Nutrition
The Simplest Nutrition Formula
Eliminating grains and dairy products and eating like our ancestors might be the simplest formula for better health.
Nutrition
Eliminating grains and dairy products and eating like our ancestors might be the simplest formula for better health.
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Every year at this time, we remind ourselves in this newsletter what really matters in nutrition. This is relevant for two reasons: one, because we constantly get lost in everyday life where there are bakeries and fancy coffee drinks – and second, because ever-new nutrition trends keep us from staying focused.
Here we can ask: what could actually be the right diet for humans? If we're honest: you could philosophize about this for months, even years – and people do. Precisely from this confusion, new ideas and new dietary forms constantly emerge. Always fresh fodder for magazines.
With gorillas, the question is very easy to answer. There's no debate about carbohydrates and fats; quite the opposite: they eat mainly bamboo, fruits, and leafy plants – and the small insects crawling on them. Adult gorillas eat up to 30 kg of this per day. Period. Just like with humans: as soon as you take these animals out of their natural habitat and put them in zoos, they get sick – exactly like us.
There's an amusing story about this that we retell every year for motivation:
In 2005, the 21-year-old gorilla Brooks died of heart failure at the Cleveland Zoo. After that, a research team wanted to find out how the lifestyle(!!) of these animals affected their health.
The experiment was really simple: the vitamin-, sugar-, and starch-rich food was replaced with what the animals would likely eat in the wild – not replicated exactly, but mimicked. So romaine lettuce, dandelion, endive, alfalfa, green beans, flaxseeds, and even branches stripped of bark and leaves – plus multivitamin tablets pressed into a banana.
The important observation in the execution: this switch changed the animals' behavior. From then on, gorillas ate for twice as long each day, spending almost half the day eating – just like in the wild. Moreover, their caloric intake doubled. At the same time, the animals lost about 30 kilograms of weight.
Could it be this simple for us humans? We're not talking specifically about weight loss here, but about vitality, about a robust immune system, drive, libido, zest for life – and about a body that works and doesn't constantly rebel. And at the end of our days, our bodies should remain largely disease-free – that is, without diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc.
The first good news:
People who still live "naturally" don't know our diseases.
Prosperity diseases exist for good reason. And: people who still have to forage for their food must get out of bed in the morning. Without coffee. Fortunately, we can still ask what the right diet is.
Not from scientists, who tend to add or rewrite things anyway, but from real people who probably have "the oldest human genes." People who are genetically very close to our ancestors. Smiling at the camera, a Hadza man tells us ("Asking Hunter-Gatherers Life's Toughest Questions"):
Meat and honey.
We usually don't stop there. Of course, "meat and honey" also means fish, organs, everything you can gather and hunt – small prey, large prey, berries, and root vegetables. Noticed what's missing?
Grains and dairy products.
And this could be for you, for us, the simplest nutrition formula for a (re)start into a healthier life.
Because: humans (Homo sapiens) have existed for 200,000 to 300,000 years. The genus Homo, to which Neanderthals and Homo erectus also belong – and whose emergence coincides with increased consumption of animal products – has existed for an estimated 2.5 to 3 million years! Grains and dairy products, however, have only been on our European table for about 5,000 years – that is, less than 1% of our entire evolutionary timeline.
In other words: in 99% of our evolutionary history, we didn't eat certain things that today make up to 90% of our diet. This must logically have consequences for our health. Our biology simply can't be tricked.
The beautiful thing is: it's not about diets, not about willful dietary changes, or guesswork. Anyone who has eliminated grains – at least wheat – and dairy products from their diet will know how – just like the gorillas – their own behavior changes. Completely automatically.
And with it, their metabolic function and overall health.
A friendly reminder.
