re: High Protein Diets: Separating Fact From Fiction

MikeM_203 — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:32:39 GMT

This just goes to show that we should eat according to our genetics. For nearly 12 million years (if you date to the very earliest known human ancestor), early pre-humans were hunter/gatherers - meat, berries, misc. plants and the like. By comparison, organized agriculture has only been around for a few hundred thousand years. And processed agricultural products (such as bread and grains) have been around for even less time and were largely products for feeding the poor masses. Grains were filling, but not nutritionally dense foods. They filled people's bellies, but weren't particularly healthy. In many parts of Africa today, grains are almost the exclusive diet of many impoverished people and they are massively malnourished.

In modern society, we're seeing the rise in chronic disease associated with this type of diet - what I call the "peasant diet" (since poor early historic people couldn't afford meat and vegetables if they weren't themselves farmers). Of course, today it's a hundred times worse given that such processed foods are now loaded with unhealthy chemicals, including: synthetic trans fat, interesterified fat, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, artificial colors & flavorings, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, etc.