lamb, and pork—lies with the amount and types of fat they contain. In part, this is just an accident of breeding, because down the millennia the breed has changed. Some breeders are now trying to breed these animals back to a much lower fat percentage and to a better fatty acid profile. Mostly, however, the problem is with the food the beasts are given to eat. Cattle are naturally “browsers”: they eat from a huge variety of bushes, flowers, and other vegetation. Today, ranchers feed them on grass or, even worse, corn and soybeans.

As long ago as 1968, Michael A. Crawford, zoologist at the London Zoological Society, was raising the alarm. He studied the difference in beasts living free-ranging lifestyles in African woodlands compared to the same species living in captivity on grassland.
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He found that the meat of free-living cattle had fatty acid profiles in line with the Savanna Model, whereas cattle fed on grassland had the “bad” fatty acid profile that we associate with beef today. That is, high in the saturated fats palmitic acid and myristic acid.

Pigs (and the wild boar from which they are descended) are creatures that browse freely in woodlands, even digging up earthworms and truffles. Today, pigs are fed on anything from restaurant scraps to time-expired processed foods. Sheep actually prefer eating the type of plant called “forb,” which is any kind of herbaceous plant except grass. Today, perversely, sheep are fed only on grass, if they are lucky, or otherwise on artificial concentrated feed made from rejected grains, vegetable oils, and soybean waste. Japanese researchers have demonstrated that sheep, cattle, and pigs have a “good” fatty acid profile if they feed in their natural habitat, whereas they have a harmful fatty acid profile when fed conventionally.
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Dr. Artemis Simopoulos of the Center for Genetics, Nutrition, and Health, in Washington, D.C., is one of the foremost advocates of the need to incorporate omega-3 oils in the human diet. He observes that “on the Ampelistra farm in Greece, purslane is plentiful and grows wild; the chickens make a feast of it, along with insects and lots of fresh green grass, supplemented with fresh and dried figs, barley flour, and small amounts of corn. . . . As we expected, the eggs contained substantial amounts of omega-3 fatty acids.”
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The Greek egg had an omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of 1.3 to 1, whereas a supermarket egg has a ratio of almost 20 to 1. The point is that many animal products have become unhealthy because the feed given to the animal bears no resemblance to the natural feeding pattern of the creature. As a result, the flesh and eggs are devoid of omega-3 oils.
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The food industry should correct this imbalance. One of the secrets to the Greek free-range egg is the omega-3-rich purslane that the chickens were eating. Now some egg farmers are producing omega-3 rich eggs by feeding the chicken on flaxseed, which is itself rich in omega-3s.

So much for the eggs, but what about the flesh of the chicken? According to Dr. Crawford, chickens are much fatter than 35 years ago: they contain 24 g of fat per 100 g compared to just 8 g in 1970. “Chickens used to roam free and eat herbs and seeds. Now they are fed with high-energy foods and even most organic chickens don’t have to walk any distance to eat.” It is likely that the Greek free-range birds had very little fat, of which a high percentage was omega-3s. This is the direction our food supply needs to go.

The situation is slightly different with other types of poultry. The fat from goose and duck is semi-liquid at room temperature, which tells us that there is not much saturated fat in it. The fat of these birds has a high percentage of monounsaturated fat. This seems to be one more element helping to explain the French Paradox—the people of Toulouse use these fats in preference to butter, thus increasing their intake of monounsaturated fats.

Some species of oily fish contain high levels of omega-3 oils as well, particularly wild salmon, sardines, herring, mackerel, tuna, and wild trout. Here, we have another secret to the long-lived and healthy Cretans and Japanese—their diets were rich in fish, many of them oily species. The Okinawans were eating 144 g (5 ounces) per day, six times the average American consumption. The high omega-3 intake increased the hormones that reduce abnormal blood clotting. Creatures like seal, walruses, and whales that eat these fish also have high omega-3 content, and this is the main source in the Eskimo diet.

However, all is not well with farmed fish, such as salmon and trout: their omega-3 content depends on what they are fed. Even though they are carnivores, farmed salmon are fed with pellets made of grains, fish meal, and vegetable oil, and so their flesh is often deficient in the omega-3 oils.

Animal matter can provide the same micronutrients as plants, such as calcium and vitamin A, but there is one essential micronutrient that has to be obtained from animal matter—vitamin B12. It is only needed in tiny amounts and it is easily obtained from eggs, fish, poultry, and meat. However, without it, we sicken and die, unlike the vegan gorilla who can manage without it. This is yet one more clue that animal matter must have been a constant part of the human ancestral diet.

Legumes

Legumes are notorious for being “gassy.” They contain a high percentage of indigestible carbohydrates called oligosaccharides, notably one called raffinose. When they arrive in the colon, still undigested, the bacteria feed on them, producing hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and methane—up to 5 gallons of flatulence per day in extreme cases. Humans simply do not have the digestive enzymes necessary to comfortably digest legumes.

Legumes are also not exempt from the same kinds of antinutrients, particularly lectins, found in cereals. Lectins in winged, kidney, mung, lima, and castor beans are toxic in their raw state. The lectins bind with the wall of the intestine, causing lesions and abnormal development of the microvilli. Nutrient absorption is impaired and the intestine wall becomes porous to bacteria, bacterial toxins, and lectins themselves. They pass into the lymphatic system and bloodstream to cause havoc directly.

Baking or vigorous boiling will deactivate some of these poisons. Our prehistoric ancestors had no way to boil water and could only bake with difficulty. We can be sure that our Pleistocene ancestors had less troublesome foods to eat. Had it been otherwise, our bodies would be immune to these toxins. Neither the Aboriginals nor the San ate beans of this nature.

In Victorian times, castor bean oil was administered as a purgative and it became a byword for vile taste. Today, we know that the castor bean harbors one of the most toxic poisons known, one that has been developed into a chemical warfare agent—ricin. This poison causes severe vomiting and diarrhea, dehydration, shock, kidney failure, liver failure, and fatal stomach hemorrhaging. Ricin is also toxic to the heart and bursts red blood cells.
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When ricin is inhaled, lung disease follows.
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Lentils, soybeans, and peas contain a related lectin that interferes with the membrane of immune system lymphocytes.
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