Nutrition, Health, Myths
and
All That
Frank Tennant
Copyright 2015 Frank Tennant,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2425-5
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
PREFACE
“Every sentence that I utter should be regarded by you not as an assertion but as a question.”
This is how Niels Bohr, the Nobel prize winning physicist, often started his lectures. I don't pretend to be in his league but, in similar vein, my objective is to fill your head with questions so that on taking responsibility for your health, you make your own best decisions.
To stimulate those questions I will summarise the knowledge I have acquired on nutrition, as it relates to health, in the last fifty years and in particular the last thirty. Parts of this information are my own views, which may be contrary to conventional thinking, and some is supported by research, which can become outdated.
Stephen Hawking in ‘A Brief History of Time’ wrote: In effect, we have redefined the task of science to be the discovery of laws that will enable us to predict events up to the limits set by the uncertainty principle.
My observation is that much of the so-called knowledge on Nutrition that has been bandied around in the last few decades has led us off track. There have been many red herrings and it is an area where there is so much to learn yet it appears the uncertainty principle has been ignored by many determined to claim certainty. It is also an area in which the German physicist, Max Planck’s statement is very relevant: A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Some conventional thinking on nutrition might take a generation or more to be superseded.
It is more than fifty years since I was first made aware of the link between our health and the health of the soil from which we obtain our food.
In retrospect, I was fortunate, when studying Agricultural Science, to get to know one of the early pioneers of organic farming in England. He was in his 70‘s at the time and had already written two books on the subject and was completing his third one. His books are still being used by organic farmers around the world. He sparked my questioning of modern agricultural methods, though it took me years of reading, observation and experience to really understand the implications. He and his fellow colleagues were originally know as ‘muck and magic’ or 'humus' farmers. These days they may be grouped as practicing organic, sustainable, biological or ecological farming. There are differences between them but in essence they rely on what I was originally advised “A healthy soil produces healthy plants which influence the health of the people and animals that eat them”. As far as our health is concerned humus farmers, as you will learn, is the most appropriate description.
I was advised to read a book called “The Stuff Man’s Made Of” . Let me quote you the summary on the inside of the dust cover and at the end you will understand why I suggest you read on:
“Never before have the people of the West enjoyed such abundant food, so much medical care, such freedom from epidemics. Yet they are increasingly susceptible to cancer, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, arthritis, gastric ulcers and many other functional disorders. These diseases are degenerative, coming from within and striking all ages. What is happening?
......a handful of research scientists, working apart, nevertheless reached certain common conclusions - that health is a positive process profoundly influenced by food and environment; that there is a nutritional cycle comprising soil, plants , animals and human beings, impairment of which at any point may impair health at other points; that the basis of positive health is wholesome food raised from biologically fertile soil.
This concept, though still too revolutionary for official acceptance, has been strengthened by subsequent work and experience. It is interesting a growing number of intelligent people in all walks of life. It may represent a great contribution to the conquest of degenerative disease”.
This summary reads like today’s situation yet that book was published in 1959.
It is a summary of information from the first half of the last century which shows the link between modern agricultural practices, food manufacturing and the incidence of degenerative diseases. I first read it in the early 1960’s.
The author noted some interesting statistics.
In the first half of the last century improved public health reduced the deaths from infectious diseases by 90%, at the same time deaths from degenerative diseases increased by 90%.
So, this is not new knowledge. It has been known for some time but the problems have escalated.
Let me, however, start at the beginning.
EVOLUTION AND FOOD
It can take many thousand years of evolution for our biochemistry to manage some foods we are currently encouraged to eat. Hopefully we may wake up to this fact and stop eating them or, possibly, by a process of selection many may cease being able to breed and those that are left could be the progenitors of a new species of homo sapiens!
To give us an indication of beneficial foods it is important to understand what we ate as we evolved.
Opinions differ as to when the present version of homo sapiens, our ancestors, emerged. It seems to have been somewhere between 125,000 and 700,000 years ago.
Our closest living ‘relative’, the chimpanzee, diverted from our mutual family tree some 5 million years ago. But there are only 1.6% of genes that separate us from them - a very small genetic distance.The main changes have been morphological - to the surface! Our biochemistry remains the same. Maybe they can give us some clues as to what is a healthy diet.
There are those who propose that we should not eat meat as our ancestors were basically vegetarian. Yet, some 5 million years ago we had a cousin (australopithelus robustus ), descended from ramapithecus, our common ancestor. Robustus was vegetarian but that line died out.
There is much evidence to show that our forbearers (australopithelus africanus) ate plenty of fish and fowls and that, 2 million years ago, they used stone tools to cut up meat.
Meat has a more concentrated supply of protein than plants. Eating meat, therefore, cuts down the bulk and the time spent in eating by two thirds. The author of ‘The Ascent of Man’ Dr Jan Bronowski, rates this extra time as the spur that enabled our forbearers to move from the biological evolution of man to the next 2 million years of cultural evolution - the making of tools and various art forms which led us,12,000 years ago, into the Agricultural Revolution.
Our Stone Age ancestors ate three times the amount of protein that we do; half the fat; six times the fibre; two to three times the calcium; and no sugar - apart from the occasional honey.
Over many millennia, mankind learnt through trial, error and instinct which foods were beneficial. Animals still have this instinct yet homo sapiens seems to have lost it. As I walk across the paddocks with my dog I notice that at certain times of the year she will eat certain grasses. Livestock will often eat what we may term weeds - they seem to know that they need what that particular plant has to offer.
There