| February 2008 |
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Vol: 11.02 |
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Nutritional Anthropologist |
Evolutionary Biology The
Bond Effect The Bond Effect The Bond Effect |
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CONTENTS PRINT EDITION IS COMING
QUESTIONS
HELL AND GOOD INTENTIONS
RECIPE
HINTS & TIPS Unsupervised Children are More Sociable
LETTERS Common Sense on Gut Flora and Climate Change Population Density and the Lift Effect
DID YOU KNOW? Genes Achieve their Effects in Complex Ways Evolutionary Trap: Why Squirrels Get Squashed Crossing the Road
GUEST OPINION Climate Change Humbug and the Resilient Earth
LIFESTYLE- Sunshine Deficiency and Heart Disease Sunshine Deficiency and Lung Cancer
EVENTS USA Speaking Tour and Cyprus Book Signing
Always consult your doctor before undertaking any health program USEFUL LINKS
Deadly Harvest Information Page
COOKBOOK |
Healthy Harvest Cookbook Companion to Deadly Harvest Healthy, tasty food in conformity with the principles of Nutritional Anthropologist Geoff Bond A comprehensive collection of nearly 100 delicious, fully tried and tested recipes.
Nicole's cookbook will soon be available in a print edition. Register with us at the Healthy Harvest page and we will let you know when it becomes available and how to order. QUESTIONS
A. Yes but... The blueberry growers make much publicity of the high antioxidant content of blueberries. However, until recently, no one had checked what the body actually does with the antioxidant compounds we consume. Dr. Ronald Prior of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service tested blueberries, cherries, grapes, kiwis and strawberries [1]. He found that they all improve the "Antioxidant Capacity" of the blood. But one needed to consume at least half a cup of blueberries to make a useful difference. Dried plums (prunes) had lost most of their antioxidant capacity. More interestingly, Prior finds that we need to consume high- antioxidant foods with EVERY meal to counteract the oxidative stress created by other components such as grains, dairy, pizza or hamburger. [Of course you don't consume these anyway, do you!]
Our View? Our ancestral meals contained a wide variety of high antioxidant plant foods - and it is variety which is important. Any one species is far from supplying the immense range and combinations of micronutrients that our bodies expect. Our ancestors ate from over 100 plant species and each contributed its own special content of, and combination of, antioxidants. Since this variety was always there, our bodies came to depend on it to function properly. So you are doing it right by eating your blueberries along with many other fruits. You don't need to eat as much as half a cup (they tend to be rather expensive!). Rather, put together a couple of cups of a variety of fruits. Just be careful to eat them on their own or at the beginning of the meal. Moreover, if you follow what we say, every meal will automatically include high oxidant plant foods: salads, vegetables, and fruits (as starter). As we say in Deadly Harvest [info], that will nicely balance the "animal matter" of eggs, fish, game, poultry and the like.
HELL AND GOOD INTENTIONS Well-meaning meddling often makes things worse. The British Food Standards Agency (BSA) has mandated that bakers must add folic acid to bread and flour. Folic acid is a synthetic form of vitamin B9 or "folate" found in green leafy vegetables. In other words, folate is found in "foliage" which, after all, our body expects us to consume copiously. The
BSAs well-meaning aim is to ensure that pregnant mums with folic acid deficiency do not
give birth to babies with neural tube defects (called NTDs for short) like
spina bifida (where the spine is not closed properly.) Even so, only some
600 births a year in UK and 2,500 in America are affected by NTDs. In an American study, Dr Solomons, pediatrician of Guatamala City hospital, finds that the introduction of folic acid fortified flour in America was followed by increases in colon cancer [Ref 6] Our View? American and British worthy idiots medicate their entire populations because a few pregnant women don't eat up their greens! Worse, a far greater number of people -- who are not pregnant mums -- will suffer serious illness. Bread, flour and cereals are naturally poor in vitamins and minerals. That is why they are a favored vehicle for the government to medicate us en masse. We take solace in the thought that we don't eat bread, flour and cereals anyway. Moreover, the foods we do eat are difficult or impossible for the government to tamper with.
RECIPE This is a recipe from Nicole's new Healthy Harvest Cookbook (info)
Yield: 4 - 6 servings
Chili con carne is usually made with beef, but here we substitute chicken. Alternatively you can use any other conforming meat, such as turkey, venison, and so on. Also in our recipe here, we substitute beans by eggplant. The chili is much tastier a day or two after it’s cooked, as the flavors develop and the texture becomes richer. Ingredients olive oil spray 2 small-medium onion (about 8 ounces), thinly sliced 2 large cloves garlic, crushed 1 carrot, sliced 2 medium celery stalks (about 4 ounces), sliced 2-3 teaspoons dried chili flakes, to taste 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon ground coriander 1 stick cinnamon 3 tablespoons tomato paste good shake of Worcestershire sauce 2-3 medium eggplants (around 20 ounces), unpeeled and cut into bite-size pieces 14-ounce can diced tomatoes 1 cup red wine salt to taste freshly ground black pepper, to taste 2 chicken breasts (around 1 1/4 pound), skinless and fatless, minced 3 tablespoons fresh coriander leaves, chopped (optional) Method: 1. Spray a large saucepan with the olive oil and sauté the onion until soft and translucent. 2. Mix in the garlic, carrot and celery and sauté all together for another 2 minutes. 3. Add the chili flakes, cumin, coriander, cinnamon and coat the veggies with the spices. Mix in the tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce. Heat through for 2 minutes. 4. Add the eggplant and sauté uncovered for around 5 minutes. 5. Add the tomatoes with their juice and the red wine. 6. Season with salt (sparingly) and pepper to taste. 7. Bring to a boil and simmer covered for around 20 minutes, or until the eggplant is done. 8. Sauté the minced chicken separately in an oiled frying pan, taking care to separate it (using a fork to shred) during the cooking process. 9. Blend the meat into the eggplant mixture. If necessary, adjust the seasoning. 10. Optional: add the coriander and simmer all together for 2 minutes.
Unsupervised Children are More Sociable Youngsters who are allowed to leave the house without an adult are more active and enjoy a richer social life than those who are constantly supervised, according to a study conducted by Professor Mackett of University College, London [Ref 4].
His study finds that:
• Children allowed out without adult supervision are more likely to be found playing out or visiting the homes of friends than children who aren't allowed out alone. But we need to design and build environments that children feel comfortable in and that parents feel confident to let them use on their own. Without action the benefits of increased independence, self-reliance and general 'growing up' are in danger of being lost."
In so many respects we lose control of public spaces to cars, buses, trucks, nutters, muggers, drug pushers, pedophiles and other wrongdoers. Stalinist, soulless public housing projects, often with different ethnicities and age groups promiscuously tossed together, are a vivid example of how badly planners, architects and social engineers got it wrong. They knew nothing about human communities and how our mentalities expect a certain environment in order to function healthily. Mind you, this has been known for at least a century. The well-meaning Australians rounded up wandering bands of forager aborigines and housed them in specially built prefabricated villages with running water and electricity. Result? Demoralization and soaring rates of depression, drunkenness, suicide and murder. The Americans observed similar pathologies when they corralled Native American tribes into reservations. This plays back to Natalie's point about village life (next article). In Pleistocene times, we lived in close knit communities where everybody looked out for each other's children. Danger came from outside: mainly marauding men from another group. Natural dangers were few: even hyenas and lions kept their distance; they knew not to tangle with the murderous men of the tribe. Children wandered and played freely around the camp and its outskirts. The environment was car-free. Young men went out into the bush for their trials of strength and bravado. Within "the family", molesters and other malefactors couldn't try anything on. Should a threat arise, Dad was right there to cleave the wrongdoer's (or hyena's) skull with a stone-headed club.
Body Mass Index (BMI) for Adolescents Common Sense on Gut Flora and Climate Change Population Density and the Lift Effect Viking Pillaging From Natalie, Hertfordshire, UK. "Thank you for a great newsletter last December. It was really interesting." Body Mass Index (BMI) for Adolescents "The article on BMI for teens was particularly relevant. My daughter is a slim girl whose BMI caused the medical staff to claim she was underweight. I searched the Internet and found that same graph which shows that health BMI for teens is lower than for adults. With this evidence I was able to contradict the medical staff and show them that my girl's weight is normal." "It is worrying when medical staff advocate weight gain for normal weight children! It could be another factor fuelling child obesity. Worse, it makes mums unnecessarily anxious. This also ties in to your article about why women “women-worry” – yes indeed!" Common Sense on Gut Flora and Climate Change "I totally agreed with you on gut flora and climate change – so refreshing to see some sense being written." Population Density and the Lift Effect "What a wonderful world if we were mainly vegetarian, living in more individual space. Having moved to a village, I see the communication between people is so much better than it is in the towns. It’s the "Lift Effect" – people don’t speak in confined spaces."
Our View? Thanks Natalie, for that image of the "Lift Effect". The human psyche was forged in conditions of much lower population density. The typical forager band contained perhaps 10 or twelve families. The next band would be a day's walk away. So we can expect to find mental comfort and security in a small, self-contained village where everyone knows each other and has a feeling of common trust, loyalty and investment in the common good. (see Unsupervised Children are More Sociable above) Viking Pillaging "I loved the explanation about the peaceful Vikings. Were the tall slim blue-eyed ones the ones who were averse to pillaging? Because I don’t see much evidence of that inheritance in Britain. Maybe the short dark ones carried the violence gene; that’s what we see in our city centers at night!"
Our View? Curiously there is a strong correlation between blue eyes and shyness, lack of confidence and introversion (see "Breeds and Temperament" in August 2004 and "Genes Achieve their Effects in Complex Ways", next article). So perhaps that is another factor in explaining the peacefulness of today's Scandinavians. You have a point too about English hooliganism. The Vikings who were genetically violent-prone, colonized Britain and left their genes in the current population.
Genes Achieve their Effects in Complex Ways. Darwin noticed that quite unconnected features were often inherited together. He called it "correlation of growth". For example, blue-eyed white cats were almost always deaf and hairless dogs have poor teeth. Darwin knew nothing about genes, yet he identified the broad principles of inheritance extraordinarily well using his own observations and those of stock breeders and pet breeders. It is a common misconception that each characteristic is created by a gene that is "for" it. On the contrary, genes act together in teams to achieve their effects. And any one gene can participate in many teams. So the same gene that participates in the team for eye-color, switching it to blue, also participates in the team for personality -- often switching it into shyness. The shy personality in this case is just a genetic accident of blue eyes. Of course people can be shy for all sorts of other reasons too. As Darwin observed, the laws of inheritance are mind-bogglingly complex.
Evolutionary Trap: Why Squirrels Get Squashed Crossing the Freeway. Any organism is said to be in an evolutionary trap (or illusion) when it does something it has evolved to do, but at the wrong time or in the wrong place. For millions of years, squirrels have evolved to dash across open spaces and thus escape before a predator notices. Ordinarily, that is a sensible thing to do. But it's a bad idea when crossing four lanes of traffic. Moths flying into a candle flame are another example. Moths evolved to navigate by a bright light - the moon. They fly in a straight line by keeping a constant angle with the moon. This works because the moon is so far away that however far the moth travels, the moon still seems to be in the same place. However, a candle flame is also a bright light but very near. Using the same principle -- of keeping the same angle to the bright light -- causes the moth to fly in ever-decreasing circles until it spirals into the flame. Humans are not exempt. Last month we talked about how psycho- marketers use the human herd instinct to manipulate us into serving their ends rather than our own. We can think of many more simple examples. Humans have an instinct to seek out sweet, fatty and salty food. Today that instinct is a curse that we fight at every turn. Young men's drive for risky and violent behavior is unwelcome in modern society. Our instinct to flock together with people "like us" goes against politically correct theories of cultural diversity. There are no quick answers: the problem lies in the haphazard and organic way modern societies have evolved. In my dreams, what would I do if given the power? I would ensure that the only foods available would be in accordance with the savanna model. I would exempt young men from health and safety regulations so they could risk their lives fighting dragons and earning the admiration of their beloved. I would condemn social engineers to carry out their social experiments uniquely on other social engineers, not on a hapless general public. Dream on! Until that happy day dawns, we are thrown onto our own resources. Our objective is to bring the good news of how we can take personal control of our lives and fit them to our savanna-bred natures. (See also "Unsupervised Children are More Sociable" above). People in crowds behave just like sheep. So confirms a study by Professor Jens Krause of the Leeds University’s Faculty of Biological Sciences [Ref 3]. It takes a minority of just 5 per cent of what they called "informed individuals" to influence the direction of a crowd of a minimum of 200 people. The remaining herd of 95 per cent follow without realizing it. There are strong parallels with animal grouping behavior. In most cases the participants didn't realize they were being led by others. Most of us are happy to play follow-my-leader, even if we are trailing after someone who does not really know where they are going. Our View? The herd instinct is programmed into 95% of us. Yet we need to fight it in order to take control of our lives like we need to do. (See previous article).
GUEST OPINION Climate Changes and Earth's Resilience From Margaret Pettit, PG Dip Environmental Education. May I say I completely agree with Geoff’s ‘Opinion’ in the January 2008 Newsletter. Climate change and overpopulation are of major concern to all of us. Without getting too gloomy about it we can look forward to increased density of cultural diversity, flooding, droughts, possible food shortages and less access to medical needs. All a huge strain on public services and ourselves! Meet the Challenges Picking up on the methane issue, recently in the UK, Dr Ian Stewart, Geologist at Plymouth University, was talking about the frozen lakes in Siberia that contain enormous quantities of trapped methane gas. As the ice melts the methane will be released into the atmosphere with huge global effects. He ended though with the comment that “the Earth can take care of itself". What we have to think about is how we meet the challenges we face”. Natural Correction What I term as ‘natural correction’ is a process which defines the biosphere as ‘being like a single organism where the living flora and fauna of the earth, its climate and geology all function together and are inter-related, influencing the development of the whole environment’. So, the Earth will take care of itself one way or the other. Again, the message is we need to take care of ourselves. Unlike our ancestors we need to think about how we are going to cope with density, with over 50% of the world’s burgeoning population living in cities; worse, in Europe that figure is 70%!
Some tips for survival? Bees and trees are essential. Bees pollinate plants that feed us. Trees, as we all know, breathe in carbon dioxide and exude oxygen and provide an essential habitat for wildlife. Let’s remember that the human race is highly adaptable. If we can "grow our own" and be a Natural Eater we will be in with a good chance.
Our View? Margaret is right. In the past, the Earth has recovered from catastrophic events much more disastrous than our present climate change concern. 65 million years ago a giant asteroid crashed into the Earth and wiped out half the species. Nothing over 5 lb in weight survived. That event plunged the Earth into a blacked-out winter lasting several thousands of years. But a small lemur-like creature survived the catastrophe and evolved into us humans. Believe it or not, today we are living in a an exceptional period of rich species diversity.
We are not alone in questioning the climate change frenzy. Professor Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, is a recognized expert putting a similar case to ours. His latest book The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World has been one of the most controversial and influential of the last few years.
Yet more studies demonstrate that our bodies depend on receiving adequate sunshine Lack of Sunshine Increases Risk of Heart Disease Thomas J Wang, M.d. of Harvard Medical School finds that those patients deficient in the sunshine vitamin D were 62% more likely to have a "cardiovascular event", for example a heart attack or stroke. [Ref 5] Lack of Sunshine Increases Lung Cancer. Dr S B Mohr of University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA finds that the less sunshine one receives, the more one is liable to lung cancer. [Ref 7] USA Speaking Tour Geoff and Nicole will be traveling to southern California for a series of lectures to hospital doctors during March. The topic is: “Degenerative Diseases are Optional: - Our bodies are designed for life in the Pleistocene. How we know, what is going wrong today, and what we can do about it.” ANAHEIM PALM SPRINGS He gives a general public talk entitled: "Conquer Diseases Like Diabetes, Heart Disease and Cancer: Revolutionary Insights from Our Ancient Ancestors" at the Mizell Senior Center, Palm Springs on Tuesday, March 11th at 1:00 pm. Cyprus Book Signing Geoff will be signing copies of Deadly Harvest at Kyriakou Bookshop, Paphos on May 8th at 6:30 pm.
More details on our events page |
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| Always consult your doctor before undertaking any health program |
FOOTNOTES [2] . Br J Nutr. 2007 Oct;98(4):667-75. Epub 2007 Jul 9. Folic acid metabolism in human subjects revisited: potential implications for proposed mandatory folic acid fortification in the UK. Wright AJ. [3] Krause, J; Animal Behaviour Journal; 14/02/2008 [4] Children's Independent Movement in the Local Environment; Built Environment 33(4): 454-468; Roger Mackett. [5] Wang, PJ; Vitamin D deficiency and risk of cardiovascular disease. Circulation. 2008 Jan 29;117(4):503-11. Epub 2008 Jan 7. PMID: 18180395 [6] Nutr Rev. 2007 Nov;65(11):512-5. Food fortification with folic acid: has the other shoe dropped? Solomons NW. [7] Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2008;62:69-74; doi: 10.1136/ jech.2006.052571; Could ultraviolet B irradiance and vitamin D be associated with lower incidence rates of lung cancer? S B Mohr |
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