The Big Bang took place 13.7 billion years ago. Earth formed
about 4.54 billion years ago out of “stardust.” So our planet is not nearly as
old as our universe (which consists of clusters of galaxies). It was not until
1.8 million years ago that our species, homo
sapiens, took shape, formed by the forces of natural selection. We are relative newcomers to our planet’s
existence, yet much of what we encounter, make, or use in the modern world has
existed as only a mere flicker in our species’s 1.8 million year life as a species.
For example, it was not until about 70,000 years ago that
our ancestors’ brains developed to the extent that a fictive imagination was
possible. That is, the homo sapiens brain
was no longer dependent on the senses (e.g., touch, sight, smell) and thus
empirical observation of one’s environment (e.g., appearances). The brain could
imagine a unicorn, justice as an ideal (even as a Platonic form!), and a
utopian vision having little if anything to do with how the world is at the
time.
It was not until 9,500 BCE that homo sapiens settled into permanent settlements to farm. Only a
relatively few types of plants were grown and animals were domesticated as a
result of the agricultural revolution. For example, wheat originally grew only
in a small area in the Middle East; by the end of the twentieth century, the
crop’s area had reached 200 million hectares.[1]
From roughly 6,000 BCE, wheat has been a
basic staple food of Europe, West Asia, and North Africa.
It was not until the eighteenth century that the scientific
revolution found some traction. At that time, the gravitational pull of the
past, through tradition and custom, began to lose out to an orientation to the
future, and thus to discovery and innovation. This was a major shift in the
history of our species. As a result, the modern world as it exists would look
like another world to a person living in the sixteenth century, whereas the
same person would find the life of people living in the eleventh century to be
familiar.
As a result of the agricultural and scientific revolutions,
we moderns have a myriad of processed foods (e.g., hormones, preservatives).
Paradoxically, even though agriculture has essentially mass-produced only a
relative few of the foods that our ancestors ate from one day to another in the
eons of time in the Stone Age, the advent of long-distance transportation has
extended the reach of otherwise geographically limited foods (e.g., pineapples)
as well as the agricultural staples (e.g., wheat). This all sounds well and
good, but a subtle problem festers that can only be discovered by taking a very
long historical perspective grounded in anthropology—the study of the homo sapiens species.
I have been applying my own study of what almost two million
years of natural selection has etched in our biology to this day to dieting.
The forces of natural selection have not had nearly enough time to tweak our
bodies (including our brains) to the modern world in which we live. For
example, we eat much more in complex carbohydrates (e.g., wheat, so breads,
pasta, etc.) than our stomachs are designed to digest. In other words, it is
difficult for our species to digest wheat because that food was not factored
into the equation by the forces of natural selection in adapting the stomach of
a homo sapiens over almost two
million years. How long out of the 1.8 million years has wheat been a staple
food for us? Almost a blink of an eye.
Additionally, sugar is difficult for our livers to process
because that organ was formed when sugar was only consumed when fruits were in
season. Accordingly, besides being overworked, the human liver produces cholesterol
particles in the process. Coca-Cola is like a frontal assault on the liver,
with the heart being hit as collateral damage through a lifetime. It is no
wonder that heart disease is the leading killer of modern man.
Combining these snippets of anthropological food science
with the fact that few of us get anywhere near the amount of exercise of the
prehistoric hunter-gatherers, we cannot count on the burning of calories nearly
as much. By the way, the hunting made our ancestors more muscular and fit (and
without the pathogens that have plagued our species ever since we created large
societies and domesticated animals).
Even with regular visits to a fitness center, we moderns really must
attend to the intake side of the energy budget wherein a surplus of retained
calories is bad. To reduce current and accumulated surpluses, we can apply a
bit of anthropology with beneficial results.
Because complex carbs can turn into fat while a person
sleeps and most exercise typically occurs during the day rather than at night
(except, perhaps, in the bedroom), I have shifted my intake of “heavy foods”
like bread, pasta, meat, and potatoes to breakfast and lunch. In this mix I
have drastically reduced my intake of wheat foods (even whole wheat bread!)
because I know my stomach is not well-suited to digesting them. Because fruits
and vegetables are of relatively few calories and natural selection has taken
them into account in adapting the human stomach, I emphasize them for dinner. I
make sure the proportion of fruits and vegetables is than that of wheat foods.
In short, both timing and
proportions are in the mix along with
food servings when anthropology—taking the millions of years of natural
selection as the default—is itself added into the equation in formulating a
diet to lose weight. As Plato wrote, much of being virtuous is changing habits.
I would add self-discipline in countering the lure of instant gratification as
a vital ingredient. In terms of dieting, a changed habit that a person sustains
can actually result is a smaller, shrunken stomach. This physiological change
can in turn take away some of the pain in applying the self-discipline.
Although I do not read published diets, I suspect that this anthropological
approach is quite novel.
[1]
2 million square kilometers or 77,204
square miles.
