[ExI] Grain diets and health (Paleo/primal health)

[J. Stanton]

I'll get to Dave's other points later, but this deserves immediate response:

On 11/18/10 4:00 AM, extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org wrote:
> On 18 November 2010 02:59, Dave Sill<sparge at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> >  2010/11/17 Stefano Vaj<stefano.vaj at gmail.com>:
>> >  Rampant obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, etc. are
>> >  postindustrial problems. They didn't start 10,000 years ago when
>> >  agriculture began. They began recently when industrialization made
>> >  highly calorie-dense food readily and cheaply available.
> This is not what paleopathology seems to indicate.

Stefano is correct.  In every known case in which a culture has taken up 
agriculture and its associated grain-based diet, lifespan, height, and 
all available indicators of health immediately crash.  This alone should 
torpedo the entire "grains aren't bad for you" argument.

Jared Diamond:

"Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of 
hunter-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5'9" for 
men, 5'5" for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, 
and by 3000 B.C. had reached a low of 5'3" for men, 5' for women. By 
classical times heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern 
Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their 
distant ancestors."

"At Dickson Mounds ... Compared to the hunter-gatherers who preceded 
them, the farmers had a nearly fifty percent increase in enamel defects 
indicative of malnutrition, a fourfold increase in iron-deficiency 
anemia (evidenced by a bone condition called porotic hyperostosis), a 
threefold rise in bone lesions reflecting infectious disease in general, 
and an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, probably 
reflecting a lot of hard physical labor. "Life expectancy at birth in 
the preagricultural community was about twenty-six years," says 
Armelagos, "but in the postagricultural community it was nineteen years. 
So these episodes of nutritional stress and infectious disease were 
seriously affecting their ability to survive."

[Note: That's a 27% decrease. Imagine if average US lifespan suddenly 
crashed from 78 to 57.]

http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/mistake_jared_diamond.pdf


"Cassidy CM. Nutrition and health in agriculturalists and 
hunter-gatherers: a case study of two prehistoric populations. in 
Nutritional Anthropology. Eds Jerome NW et al. 1980 Redgrave Publishing 
Company, Pleasantville, NY pg 117-145"

[Note: Hardin Village were North American farmers 1500 AD to 1675 AD. 
Indian Knoll were North American hunter-gatherers who were settled in 
the same location c. 3000 BC.]

"    1.    Life expectancies for both sexes at all ages were lower at 
Hardin Village than at Indian Knoll.  [Dramatically lower, and very 
similar to the decrease seen at Dickson Mounds: see chart in article.]
     2.    Infant mortality was higher at Hardin Village.
     3.    Iron-deficiency anemia of sufficient duration to cause bone 
changes was absent at Indian Knoll, but present at Hardin Village, where 
50 percent of cases occurred in children under age five.
     4.    Growth arrest episodes at Indian Knoll were periodic and more 
often of short duration and were possibly due to food shortage in late 
winter; those at Hardin Village occurred randomly and were more often of 
long duration, probably indicative of disease as a causative agent.
     5.    More children suffered infections at Hardin Village than at 
Indian Knoll.
     6.    The syndrome of periosteal inflammation was more common at 
Hardin Village than at Indian Knoll. [Porotic hyperostosis again.]
     7.    Tooth decay was rampant at Hardin Village and led to early 
abscessing and tooth loss; decay was unusual at Indian Knoll and 
abscessing occurred later in life because of severe wear to the teeth. 
The differences in tooth wear and caries rate are very likely 
attributable to dietary differences between the two groups."

"Overall, the agricultural Hardin Villagers were clearly less healthy 
than the hunter-forager Indian Knollers, who lived by hunting and 
gathering."

More information and long discussion here:
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-diets/nutrition-and-health-in-agriculturalists-and-hunter-gatherers/

JS
http://www.gnolls.org