Dysevolution continued from the agricultural perspective:
Early farming brought the world starchy commodities foods like corn, wheat, rice and potato. They were relatively easy to produce and offered lots of storable calories. This allowed hunter-gatherers to settle down into farming communities. This was a boon for population growth as starvation became less common. See the picture below.
What was the downside? Previously, the hunter gatherers would eat a diverse diet loaded with vegetables, fruits, roots, meat and fish. These food types tend to be loaded with minerals and vitamins. When this farming switch occurred, humans began consuming higher volumes of the less nutrient dense but calorie rich staple crops. They also learned how to strip off the nutritious outer casing of grains to enhance its storability. Think brown rice versus white rice (6X more B vitamins in the brown form). Concomitantly, they reduced their consumption of meat, fish, fruits and vegetables as they had enough calories from starches.
This change in diet brought about nutritional deficiency diseases like beri beri, pellagra, goiter, anemia and scurvy.
Fast forward to today and we have cured some of these major nutritional defficiencies by supplementing the bleached refined foods that we consume in an attempt to control the unhealthy state of the modern diet and avoid a mismatch disease. What we have not accounted for is the root basis of modern disease.
As with breastfeeding versus formula, you cannot reproduce a food in its pure form with a refined equivalent and expect the same health outcomes. Modern farmed foods whether it be fish, beef, grains, etc.. are all turning out to be a problem for humans.
Of these foods, the biggest health risk to humans today is from refined flour and sugar from any source. These foods have not been handled appropriately and we are suffering. They lack many synergistic nutrients and minerals that are not supplemented. They lack FIBER (think gut micro biome). The jury is still out on the safety of novel food gene modifications (GMO) and so on...
History has shown us everything that we need to know about our food-gene connection. We can stop the evolution of disease, but it requires a step back in time to a less refined and reductionistic approach.
Aside: Medicine today is suffering from the same reductionistic theory. I was taught in medical school that the more refined a drug is the better! Again, nature has shown us that all things work better in combination and never alone. As we progress through the next year of newsletters, keep these principles in mind when you make decisions. The whole is often better than the parts individually! The village mentality or team versus the I.
Dr. M