It's a Jungle Out There

Interesting review of a talk given at a conference by Dr. Daphne Miller author of The Jungle Effect.

Over the past ten years, scientists have spent a lot of energy investigating the world's healthiest and longest-lived populations, trying to figure out what they are doing right. Why do they live so much longer and have vastly lower rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other diseases than Western countries? We've picked apart and analyzed the traditional diets and lifestyles of Okinawans, Cretans, Icelanders, Cameroons, Pima Indians, and so forth, in an attempt to codify, once and for all, the healthiest diet.

The problem, as Dr. Miller discovered when she travelled to all of these places to see for herself, is that health and longevity are about the only things that these cultures have in common. The robust Tarahumara Indians, for example, eat a diet of 80% carbohydrates (mostly in the form of starchy vegetables like corn and potatoes!), while the indestructable Cretans get almost 50% of their calories from fat. Some long-lived cultures eat almost no meat, while the hale and hearty Icelanders eschew vegetables as "animal feed" and eat large quantities of lamb and fish.
. . .

A unifying concept that Dr. Miller didn't mention is that all indigenous diets are composed of a relatively small list of foods. In most cases, about two dozen foods provide 95% of the calories--in some cases, fewer than a dozen! Compare this with the tens of thousands of food products we are confronted with at the grocery store. Hundreds of kinds of produce from every climate inn the world. Dozens of kinds of grains. Scores of protein sources.

A small list of foods? Hmm, reminds me of my childhood. The only fruits I ate were Red Delicious Apples and the occasional banana. As for vegetables – carrots and maybe some corn. No wonder M is such a picky eater. She inherited none of the adventurous food genes from the Hobbled Wife’s side of the family.