In Search Of The Perfect Human Diet 寻找完美的人类饮食

2kork.wmw779

Searches for a solution to the obesity epidemic using dietary science, historical findings and ancestral native diets.

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00:02:42vegan in an effort to find both health and the same inner peace I'd felt during my near-death

00:02:46experience on the running track. For over five years, I ate only uncooked fruits, vegetables,

00:02:52nuts, seeds, and sprouts, an experience that inspired my first book, The Christ Diet, Connect

00:02:58Your Cell to Your Soul. But as time passed and life stresses tested my resilience, I

00:03:03didn't feel as good physically or emotionally as when I first began a vegan diet. The defining

00:03:07moment for me was my mother's death at the hands of a drunk driver. My dietary discipline,

00:03:12no matter how well-intentioned, wasn't providing my body, mind, or spirit with the materials

00:03:16I needed to recover from the physical and emotional impact of my loss. In fact, it wasn't long

00:03:22before my inner voice began crying out for real protein. During these same years, as I

00:03:29became a writer and broadcast journalist, we've seen a new national crisis emerge, an epidemic

00:03:35of overweight, obesity, and diet-related chronic disease that is now the number one killer

00:03:40in the U.S., and spreading unchecked to developed countries around the globe. The confusion for

00:03:46most Americans is that we see and hear so much contradictory advice that we don't really

00:03:51understand what to eat for optimal health. How can we deal with a national obesity epidemic

00:03:57when most of us aren't even sure how to lose our own excess body fat? In fact, ten years

00:04:02ago, a national Harris Bowl said 80 percent of Americans over 25 were overweight, and ABC

00:04:08News declared that Americans are fat and just too confused to do anything about it.

00:04:14The public is confused not because what are known as facts continue to change. The public

00:04:21is confused because what the media and special interest groups and large corporations selling

00:04:27foods, et cetera, would like you to currently believe is a fact keeps on being changed.

00:04:31Ninety percent of the people that I see have no clue, and they're just jumping from one thing

00:04:37to the next thing on a daily basis. I think we just need to ditch the whole thing and reconceptualize

00:04:44and reteach nutrition. From a very basic point of view, I think we complicate it too much.

00:04:49I have spent a fair amount of time in hospital scenarios, and it's tragic when you see some

00:04:56of the compounding factors of obesity and how it shortens lives, how it decreases the quality

00:05:03of life. So it's a tragedy in that regard, particularly when we're seeing more and more children affected

00:05:08by it. People will not be able to afford the cost of chronic obesity and diabetes and all

00:05:15of the complications that come with that. We're spending $147 billion a year because

00:05:20of obesity-related conditions. And we've seen the rate increase among kids in all communities.

00:05:29In the African American and Hispanic communities, the numbers are even worse.

00:05:34Add to the mix our new personal media devices, and escaping our uncertainty is made increasingly

00:05:40difficult because we are surrounded by a never-ending cycle of ever-changing diet recommendations

00:05:46and emotionally-charged nutritional beliefs everywhere we go, every day of our lives.

00:05:51There are three things in life which are very visceral. Religion, politics, and nutrition.

00:05:58They're all based on belief systems, and none of them respond well to the challenge.

00:06:03Essentially they say, don't confuse me with the facts because in my heart I know I'm right.

00:06:07A quick Google search on healthy eating reveals literally thousands of contradictory messages,

00:06:13medical entertainment shows, superficial news coverage, inaccurate reporting, and personal

00:06:18opinions delivered as fact, fueling even more confusion.

00:06:23Nobody's really interested in delineating the distinctions here and educating people

00:06:27and allowing them to make an informed choice. We look for sensationalism, and so they create

00:06:34a very false dichotomy right out of the gate that usually the person presenting information

00:06:39like this, Gary Taubes and some other people, have been kind of waylaid by these setups, essentially.

00:06:46Health is not simply the absence of disease. Health is being healthy.

00:06:51And a lot of people have no disease, but they never get enough sleep, they can't get out of bed

00:06:55in the morning,

00:06:56they don't have all the energy they need for the things they do, they have to visit a doctor

00:07:00two or three times in a six-month period, they're at their chiropractor every week,

00:07:05they take two or three over-the-counter pain meds, two or three anti-inflammatories, a bunch of anti-histamines.

00:07:11That's not health. They don't have a diagnosed illness, and they are not healthy.

00:07:17And that's most of the public.

00:07:19The tragic end result of this confusion is that in the U.S. alone,

00:07:23it's estimated that between three and four hundred thousand people die every year

00:07:27from complications directly related to their diet.

00:07:30That means in ten years, four million more of us will be dead from largely preventable causes,

00:07:36a statistic that should stop us in our tracks and push us to search for an immediate solution.

00:07:41Yet what remains is an invisible epidemic without a face.

00:07:46Sadly, unless we see the horror for ourselves on live television, as we did September 11, 2001,

00:07:53we don't seem to grasp the very real threat to ourselves and our loved ones,

00:07:58with all due respect to those who lost their lives that day, their friends and loved ones.

00:08:03Take a moment to consider this analogy.

00:08:06The largely preventable deaths of the three to four hundred thousand people who die every year

00:08:11from disease caused by the diet they eat every day is about one hundred nine-elevens,

00:08:18essentially the same as one nine-eleven every three days, year in and year out, with no end in sight.

00:08:30Dropping dead was easy that hot Memorial Day in 1978 compared to what I had to face later.

00:08:35That day, at the age of twenty-four, I felt no pain, had no visible scars,

00:08:40and soon moved forward with getting my life back together.

00:08:48Then, twenty-two years later, at age forty-six, due to increasing irregular heartbeats and difficulty breathing,

00:08:54I had to have a cardiac defibrillator implanted in my left chest muscle,

00:08:58which would restart my heart if I collapsed again.

00:09:01The implant was a physically painful and dispiriting reminder of my mortality I could see and feel every day.

00:09:07I didn't know how much time I had left to live,

00:09:10but I was determined to use what time I had to make a difference.

00:09:14This was the beginning of my unprecedented ten-year global journey

00:09:17to find the perfect human diet.

00:09:40Albert Einstein once said,

00:09:43We can't solve problems with the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

00:09:47Similarly, when I was a boy and I really wanted to know the answer to a complex or confusing question,

00:09:52my parents gave me some simple advice to open up my mind to new ways of thinking.

00:09:57First, they said, dive in and do your own homework.

00:10:00Second, be willing to look past conventional thinking for clues and alternative points of view.

00:10:05And finally, don't be afraid to go back and start at the beginning and see where it leads you.

00:10:10Using that model, preparing to search for the perfect human diet required me to do some homework

00:10:15on a few nutritional pioneers that are flying under the radar of conventional dietary thinking.

00:10:21The West Coast repository for one of the largest libraries of books and media

00:10:25dedicated to preserving the works of the nutritional pioneers

00:10:28is the Price-Poniger Nutrition Foundation in San Diego, California,

00:10:32where I spoke with the Foundation Board Vice President, David Getoff.

00:10:38The Foundation is set up to do two main things.

00:10:44To archive the works of all the nutrition pioneers.

00:10:49And the other is to promote the information that was derived from all that work

00:10:56and to have people understand that the ways in which the population of the planet,

00:11:04you know, not of the U.S. or anything, any particular little area, but the planet,

00:11:08it ate when they were researched by Weston Price, when he traveled around our world,

00:11:15looking at all sorts of different tribal and traditional populations

00:11:19that had not yet been influenced by all of the things that we're all influenced by,

00:11:23because there wasn't anything around them.

00:11:26They were still eating in the traditional methods.

00:11:28That they had very, unbelievably, extremely good health.

00:11:33That they had a completely different-looking face,

00:11:37which some people today might not even like because we've gotten used to the thin faces

00:11:42that have developed from improper feeding, which is pretty cute, actually.

00:11:45It's very interesting.

00:11:46But the jaw structure and the skull was large enough that you didn't have to remove your wisdom teeth

00:11:53because there wasn't room for them.

00:11:55You didn't have to pull two or three other teeth out for orthodontia

00:11:58and then work on an overbite or underbite.

00:12:01None of those things happened because we were all eating correctly.

00:12:06What I say in classes is generally that the longest-running and most comprehensive

00:12:14and the largest number of people in the actual group of research

00:12:18that has ever been done on the human diet is called the history of the world.

00:12:24And so when somebody takes a small research study that went on for six months or ten years

00:12:33and it seems to show something which Weston Price's research showed the opposite of,

00:12:40then the new research is wrong.

00:12:41Because Weston Price's research was specifically designed to look at tribal populations

00:12:48that had been eating the same diet for many multiple generations

00:12:54and that they still had perfect health.

00:12:58Another modern nutritional pioneer flying under the radar of conventional dietary thinking

00:13:02is Professor Karen O'Day, currently of the University of South Australia.

00:13:07About 30 years ago, Professor O'Day conducted a study in Derby, Australia

00:13:11which illustrated a traditional method of eating's potential to restore health

00:13:15to a population in decline due to dietary changes.

00:13:19Professor O'Day examined a group of Australian Aborigines

00:13:22who had originally grown up in the bush as hunter-gatherers.

00:13:25They knew which foods to pick and gather,

00:13:27they knew how to make weapons to kill kangaroos and dig out wallabies,

00:13:31and knew where and in what season to find both wild game and plants.

00:13:34But as early adults, they became westernized.

00:13:37They moved into small towns and cities and started to eat western foods.

00:13:41They became fat.

00:13:43They developed health issues like type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

00:13:47So Professor O'Day asked the group,

00:13:49would you be willing to go out to the outback for a seven-week experiment

00:13:53and become hunter-gatherers again?

00:13:55They agreed.

00:13:56She took them out to their traditional country in an isolated location

00:14:00where they lived off the land as hunter-gatherers.

00:14:03Depending on whether the group was on the coast or inland,

00:14:06their diet varied, eating from 54% to 80% animal protein,

00:14:1013% to 40% fat, and from 5% to 33% wild fibrous carbohydrates.

00:14:16Lo and behold, they lost weight.

00:14:18The insulin resistance, the high blood pressure, the high cholesterol,

00:14:23everything normalized when they re-established their former traditional lifestyles.

00:14:27All this improvement came in just seven weeks on a diet predominantly animal in origin,

00:14:32an average of 64% animal-based foods.

00:14:36And interestingly enough, exercise was not a factor in their improvements.

00:14:41Professor O'Day determined that the group was actually less physically active in the bush than in the city.

00:14:49A current test of a traditional method of eating's ability to restore health

00:14:53has been undertaken by Canadian physician Dr. Jay Wartman,

00:14:56who became interested in the relationship between diet and diabetes in the First Nations peoples of Canada.

00:15:03First Nations are one of the Aboriginal peoples in Canada,

00:15:07and they have terrible problems with obesity, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes.

00:15:11And I think it's got a lot to do with the change, the dramatic change from a traditional diet to

00:15:17a modern diet

00:15:18that is not a very healthy diet.

00:15:20The traditional diet in this part of the world was very low in carbohydrates.

00:15:24And it consisted of game, seafood, all kinds of fish, and some wild edible plants,

00:15:32usually seasonal plants like berries and certain greens that are eaten at certain times of the year.

00:15:38But a diet that's very low in starch and sugar content.

00:15:42And so it got me interested in the modern low-carbohydrate diets.

00:15:46I looked at the research in low-carbohydrate diets

00:15:49and found that people who had diabetes or metabolic syndrome or just obesity

00:15:54benefited a lot from being on a modern low-carbohydrate diet.

00:15:59So I got interested in that relationship.

00:16:02The traditional diet, the fact that it was low in carbohydrates,

00:16:06the change in that diet, which is a big, big increase in carbohydrates,

00:16:10and the advent of these diseases.

00:16:13In my travels, I go into a lot of remote communities and meet with people.

00:16:18I started questioning the elders about the diet.

00:16:21Like, what were your traditional foods?

00:16:23What kinds of foods did you eat?

00:16:26I started collecting stories, and it became very evident to me

00:16:29that their diet was very low on carbohydrate.

00:16:31Everybody was very interested.

00:16:33And we selected a community where it looked like it may work

00:16:37and started developing a study there.

00:16:40And it surprised me, actually, in some ways, the enthusiasm, the uptake.

00:16:46People immediately understood that the connection between their traditional ways

00:16:51and this dietary approach made sense to them.

00:16:54It resonated very strongly with them because there's a whole renaissance going on

00:17:00in terms of the culture.

00:17:01I feel like I'm the guy standing by the train tracks,

00:17:05and I know that the bridge is out down around the corner,

00:17:08and I'm waving at the train saying,

00:17:11Stop! Stop!

00:17:12And they all look at me like I'm crazy.

00:17:15And it's interesting because in the niche where I work with this diet,

00:17:20with First Nations people, when I connect the dots for them and I say,

00:17:25Think about your traditional diet.

00:17:26Think about what your elders ate, your ancestors.

00:17:30And think about the foods that you eat today and how your diet has changed.

00:17:34The light bulbs go on.

00:17:36So I find it very rewarding to work in this population because they get it.

00:17:41They get it very quickly, and it makes a lot of sense to them

00:17:45that the diet they're eating today may in fact be the cause of a lot of the health problems they

00:17:50have.

00:17:51So that very strong resonance of this idea in this population gives me hope

00:17:57that we will make a difference with this approach.

00:18:01And if we make a difference here, it's going to be hard for everybody else to ignore.

00:18:06For my next phase of preparation, I began searching for perspectives we are unlikely to hear

00:18:12in the mainstream media's coverage of popular dietary advice, beginning with vegetarianism.

00:18:17Coincidentally, the San Francisco Vegetarian Society's 7th Annual World Vegetarian Festival

00:18:23opened just as I was preparing to start my trip.

00:18:25It seemed like a perfect opportunity to hear the current thinking in the vegetarian and vegan world

00:18:30from both the participants and the movement's professional leaders.

00:18:36How you doing?

00:18:39We're doing a documentary called In Search of the Perfect Human Diet.

00:18:43Does somebody want to talk to us about your magazine and what you do and why you're here and all

00:18:47that good stuff?

00:18:48It's a perfect fusion of both my passions, vegetarian lifestyle, even a focus on veganism

00:18:53with the whole publishing aspect of a magazine.

00:18:57And you're vegan?

00:18:58I'm vegan, almost lifelong, since I was two.

00:19:01Really?

00:19:02That's pretty amazing.

00:19:04I've been vegetarian 22 years.

00:19:06I'm just recently vegan though, so I'm vegan now.

00:19:08So we know in America that people aren't eating right now.

00:19:12Most people know you're supposed to eat more fruits and vegetables, right?

00:19:17I don't tell people they should eat more fruits and vegetables.

00:19:19I tell people, you know, how do they say, how many servings of fruits and vegetables?

00:19:23Five a day?

00:19:24Six a day?

00:19:25Eight a day?

00:19:25And I say, no, stop counting.

00:19:27Don't add fruits and vegetables to the core of your diet.

00:19:30Make fruits and vegetables the diet.

00:19:33Can you follow that?

00:19:34Then we can count what things we eat, a couple of this and a couple of that that aren't fruits

00:19:37and vegetables.

00:19:38But most of what we eat should be fruits and vegetables, and our diet should be vegetable-based.

00:19:42The mistake that most vegetarians make is they think they need to make up for lack of dead

00:19:47to gain flesh in their diet.

00:19:48You don't need to make up for the lack of meat in your diet.

00:19:50You just need to get rid of the meat.

00:19:52Okay?

00:19:52And then you need to get all of your calories from whole natural foods.

00:19:55Not from highly processed, heated, beaded, treated, chopped, diced, salted, sugar,

00:20:00crap that's being sold at five times the cost of whole natural foods, because that's what people want.

00:20:05Tell us why you're here.

00:20:07I am the co-founder and creator of Tasty Eats.

00:20:10So I created soy jerky.

00:20:12Soy jerky.

00:20:13Yeah.

00:20:13Now that's interesting as an alternative to beef jerky.

00:20:16Yeah, absolutely.

00:20:17Because beef jerky is just loaded with saturated fat, sodium, just artery-clogging ingredients.

00:20:25Okay.

00:20:25So beef is bad, soy is good.

00:20:28Absolutely.

00:20:29We're actually, anatomically, we are herbivores.

00:20:32We're not, we're actually not carnivores.

00:20:35The way our digestive system works, we're actually better suited to be vegetarians.

00:20:41Vegetarians, obviously, don't eat meat.

00:20:44And they have a real problem with foods of animal origin.

00:20:48So if you advocate a low-carb diet, and you pretty much are telling people to eat meat.

00:20:55And it doesn't have to be.

00:20:56I mean, we've had patients, a lot of patients that have been vegetarian and have done fine.

00:21:00I mean, they have to work to do it.

00:21:02And they have to take some supplements.

00:21:04But they can do it, and they can do fine.

00:21:08But for the most part, if you advocate a higher protein diet, you're advocating a meat diet.

00:21:13And people that are vegetarians look for every reason to not eat meat.

00:21:19And up to and including trying to promote this idea that it's healthy.

00:21:24That the vegetarian way of life is a healthier way of life.

00:21:28Which is not true.

00:21:31I mean, it's absurd.

00:21:33There are sort of articles to physicians on how to deal with patients on vegetarian diets.

00:21:39Not to get them off the vegetarian diets, but how to, you know, what kind of treatment problems you're going

00:21:44to run into.

00:21:44I mean, it's an aberration.

00:21:46It's not the way of man.

00:21:48I mean, we've got a carnivorous GI tract.

00:21:50There are two kinds of GI tract, basically.

00:21:52There's a carnivorous, and there's an herbivorous.

00:21:54And an herbivorous GI tract has, you know, got multiple stomachs, a lot of herbivores.

00:21:59Because the nutrient density in plant foods is so low.

00:22:04But animals, cows that eat grass and things like that, that's really not very nutritious.

00:22:08They have to eat all the time.

00:22:09A lot of these vegetarian animals regurgitate their food and re-chew it and re-swallow it.

00:22:14Some of them even eat their own feces to recycle it to try to extract every little bit of nutrient

00:22:18out of it.

00:22:19But the main thing is they have to eat all the time.

00:22:22And we don't do that.

00:22:23We can eat once a day and do fine.

00:22:25We can eat once every two or three days and do fine.

00:22:27Just like lions can.

00:22:28I mean, we've got a carnivorous GI tract.

00:22:31And vitamin B12, which is only found in foods of animal origin, is essential to us.

00:22:38I mean, if we don't get vitamin B12, we die.

00:22:40It's an essential nutrient.

00:22:41So that right there, in and of itself, with nothing else, is an argument against the fact that our natural

00:22:47state is vegetarians.

00:22:49It's nonsense.

00:22:53What is commonly referred to as a low-carb diet, recently gaining wider media and medical acceptance,

00:22:58reframed as low-glycemic, had its beginnings in 1863, with the first popular diet book ever written,

00:23:06Banting's Letter on Corpulence, addressed to the public.

00:23:09In 1862, London undertaker William Banting was 65, 5 foot 5 inches tall, and weighed 202 pounds.

00:23:17So fat in fact, he wrote that he couldn't stoop to tie his shoes, became winded with every slight exertion,

00:23:24was losing his eyesight and hearing, and had to walk downstairs backwards to avoid knee and ankle pain.

00:23:31After 30 years of failure trying everything we're still advised to do today, including reducing fat, cutting calories, and exercising

00:23:40more,

00:23:41one doctor finally prescribed a diet that advised him to, quote,

00:23:45abstain as much as possible from bread, butter, milk, sugar, beer, and potatoes,

00:23:51which had been the mainstay of his diet for years.

00:23:53And he'd instead, three meals per day, primarily of meat, fish, poultry, or game,

00:23:59very small amounts of dry toast and fruit, any vegetable except potatoes, tea without milk and sugar, and dry wine.

00:24:07And no strict restrictions on the quantity of food at his meals.

00:24:12In August of 1863, Banting wrote in his booklet that at 66 years of age,

00:24:18he had dropped 35 pounds in 38 weeks, and later 50 pounds by early 1864.

00:24:25His eyesight and hearing improved, he could exercise freely,

00:24:29and yes, he could finally walk downstairs forwards with perfect ease.

00:24:33His book became a phenomenal success, ruffled the feathers of some in the medical community and popular press,

00:24:39and his name became part of the Queen's English, as a verb, meaning to diet.

00:24:47You know, we know that Banting came out with this diet in 1863, published it,

00:24:52but how did the medical community respond?

00:24:54And what people don't realize is that, for the most part, the medical community decided that Banting was right.

00:25:01So these diets would recommend meat and green vegetables, and that was the basis of a diet.

00:25:06If you went to the obesity textbooks, or the medical textbooks, or William Osler,

00:25:11who was the most famous physician of the, you know, turn of the 20th century,

00:25:16the early years of the 20th century, in his medical textbook, he says,

00:25:19you know, fat children come to see me, or fat women come to see me,

00:25:23I tell them to give up carbohydrates, starches and sweets.

00:25:26And you get rid of added fats as well, by which they meant butter, lard, you know.

00:25:32So you're eating the basis of the medical establishment's typical diet through the 1960s

00:25:39would have been some amount of meat and green vegetables.

00:25:43Every diet restricted carbohydrates.

00:25:45And then the question was whether or not you were going to restrict fats as well.

00:25:48And this isn't actually through 1910, say from 1865 to 1965.

00:25:52For a century, if you went to a hospital and were treated for obesity,

00:25:57you were told to give up carbohydrates.

00:26:01Now, of course, it's obvious to anyone following the media's coverage of diet and health stories

00:26:05that the low-carb prescription is not conventional medical advice.

00:26:10Begging the question, what happened to the science of nutrition and weight loss

00:26:14that had guided medicine for the preceding 100 years?

00:26:19You know, in the 1950s, we started coming up with this idea that fat causes heart disease.

00:26:24And if you're going to tell people to eat less fat, you've got to tell them to eat more carbohydrates.

00:26:30So the idea of the fattening carbohydrate and the idea of removing carbs first from a weight loss diet

00:26:39in the 1960s vanished to be replaced with the idea that dietary fat is a problem

00:26:45and carbohydrates are now, not only are they heart healthy,

00:26:49but the basis of a good and healthy diet is supposed to be a lot of carbohydrates.

00:26:55Jane Brody, the New York Times personal health reporter.

00:27:00This is her 1985 Good Food book.

00:27:04And the subtitle is Living the High-Carbohydrate Way.

00:27:08And she actually says in the book that when she was raised,

00:27:10she was raised to believe that potatoes, bread, pasta, rice were fattening.

00:27:14Lo and behold, they're not and you can eat as many of them as you want.

00:27:18And now a diet becomes, a weight loss diet becomes the exact opposite of what it was.

00:27:24Now a weight loss diet is low in fat and high in carbohydrates,

00:27:28and particularly those carbohydrates that everybody believed was fattening until the 1960s.

00:27:33Bread, pasta, potatoes, just don't put fat on it.

00:27:35Don't put butter on it, don't put cheese on it.

00:27:37That's what makes you fat.

00:27:39And the fascinating thing about this switch, this paradigm shift,

00:27:42is that there was no evidence to support it.

00:27:44There was this belief that fat caused heart disease by its effect on cholesterol,

00:27:49and nothing else.

00:27:51You know, absolutely nothing else.

00:27:54We changed at least a century of established wisdom on what constituted,

00:28:00not just a healthy diet, but a weight reduction diet,

00:28:02based on a belief that dietary fat caused heart disease.

00:28:06You know, we have come out of the era in which fat is demonized as the bad macronutrient.

00:28:13But that legacy is still very much with us.

00:28:16I still see that when people are telling, giving people nutritional advice,

00:28:19talking about weight control, I still see the emphasis on fatty foods,

00:28:23and people talking about high fat foods, and cutting down on fat consumption,

00:28:27and low fat foods.

00:28:28Fat does not make you fat.

00:28:30You know, this is a very important concept.

00:28:33Fat does not make you fat.

00:28:34What is driving the obesity epidemic in this country is the very high consumption

00:28:39of high glycemic-load carbohydrate foods, which have been technically manipulated.

00:28:45The famous Framingham Heart Study was used to promote margarine and other foods

00:28:52that did not contain saturated fat.

00:28:54But as, in fact, this study found that those who ate the most saturated fat,

00:28:58the most cholesterol, and even the most calories weighed the least,

00:29:03had lower levels of serum cholesterol, and were more physically active.

00:29:07So the three biggest risk factors for heart disease, or what we consider risk factors,

00:29:14were lower in people consuming more saturated fat.

00:29:20My food plate is the new graphical representation of the newly revised 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

00:29:27The plate replaces the well-known but confusing food pyramid in an effort to simplify the federal government's

00:29:33at-a-glance nutritional guidelines intended to promote health through improved nutrition.

00:29:39Using new, more generalized language, the new guidelines advise us to enjoy our food but eat less.

00:29:45Eat more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and fat-free or 1% dairy products.

00:29:50And also to eat less of the foods that are high in saturated fats, sodium, and added sugars.

00:29:57Substantial changes to the actual recommendations made by the new food plate are few,

00:30:01leaving it essentially the same as the old pyramid.

00:30:05But what doesn't get much public attention is the methodology that has been used to create the U.S. Diet

00:30:11Guidelines.

00:30:12The guidelines are based on a report generated every five years by a specially selected review panel.

00:30:18The panel members decide what scientific evidence and testimony to include from all that is presented.

00:30:23What the panel chooses will then guide the nation's health policies for at least the next five years.

00:30:29I mean for years the mainstream has been telling us academicians and those are the people that the government always

00:30:36turns to.

00:30:37All the usual suspects when they want to have a conference to decide how to do something, they go after

00:30:41the mainstream.

00:30:42And the mainstream has been wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong nutritionally over the past 20 or 30 years.

00:30:48And so they get the advice from people that give them incorrect advice and they act on it and then

00:30:55we all suffer from it.

00:30:57From the start, our dietary recommendations have been based as much on politics as on science.

00:31:04The first set of dietary goals were written by political staffers, not by scientists or nutritionists.

00:31:13They were based then, that first set, on the as yet unproven theory that reducing dietary fat would reduce heart

00:31:21disease, diabetes, and obesity.

00:31:24They directed Americans to consume less fat, less sodium, less saturated fat, more carbohydrate.

00:31:30And these recommendations have remained remarkably consistent for 30 years.

00:31:37They come right out and they actually say vegetarian for kind of the first time.

00:31:42It's even more grain, more legume based, a de-emphasis in animal based proteins, which for me is absolute madness

00:31:49and is definitely driving the train in the wrong direction.

00:31:52And it's further problematic that there's no distinction made, you know, when they say plant based proteins or grains, a

00:32:03snack well or a similar like highly refined, high fructose containing item is lumped in right along with a bowl

00:32:12of steel cut oats or pearled barley.

00:32:16Few people are eating those types of foods though.

00:32:18And even for me, those are not optimum foods.

00:32:21Those are marginal for the most part, which makes me sound like a crazy person.

00:32:25But let's take that then further steps of refinement and take that steel cut oat and make it instant oats,

00:32:32which we know that the glycemic and insulin generating effects of that type of food are so much more powerful

00:32:38than the less processed forms.

00:32:42It's somewhat disheartening.

00:32:44I went to a farmer's co-op in Arkansas once and went in there and started looking at the labels

00:32:49on the feed bags.

00:32:51And this guy comes over and asked me if he could help me.

00:32:53And I told him kind of what I was doing that I was writing a book on nutrition and I

00:32:58wanted to see, you know, how you fattened up animals.

00:33:01And he said, well, you know, the guy that does this is upstairs. Let me take you up and he

00:33:04can talk to you.

00:33:05So we go up and the guy pulls out his book of his manual of animal feeding, I think it

00:33:11was called.

00:33:12He looks down there and he said, yeah, this is where we come up with our formulas to, you know,

00:33:15to fatten cows, to fatten hogs, to do this, to do that.

00:33:19And so he made me some copies of these things.

00:33:22And so I took them home and I ran them through my nutritional computer just to see how it came

00:33:26out.

00:33:27And it came out almost to the percent exactly what the USDA food pyramid is.

00:33:33So farmers basically use the USDA food pyramid to fatten their animals.

00:33:38And so I refer to it as the feedlot pyramid.

00:33:42Now with initial preparations complete, it's time to start at the beginning of human evolution to see where it leads

00:33:48us.

00:33:48I traveled to the University of Colorado in Fort Collins to meet with America's leading expert in evolutionary nutrition, Professor

00:33:55Lauren Kerdain.

00:33:56The evolution by natural selection is the most powerful idea in all of medicine and biology.

00:34:02It's only been within the last decade, maybe 15 years, that the scientific and nutritional communities have become aware that

00:34:09indeed our nutritional requirements are shaped by our evolution.

00:34:13Probably about 1987, I read the classic paper by Dr. Boyd Eaton from Emory University called Paleolithic Nutrition that was

00:34:22published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

00:34:24And I thought that was about the best idea I've ever heard of in my life.

00:34:28And being somewhat of an obsessive personality, I decided to follow up on this.

00:34:35And after I read the article, I went out and there were 60 or 70 references to the article.

00:34:40I went out and got every one of those.

00:34:41And I read every one of those.

00:34:43And if you're a scientist, you realize that every article has references.

00:34:46And you basically can reference every paper that's ever been published, ever.

00:34:50And so I started to read these articles.

00:34:54And I started to put them in piles.

00:34:56They started to form these patterns like milk, problems with drinking milk, problems with eating grains, problems with vegetable oil,

00:35:06and so forth.

00:35:06And then I started to file them.

00:35:09And you see these filing cabinets in here.

00:35:11I now probably have 10,000 or 15,000, 20,000 scientific articles.

00:35:16And they started to form sub-patterns and the patterns and blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:35:20And so I started to get this insight into the whole thing.

00:35:22And one of the days, finally, in the early 90s, I got up the courage to call Boyd Eaton because

00:35:28he was kind of my hero.

00:35:29So I called him up on the telephone and very, he's a gentleman by the true sense of the word

00:35:35gentleman.

00:35:36And he, of course, entertained a telephone conversation from a complete stranger for about 45 minutes.

00:35:43And at the end of the conversation, he goes, well, it sounds to me like you know more about this

00:35:47than I do.

00:35:47To better illustrate the concept of evolutionary nutrition, Professor Cordain took me down to the football field to give human

00:35:54dietary evolution a sense of scale.

00:35:57Two million years ago was the very first appearance of a member of one of our ancestors called Homo erectus.

00:36:05And so we believe that this is the first member of the human genus Homo, which means man.

00:36:11And we believe that this is a crucial step in the evolution of the human diet.

00:36:16So this is basically the starting point.

00:36:19And we can go back a half million years earlier, and that's when the first stone tools were made.

00:36:25But the first appearance of people that were anatomically very similar to us from the head down starts about two

00:36:33million years ago.

00:36:35Then Homo erectus leaves Africa and crosses into Europe.

00:36:40We find Homo erectus for the first time in a place called Damanisi.

00:36:45Damanisi is dated to about 1.7 to 1.8 million years ago.

00:36:50This is the first time we see Homo erectus moving to 40 degrees north latitude.

00:36:55Now the crucial idea at 40 degrees north latitude is that plant foods are not available all year round.

00:37:03So there's a number of months out of the year when there is nothing to eat but animal foods.

00:37:08After we pick up the fossil record from Damanisi in Georgia, the Homo erectus spreads throughout the rest of Asia.

00:37:16They go east to a site in China roughly 1.65 million years ago.

00:37:21And they spread all throughout Asia up to about 40 degrees north latitude.

00:37:24But they couldn't crack much higher latitudes than that because they probably hadn't mastered fire by that time.

00:37:29Then we have Homo spreading from southern Europe on into northern Europe.

00:37:36And we can go to Boxgrove in England about 500,000 years ago, between 4 and 500,000 years ago,

00:37:42where we can pick up the fossil record there.

00:37:44Boxgrove revealed a rich fossil record of big game animals and the butchering of large herbivores, including rhinoceros.

00:37:51Another famous European site is in Schoenigen, Germany, dated to 400,000 years ago, where a series of wooden throwing

00:37:58spears were found.

00:38:00Radiocarbon dating has confirmed that three of the wooden spears found there are the oldest complete hunting weapons ever found.

00:38:06They were found with more than 10,000 animal bones, mostly from horses, including many that were butchered for edible

00:38:12meat.

00:38:13Then, at about 230,000 years ago, we first see evidence of Neanderthals in Europe.

00:38:18And the evidence suggests that, like early Homo, they were highly dependent upon animal foods.

00:38:24As our brain size increased, our behavioral sophistication also increased, and we were better able to hunt animal food.

00:38:32We weren't dependent upon scavenging them.

00:38:34And so, more and more, the fossil evidence suggests that more and more animal food was included in the diet.

00:38:39It takes a degree of behavioral sophistication to be able to make a sharp stone stick to the end of

00:38:46a spear.

00:38:46Now, did diet have anything to do with our sophistication?

00:38:49We believe that it does. We believe that, increasingly, we started to include more omega-3 fatty acids in our

00:38:55diet.

00:38:55We believe that, as we became more and more dependent on omega-3 fatty acids, that also facilitated increased brain

00:39:03growth, increased behavioral sophistication.

00:39:05So, by following this dietary path here, we were getting smarter and, you know, more sophisticated and better able to

00:39:13survive and take care of ourselves.

00:39:15Literally, the evolution of the human brain was dependent upon animal foods.

00:39:19We would not be sitting here speaking to one another had not those guys, way back there, started to eat

00:39:24animal foods.

00:39:25So, as I understand it, then right next door is another critical time in history.

00:39:29That's absolutely right. 192,000 years ago, in Africa, for the very first time, we see anatomically modern humans appearing.

00:39:38192,000 years ago.

00:39:39So, the next stop along the line is when things really took a big hit.

00:39:44Well, that's right. When we look at anatomically modern humans, they left Africa, perhaps give or take 20,000 years,

00:39:52by about 70,000 years ago.

00:39:54And they headed east again. They went towards Australia. So, about 45,000 years ago, we think anatomically modern humans

00:40:02entered Europe.

00:40:02And we also believed that they were behaviorally modern by that time. We believed that they had full capacity for

00:40:07speech.

00:40:08We see sophistication in the tool making. We see art. We see burying of the dead. We see musical instruments.

00:40:15We see cave paintings.

00:40:16Wow. Yes. And so, we actually, there's famous cave paintings in Europe where we actually see these humans hunting wild

00:40:24animals.

00:40:25So, that's in France, right? In France, that's right, yeah.

00:40:27Let's shuffle forward to about 10,000 years ago, which is the half-yard line.

00:40:33The half-yard line? The half-yard line, indeed. That was 10,000 years ago.

00:40:37Now, that seems to be historically remote, but on an evolutionary basis, it's a drop in the bucket, isn't it?

00:40:43Let's shuffle on up there.

00:40:49And we look back, and that's a long way. From that point until here, every human being on the planet

00:40:56ate wild, plant, and animal foods that they either hunt or gather.

00:41:01From that point to here, nobody drank milk or ate grain.

00:41:05So, for the first time, we see humans eating dairy and wheat, and then there was another big change with

00:41:12that, right?

00:41:13That's right. With the Industrial Revolution, we started to include refined sugars, refined grains, and mixtures of these refined sugars,

00:41:19refined grains, refined oils.

00:41:21We call them processed foods. These are the ubiquitous foods in the typical American diet that comprise more than 70

00:41:27% of the average calories in the American diet.

00:41:29Right now? Right now.

00:41:3070% of everything that we eat stems from the Industrial Period, essentially.

00:41:34The Industrial Period forward. And actually, processed foods really didn't get going until about 1900, 1920.

00:41:40So, let's go down to that point here on our evolutionary time scale, and let me point down here to

00:41:47this.

00:41:48If we take a look at the last fifth of the last inch, we're talking…

00:41:54Right in front of your fingernail.

00:41:55Right in front of my fingernail. The last fifth of the last inch of this entire evolutionary time scale, that's

00:42:02when humanity started to generally eat processed foods.

00:42:05Now, tell me, my God, when you look back at that distance to here, is it any wonder that we

00:42:12are having trouble with our diet?

00:42:13We are so far off base from what we are genetically programmed to eat.

00:42:18The second leg of our search takes us to New York City, first to meet with the American Museum of

00:42:22Natural History's Gary J. Sawyer, physical anthropologist.

00:42:26Sawyer specializes in the forensic reconstruction of our extinct relatives, based on the most up-to-date evidence of where

00:42:33and how our ancestors lived.

00:42:36We do not know how to eat properly. We feed ourselves, but we fail to give ourselves the proper nutrition.

00:42:46And after a while, it becomes cumulative, and that's when we start developing degenerative diseases.

00:42:53I'd like to welcome you to the Hall of Human Origins.

00:42:55We're going to take a big leap in time now into what we call the very early Paleolithic.

00:43:02If you'll follow me over this way, I'll be able to explain to you.

00:43:05Great.

00:43:08We're now two million years into the past.

00:43:11What I'd like to point out is the environment where these people lived, all open grassland, what we call savannah.

00:43:19There's trees in the background, but it's very open, very dangerous territory for them.

00:43:25So when we hear that the earliest modern humans came from Africa and came from the savannah, this is a

00:43:30representation of that?

00:43:31This is an excellent representation.

00:43:33What I'd like now to do is show you something.

00:43:37Look at that.

00:43:38All right.

00:43:39This is a fossilized skull, approximately two million years old, in excellent condition to find a specimen like this, so

00:43:52perfectly preserved.

00:43:53These people were now becoming more and more meat eaters.

00:43:58And we feel that this had a great deal to do with expansion of the brain.

00:44:03Our bodies evolved the way they are now, quickly.

00:44:07Our brain, however, took a while to catch up.

00:44:11However, with a high protein diet as what they had, that was the secret for encephalating our brain and for

00:44:20the greater intelligence that we have today.

00:44:22Does that mean growing our brain, getting more?

00:44:25Yes, it does.

00:44:26It does.

00:44:26Okay.

00:44:27Yeah.

00:44:27They would actually crack open the skulls of these animals and actually get the brain tissue out, which is high

00:44:34in cholesterol.

00:44:35Break open the long bones and get the marrow out and eat that.

00:44:41So already, early fossil humans were consuming meat.

00:44:47Right.

00:44:48And that made a big difference in our evolution and how our brains developed.

00:44:52We believe it made all the difference in our evolution.

00:44:56If we had stayed as vegetarians, in all probability, I wouldn't be speaking to you on this particular high level

00:45:04of intellect.

00:45:05This is a diorama that features anatomically modern humans, just like you and I, albeit very primitive.

00:45:17If you look at the background, they're living in a tundra environment, but they've already constructed a house, a very

00:45:25interesting house, made of mammoth bones.

00:45:27It's all mammoth bones.

00:45:28It's almost all mammoth bones.

00:45:30Correct.

00:45:30These are what we call anatomically modern humans, just like you and I, identical in all respects, same form of

00:45:37intelligence, everything.

00:45:39However, they're still living in the Paleolithic, which means that their diet, so to speak, is lean meat, any form

00:45:48of vegetation they could get, fruits, berries, nuts, fish.

00:45:52Okay?

00:45:53Everything is coming from a world that was pristine, as opposed to a world today that is highly polluted.

00:46:03Okay?

00:46:04The humans here are modern like you and I.

00:46:07They are clothed.

00:46:09We know that they use needles to sew their clothing.

00:46:13They're actually burying some meat right here.

00:46:17Oh, right there.

00:46:18Right there they are.

00:46:19Right?

00:46:19They're refrigeration.

00:46:21They're refrigeration system.

00:46:22They're refrigeration system.

00:46:22Okay, so they're advancing considerably.

00:46:24Okay?

00:46:25They're still what we call, in the Stone Age, they're still making their tools of stone and bone.

00:46:31No metal exists before this.

00:46:33Okay.

00:46:34So we're roughly dealing with a period, maybe 30, 40,000 years BP, before the present.

00:46:40All right?

00:46:41Okay.

00:46:41Just before a big change would start taking place in human evolution.

00:46:46A change we call a dietary change.

00:46:49So this is just before the beginning of agriculture, just before the big switch over in a different

00:46:57phase of human evolution.

00:46:59And this was nutritionally superior, this kind of diet.

00:47:03This represents the pre-agricultural age.

00:47:08After that, we start to decline.

00:47:11Things change.

00:47:12Things change.

00:47:13Things change.

00:47:14The foods that were available to them in nature is what helped move evolution forward, right?

00:47:19We believe so.

00:47:20Definitely.

00:47:21You know, it was a struggle.

00:47:22It was a struggle.

00:47:23It was survival of the fittest.

00:47:26And today, we are it.

00:47:29We're the end product of that long survival.

00:47:33Also located in New York is the Wintergren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

00:47:37We support significant and innovative research into humanity's biological and cultural origins,

00:47:43development, and variation.

00:47:45Evolutionary anthropologist and President of the Foundation, Leslie Aiello's research,

00:47:50focuses on the evolution of human adaptation, including evolution of diet, the brain,

00:47:55language, and cognition.

00:47:58What we call the ideal human diet depends on what we call human.

00:48:02Because we've had seven million years of human evolution, that being defined as the

00:48:08time that we separated from our closest living ancestors, the chimpanzees.

00:48:13But throughout that seven million years, we weren't human as we would define it today.

00:48:18And for probably five million years throughout that time period, if we saw one of these ancestors

00:48:24on the street, we'd recognize them as an ape standing on two legs.

00:48:29And their diet was correspondingly different.

00:48:32It wasn't identical to modern apes.

00:48:35But what we think is they were assisting primarily on vegetable materials, fruits, leaves,

00:48:42that type of thing.

00:48:43Supplementing, of course, with a bit of animal material.

00:48:46But at about two million years ago, we think the change really happened.

00:48:52And at this time, our ancestors, we call them Homo erectus, were radically different in body form.

00:49:00They were about 50 percent, again, as big as these earlier ancestors.

00:49:04And if you saw them on the street, they would look more like us.

00:49:07They would have the same body proportions.

00:49:11Long legs, relatively short arms in relation to those legs.

00:49:15And very importantly, smaller teeth and jaws.

00:49:19Now, this indicates that there was something definitely different about the diet

00:49:24of these ancestors at two or 1.7 million years ago.

00:49:29The question is what was different.

00:49:31Many of the earliest modern humans were actually also very big individuals.

00:49:37And so, you know, so this idea that our early ancestors were small people

00:49:41and we've just gotten bigger since then, really isn't true.

00:49:44And it looks like, you know, there were periods, you know, from these large individuals.

00:49:50Many modern humans are much smaller.

00:49:52Our early hunter-and-gatherer ancestors, one of my old professors used to say

00:49:56this was the high period of human evolution, and it's been downhill since then.

00:50:01Because they were eating a huge diversity of foodstuffs.

00:50:04We go to the supermarket and when they make a salad,

00:50:07we think that we're eating a lot of different types of veggies and all.

00:50:11But in comparison to what our early ancestors were eating, this isn't true.

00:50:15You know, they had a huge diversity.

00:50:18Once you start agriculture, you seriously reduce the variety in your food.

00:50:24And this also reduces the variety of nutrients you get.

00:50:27And what we think we're seeing when we see the real reduction in the skeletons.

00:50:35When we see evidence in the skeletons of really nutritional deficiency.

00:50:42That what we're tracking is this reduction of variation in the diet.

00:50:46We aren't getting what we were built to need.

00:50:50And I think that that's the bottom line of it.

00:50:53In 2003 at a symposium on the evolution of the human diet, the known, the unknown, and the unknowable

00:51:00at the University of Arkansas, one remarkable development caught my attention above all others presented.

00:51:05That we were just now entering a period of exploding scientific understanding.

00:51:09With rapid changes in scientific technology bringing to light new facts about the human diet

00:51:15that were previously unknowable.

00:51:17Three years later, when I was interviewing Professor Cordain, he said,

00:51:21You really should talk to Mike Richards at the Max Planck Institute.

00:51:24He's got some new technology that can tell you exactly what humans ate in the past.

00:51:29On my way to Leipzig, Mike suggested I visit one of his department's dig sites in the south of France

00:51:34to see the human nutrition discovery process from start to finish.

00:51:38We came here, they were butchering these animals.

00:51:41They were leaving behind the bones and the stone tools.

00:51:43We want to know a little bit more about that.

00:51:46Were they cutting off the meaty parts and taking those with them?

00:51:50Do you find evidence of those parts still here?

00:51:53What exactly was the process that led to the creation of this thick deposit of bones?

00:52:00Well, you're standing in the site of Jean-Zac, also known as Chez Pinot.

00:52:04Middle Palethic and early Upper Palethic site that was really, it was discovered in effect a hundred years ago

00:52:11when they cut this road that we're standing in.

00:52:14They cut a road to get access to the limestone face here, which they then quarried.

00:52:19And when they built this road, they sliced through the site.

00:52:23And you can probably see the richness of the archaeological levels there.

00:52:27You see that tag that says SW08 and all those dark things in the section are stone tools.

00:52:33And so it's a very rich layer that appears as well down here.

00:52:39They didn't report it to anybody official.

00:52:42It didn't really make it into any publications.

00:52:45And the site went unnoticed again for about a hundred years.

00:52:49And it was in the 1990s that a French geologist working in the region came here and took advantage of

00:52:54the road cut.

00:52:55They came across the stone tools and the bones in the section and brought it to the attention of a

00:53:00local French archaeologist.

00:53:02What we do is we study the bones and stone tools left behind by first Neanderthals and then modern people

00:53:09at the top of the sequence.

00:53:10And reconstruct what kinds of stone tools we find and what kinds of animals they were hunting at what periods

00:53:19indeed were they hunting

00:53:20or were the bones brought here by other kinds of animals like various kinds of carnivores and so forth.

00:53:27And are these all animal bones at this point?

00:53:29Yep, all animal bones.

00:53:30And then that brings us up to this layer of large limestone blocks that you see.

00:53:35Below those limestone blocks, we know it's Neanderthals.

00:53:39Above those limestone blocks, we know it's moderns.

00:53:42And during that time period represented by those layers there, the change happened.

00:53:48And then what happened when those two groups met each other?

00:53:51Right.

00:53:51Did they indeed meet?

00:53:52What was that interaction like?

00:53:54And here you would have had hundreds of thousands of years of Neanderthals living here, well adapted to this region,

00:54:02doing perfectly well, probably.

00:54:05And then in come these modern individuals.

00:54:08How did they react?

00:54:09What exactly happened?

00:54:10Well, and thus far when it comes down to diet, can you tell from besides the reindeer, obviously the animals

00:54:16that were here,

00:54:17can you tell us what they ate?

00:54:19Well, the evidence for the most part is going to come from the bones because that's what's preserved.

00:54:25We have a large team here of individuals studying the fauna and they can tell you a little bit more

00:54:29in detail about the kinds of things they're finding.

00:54:34We have found a lot of reindeer during the excavation.

00:54:40And as you can see, some long bones of reindeer and we've got a scapula of reindeer there, just there,

00:54:51and a lot of rib.

00:54:53Is the preference for reindeer because reindeer was the animal that was here?

00:54:59Or do we have a lot of reindeer because they really wanted reindeer?

00:55:02And there were horse and bison around but they ignored those.

00:55:05Those are the kinds of questions.

00:55:06More selective.

00:55:07Exactly.

00:55:08Is there anywhere in this layering that you said Neanderthals completely disappeared?

00:55:13Don't find Neanderthals after that layer of roof fall.

00:55:17The moderns came in.

00:55:19So modern humans more like us?

00:55:21Yes, exactly like us.

00:55:23They were modern humans.

00:55:26They had a brain that was organized, as far as we can tell, like ours.

00:55:30So you have to imagine these Neanderthals being extremely capable hunters, extremely capable at surviving in this environment.

00:55:41They were very intelligent, bipedal hominins, successfully adapting to this region, but yet at the same time, not quite us.

00:55:50Not quite.

00:55:50To me, that's what makes them so interesting.

00:55:52We want to really understand if those Neanderthals were encountering anatomically modern humans, because we want to understand if they

00:56:03interact with each other.

00:56:06Because right after that, they disappeared.

00:56:09And, of course, one of the big questions is why did they disappear?

00:56:14And what happened when they disappeared?

00:56:17It's certainly one of the bigger questions is, I mean, it's kind of funny.

00:56:21Why are we here and they're not here?

00:56:22Yeah, exactly.

00:56:23What happened?

00:56:24What happened exactly?

00:56:25That our species is the one that was left standing.

00:56:29Would you say, based on the archaeological evidence, that they were healthy compared to humans today?

00:56:36Well, fortunately, they were healthy because we would not be here if they were not healthy.

00:56:42All of the fossils excavated at the dig are taken a few miles away to a field lab where they

00:56:48are identified, bagged, labeled, and logged prior to being taken back to the Department of Human Evolution's laboratories in Leipzig,

00:56:55Germany.

00:56:56Department Director Jean-Jacques Houblanc spoke with me more specifically about what the Institute's research has discovered about early modern

00:57:04humans' health.

00:57:05Well, if it looks like Neanderthals and modern humans evolved as hunter-gatherers, were we healthy then and were we

00:57:11healthier than now?

00:57:14Well, I'm sure that they had a lot of troubles with their health, but very different kinds of problems than

00:57:24the ones we have now.

00:57:25We live in a society which is very safe. We don't have much accidents. Although we have violence, it's limited.

00:57:35And so we are mainly preoccupied with all the health problems related to our diet and our way of life.

00:57:43I think for the Neanderthals or for the first modern humans in our regions, they were mostly preoccupied in finding

00:57:52food.

00:57:52And the kind of problems they had in their daily life with their health was basically related to all the

00:58:02kind of accidents they could have looking for food and hunting animals.

00:58:07It's very unlikely that they had a lot of obesity. What we can say just looking at their skeletons is

00:58:17that they were very, they look like very tall, very strong and very healthy people in general.

00:58:24From the farmers, we have to suffer sometimes some kind of misadaptation related to the fact that initially we are

00:58:38not really made to eat so much cereals and sugar and things like that.

00:58:44The next destination is the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology's Department of Human Evolution in Leipzig, Germany.

00:58:52Professor Mike Richards' research involves the application of stable isotope analysis of bone collagen to determine human and animal diets

00:58:59as well as dietary changes in prehistoric and historic Europe.

00:59:04These are the things that I think people are completely confused about. I mean, I certainly was growing up. You

00:59:08just think that these are, you know, it's good to have a glass of milk and it's, you know, that's

00:59:12good for you and have lots of cereals every day and these kind of things.

00:59:15But when you really think about it, you realize that these diets are not so good for you at all.

00:59:19I run a group that's in a field called archaeological science. So we specialize in applying, you know, sort of

00:59:27hard science techniques to anthropology, archaeology.

00:59:30And I understand you're also working with early human diet here?

00:59:34Yeah, my main specialty is diet. I study bone chemistry as a way of getting at what the diets of

00:59:41people and animals were in the past.

00:59:43And one of the main things we're looking at is the evolution of diets through time by trying to get

00:59:48this information from these bones themselves and doing scientific analysis of the composition of these bones.

00:59:53People have hypothesized that it's a trait of like the first homo, our species, is that it's animal products is

01:00:00what led to our increased brain size and all the sort of things that we set us apart from other

01:00:05primates.

01:00:07And the problem is you can, the evidence for this is circumstantial. You find tools that are being used to

01:00:12cut up animals. You find butchered animal bones.

01:00:13But there's no way to really tell what proportion of the diet that represented. And plant foods just don't survive,

01:00:19so they're invisible.

01:00:20So we have to use this kind of study, looking directly at the fossils themselves or the bone chemistry, to

01:00:26really prove what proportion of their diet was coming from animal protein versus plant protein.

01:00:31The first step is taking the sample. That usually happens in the museum or in the field. And we try

01:00:38to take as small a sample as possible, so maybe like the size of a thumbnail is what we can

01:00:41work with.

01:00:42When we get that sample back to the lab, we clean off the outside layer to get rid of any

01:00:48sort of contaminants from the soil.

01:00:49Then we take that bone and we put it in hydrochloric acid, and that dissolves away most of the bone,

01:00:54because most of the bone is mineral.

01:00:56And that's where these contaminations from the soil will come in. So we want to get rid of that entirely,

01:01:01and it leaves this protein.

01:01:02And then we take that freeze-dried collagen, white fluffy collagen, to the mass spectrometers.

01:01:09And we measure the amount of carbon and nitrogen in it to make sure, again, that it's really collagen.

01:01:13And then we measure the isotope ratios. And when we get those numbers, we compare, for example, Neanderthals to animals

01:01:20that lived at the same time.

01:01:21So you know that if you have reindeer, you know they're herbivores. And then if you have wolves, you know

01:01:26they're carnivores.

01:01:27So you build up this whole sort of food web with isotope values, and you see how they all fit

01:01:31in.

01:01:31But when we pick up this story with the Neanderthals, which is the first time we can, then we do

01:01:36see, really, they are getting all their protein from animal sources.

01:01:39So as predicted, we pick that up. And then we see with modern humans as well, the same thing.

01:01:44They're very successful because they're eating mostly animal protein as well.

01:01:48And very little plant foods in Europe, but a larger range of animal foods, including, I think, fish was a

01:01:55big part of modern humans.

01:01:56So that's the idea we have of sort of the Paleolithic diet, that we see it for modern humans.

01:02:01It's a lot of animal protein, I think. I spent a lot of time working on Neolithic and post-Neolithic

01:02:04sites as well.

01:02:05And there you really do see the humans with much lower nitrogen isotope values, and they're clearly getting a lot

01:02:10of their protein from plants.

01:02:12As agriculture moved. As agriculture moved, yeah.

01:02:15But before that, they had the same kind of values as the Neanderthals.

01:02:18Yeah, except for this addition of these extra fish. That seems to be the big difference.

01:02:23The main difference. So, until agriculture, were there any modern human vegetarians?

01:02:29I really don't think so. I do not think so.

01:02:33And actually, it's extremely hard to find vegetarians, even ethnographically or archaeologically.

01:02:39In all the studies, we've measured thousands and thousands of humans from all over the world.

01:02:45And I think we've yet to find a vegan. There's no way.

01:02:49Sometimes we do, but then we go back and realize that we actually sampled a cow or something by mistake.

01:02:56Yeah, there are no vegans until recently.

01:03:00When you get really big villages, people crowding together, and having a really high, I guess, amount of cereals in

01:03:07their diet,

01:03:08you really see a difference in their bones.

01:03:09And these diseases that you would never see, that you never saw in the Paleolithic, you start to see in

01:03:14kind of high abundances.

01:03:16Does it make scientific sense, as well as logical sense, that we can learn things from their lifestyle that would

01:03:23then apply to us?

01:03:25I think so. I think you think of this evolutionary trajectory that made how these humans evolved to this state.

01:03:31These modern humans, we got to be this way. And it's over, you know, maybe a hundred thousand years of

01:03:34evolution to get to be this state.

01:03:36Of actually adapting to this diet, of being a hunter-gatherer, moving around a lot, eating these wild foods.

01:03:43I think there's no question that for most of the time that we've been around, we had a really, that

01:03:48kind of nomadic lifestyle,

01:03:51with lots of sort of exercise, and eating a lot of animal proteins and wild plant foods.

01:03:56But if you just think of what's been successful in terms of us as a species, we've survived, you know,

01:04:01a hundred thousand years.

01:04:02And most of that, 95% of that, was this kind of adaptation, was eating these animal, these wild animal

01:04:08foods, plant foods, with lots of exercise.

01:04:10That's what we've been very successful at. It's a new experiment now, this Neolithic, it's a very short period of

01:04:15time.

01:04:15You know, since we've been around less than 10%, maybe, that modern humans have been around.

01:04:19So, I don't know, maybe it's, you know, if you think of it that way, I mean, what we are

01:04:23adapted to is not what we're living right now.

01:04:26This kind of Paleolithic diet, I guess, is probably the most optimum for modern humans.

01:04:31It has to be. It's what, you know, we, you know, evolutionary pressures got us towards, and we were successful

01:04:37in that kind of diet.

01:04:38So, I think it is the, it's got to be the best diet for humans.

01:04:42If this way of eating is the best diet for humans, I wanted to understand how we could use this

01:04:47knowledge now, in our modern world.

01:04:50I called Professor Cordain to see if anyone, medical professional or scientist, was putting this evolutionary nutrition method of eating

01:04:57into practice with real patients.

01:04:58He suggested I contact Dr. Lane Sebring at the Sebring Clinic in Wembley, Texas, who is having extraordinary results with

01:05:06his patients employing just such an evolution-based method of eating.

01:05:09One of the things I tell my patients, you know, it's nice to know improvements possible.

01:05:14Every year, the doctor adds a new pill to your list, and you've got another problem, and the hope starts

01:05:19to fade.

01:05:19I sort of break food into two categories, human food and non-human food.

01:05:25And the human foods would be the lean meat, chicken, fish, turkey, etc., preferably from an animal eating what it's

01:05:31designed to eat.

01:05:33Fruits, nuts, and vegetables.

01:05:35The non-human food would be the grains, which is probably the worst problem we've got.

01:05:40Dairy after two years old, we're not designed for dairy after two years old, certainly not from another animal.

01:05:45Beans and potatoes.

01:05:47And so those are the simple categories that I put them in.

01:05:50And people understand that, I understand that.

01:05:53And it helps me to make choices.

01:05:55Grains cause us to lose height.

01:05:58They cause a narrowing of the sphenoid bone here.

01:06:02Our bones aren't strong enough to support the full weight.

01:06:05And so, and that buttress the skull, and so this is narrowed.

01:06:08This bone now is narrowed down.

01:06:11And so, we have smaller brains as a result of eating grains.

01:06:14We have more scrunched up doses we can't breathe through.

01:06:17And we have a jaw that can't hold a full complement of teeth.

01:06:20And so we get overlapping teeth, or we have no room for our wisdom teeth.

01:06:23And that's common to all civilized groups on the planet, because they eat grains.

01:06:28And that happened when that began, and that follows the introduction of grains into the diet.

01:06:33They bring in gluten.

01:06:34They bring in yeast.

01:06:36They cause a chronic inflammatory state of the gut.

01:06:38And as a big initiator of almost all our chronic inflammatory diseases.

01:06:46Autoimmune diseases.

01:06:47Rheumatoid arthritis.

01:06:48Virtually absent in the archeologic record prior to the institution of grains into the diet.

01:06:51I try to get patients to realize what they need to do is to think about protein as time-released

01:06:58glucose.

01:06:59Okay?

01:07:00You think about protein, the liver can take protein and turn it into glucose in a time-released fashion.

01:07:05Work harder, makes more.

01:07:06Okay?

01:07:08That's how we're truly designed.

01:07:09How beautiful is that?

01:07:11So you've got steady energy all day long.

01:07:13But if you eat a bunch of carbohydrates, then the insulin level goes up, and insulin goes to the liver,

01:07:18and shuts off the conversion of protein into glucose.

01:07:21So now, if you had a steak for breakfast, you can't get to it for energy.

01:07:26You see?

01:07:27And so, your sugars are going to start crashing pretty soon.

01:07:31And at that point, the only way to get it back up is either to rest a little bit.

01:07:35And you can sort of stuff more protein in, and that'll bring it up.

01:07:39But a lot of times, at that point, they're craving carbs.

01:07:41They want something quick.

01:07:42They want it now.

01:07:43And they don't feel good.

01:07:45Each meal should start with a major source of protein.

01:07:48Surround that with all the vegetables you want.

01:07:51And then, in between meals, if you want some fruits and nuts, or maybe even with the meal, you can

01:07:56do that as well.

01:07:57Like, I like to throw nuts in a big green salad.

01:07:59You know, sometimes fruit in there as well.

01:08:02And if you need a...

01:08:03Those two work...

01:08:04The fruits and nuts work great for snacks.

01:08:09Doctor, here we are at Brookshire Brothers Supermarket, local supermarket here in town.

01:08:14And most people shop in a regular supermarket, and, you know, they want to really know and understand

01:08:19what they should buy and what they shouldn't buy when they go shopping.

01:08:21So, how about we go inside and you show us what to do?

01:08:38The healthiest meat are the larger cuts of meat, you know.

01:08:41You want to get larger cuts of meat.

01:08:44And so, you know, here we've got some pork tenderloin.

01:08:49Here's some more of my favorite here.

01:08:51Sirloin steak.

01:08:52Looking for...

01:08:53Here we go, some rib eyes.

01:08:55Let's make...

01:08:55Let's get some distinctions here.

01:08:57Because a lot of people that are on the run or whatnot, they'll get frozen vegetables or canned vegetables.

01:09:01And they don't feel like they have time to refresh.

01:09:03Is it any good for us?

01:09:04Well, between the frozen and the canned, the frozen is much better.

01:09:10Much better for you.

01:09:11Okay.

01:09:11It's not...

01:09:12They often add some salt.

01:09:14But here's some collard greens, etc.

01:09:17But these are frozen.

01:09:18They're usually quick frozen.

01:09:19And so, maintain their freshness.

01:09:22Right.

01:09:22In some cases, the frozen can be even better than old, fresh, that's been laying around for a while.

01:09:27Because this sort of, for the most part, can stop any sort of decline by freezing.

01:09:36The romaine lettuce is much better for you than the iceberg lettuce.

01:09:40It has a lot more in it.

01:09:42It's just a lot more nutritional value.

01:09:43It has a lot more nutritional value.

01:09:45And the color tells you an awful lot.

01:09:48The more color it's got, the better it is for you.

01:09:50Unfortunately, sometimes you have to be careful, because there's an awful lot of pesticides used in red bell peppers, and

01:09:56strawberries, and a few things like that.

01:09:58Because they have to do that if they're not going to be grown organically.

01:10:02Here we've got some beautiful fruit.

01:10:04Each one of these is going to be loaded with nutrients.

01:10:07It's really hard to overdo this.

01:10:09If you're diabetic, you need to be careful not having too much fruit.

01:10:12Right, because one of these a day.

01:10:13You hear that there's still a lot of fruit sugar in fruit.

01:10:16There is.

01:10:17Right.

01:10:17Fructose.

01:10:17And fructose can do some bad things to you in high amounts.

01:10:21Right.

01:10:22Especially if you're diabetic.

01:10:24Exercise undoes that damage, by the way.

01:10:26And that's another lecture.

01:10:28But this is an excellent source of energy through the day.

01:10:34You know, eat half an apple in between a meal.

01:10:36It's great.

01:10:36And then eat the other half later.

01:10:38Or an orange.

01:10:39It doesn't really matter.

01:10:39You should eat the orange and not the orange juice.

01:10:41Orange juice can be way too much sugar.

01:10:45People hear a lot of times, whole grain oatmeal.

01:10:49Whole grains have problems.

01:10:51Nutritional problems.

01:10:52The refined grains don't.

01:10:54So you can't win either way.

01:10:56Oh, they have their own set of problems.

01:10:57They own their own set of problems.

01:10:58The whole grain thing that's coming up now actually creates a new set.

01:11:01It's a gimmick.

01:11:01Oh.

01:11:01It's a gimmick.

01:11:04They're touting whole grain.

01:11:05Sounds kind of like wholesome.

01:11:07They have hearts on there, right?

01:11:09Your heart.

01:11:11That's what, you know, and that's what we're led to believe.

01:11:14But it's marketing.

01:11:16And so what are the new problems that you get if you have a whole grain?

01:11:19Well, again, it holds a lot of the minerals in the gut.

01:11:21You can't absorb those.

01:11:22Okay.

01:11:23It blocks the absorption of a lot of the nutrients we need.

01:11:25So it actually raises your appetite and increases your need for a good multiple vitamin

01:11:33that you should take separate from the whole grains.

01:11:35You take a multiple vitamin with minerals and you've got a bunch of grains that go with that,

01:11:39you're not going to get any.

01:11:40Cool.

01:11:42Okay.

01:11:43So you were giving me that top list of things to avoid and that included bread.

01:11:47The staple of American life.

01:11:49Right.

01:11:50Pretty much.

01:11:52Unfortunately, it's not good for us.

01:11:54Okay.

01:11:54If we don't change some things, we're not going to fix this problem.

01:11:58So here's a white bread.

01:12:01There's not much in here that's good for you at all.

01:12:03It blocks again.

01:12:04It blocks absorption of nutrients.

01:12:06It causes, promotes osteoporosis, etc.

01:12:10It's sugar.

01:12:12Two slices of French bread, a quarter cup of sugar, and a medium baked potato are virtually

01:12:21identical.

01:12:22Oh, okay.

01:12:22So two pieces of French bread are the same as a quarter cup of sugar.

01:12:26Exactly.

01:12:26Baked potato, Shane.

01:12:27Same as a quarter cup of sugar.

01:12:28Some people, the sugar goes up faster with the bread than it does with the quarter cup

01:12:32of sugar.

01:12:33Really?

01:12:34Yes.

01:12:34Now that's interesting.

01:12:35Yeah.

01:12:36Not everyone, but some people.

01:12:38And here we've got...

01:12:39Hoat nut.

01:12:40Oakmeal bread.

01:12:42Yeah.

01:12:43There you go.

01:12:44This is supposed to be good for us, but it's not.

01:12:45This actually has problems that this one doesn't have.

01:12:48Okay.

01:12:49It actually holds more of the minerals into the gut from being absorbed than this one

01:12:53does.

01:12:53Because it's got the whole grain in there.

01:12:55It's got the whole thing in there.

01:12:56And that, those, that particular, those molecules bind up a lot of our minerals that

01:13:00we need.

01:13:01So this whole new, once again, this whole grain push that's going on now, kind of coming

01:13:06out of the whole, against the low carb thing, you're saying, oh, this is much healthier

01:13:09for you.

01:13:10It's not, it's just not accurate.

01:13:12It's, it's a marketing strategy and it's like selling us on soy.

01:13:16Okay.

01:13:17Okay.

01:13:17All right.

01:13:18So there's, there's really not good for you.

01:13:21Okay.

01:13:21This is a no.

01:13:22Very good.

01:13:22This is, this is big on the no list.

01:13:24Big on the no list.

01:13:30Now, okay.

01:13:32Here's a perfect example of something that could be marketed as fat free.

01:13:37And fat free is supposed to be good for us.

01:13:38When we come around this side.

01:13:39Fat free is supposed to be good for us.

01:13:41But in fact, and there's no fat in here.

01:13:44So it's fat free, but there's nothing worse for you on the planet than to eat all this

01:13:48sugar.

01:13:48But it's got butter right on the front.

01:13:51Right.

01:13:52But it's not.

01:13:53So it's fat free and there's nothing worse for you than it is.

01:13:56High fructose corn syrup.

01:13:58Okay.

01:13:59This is what you're really trying to avoid.

01:14:01Clogs up your arteries.

01:14:02That's the number one ingredient.

01:14:03That's about all it is.

01:14:05Okay.

01:14:05After that is salt.

01:14:08So, there's nothing in there that you want.

01:14:11Right.

01:14:11And that's true for probably most of the syrups and those kinds of things.

01:14:16Right.

01:14:16Then you've got the sugar free version.

01:14:18And then you have to worry about what have they put in here.

01:14:21It's probably not found in nature.

01:14:23It's probably something completely manufactured.

01:14:25Our body knows nothing of what to do with it.

01:14:28And often works as neurotransmitters in the brain that mess up our thinking.

01:14:33Cause fogging of thinking, etc.

01:14:34Even shown to reduce depression.

01:14:39Here's something off the shelf.

01:14:41Look at this.

01:14:44My goodness.

01:14:45It almost looks like candy.

01:14:47Like at Halloween that you would get all this sugar.

01:14:50That's exactly what it is.

01:14:51It's just coated with thick icing on these little mini wheats.

01:14:58And so the ingredients here is whole grain wheat.

01:15:01We've already talked about the fact that how there's nothing in wheat that's good for you really.

01:15:04I mean if you look at it, it's kind of the scourge of health.

01:15:06It's the beginning of the downfall of our health.

01:15:09Sugar is next.

01:15:10Sorbitol, gelatin, reduced iron.

01:15:12They're throwing in some minerals in here which are not going to be absorbed.

01:15:16Because of the grains.

01:15:17Hold that.

01:15:18And it's whole grain so it's going to hold it even more.

01:15:19So this is, you're better off not eating than eating this.

01:15:23And unless you're dying of starvation, you can't get any sugar to the brain.

01:15:25This will help you get sugar to the brain.

01:15:26And that's all we're looking for.

01:15:31Every once in a while, it looks to me like maybe some of the good stuff is hidden in the

01:15:35middle of the aisles.

01:15:35This is about it.

01:15:38This is about it.

01:15:39Here you can, here you've got some walnuts.

01:15:42Very good food.

01:15:43Oh, these look great.

01:15:45Pecans, almonds, these, they're hard to overdo.

01:15:49So this is a yes.

01:15:50This is a yes.

01:15:51This is a big yes.

01:15:52There's just so many things here in the store that can do us damage if we're not really aware.

01:15:59The answer is, in truth, almost all of it.

01:16:02Almost all of it.

01:16:03If you go to the fruits and the nuts and the vegetables and the lean meats and chicken, then you're

01:16:08good.

01:16:09It's wonderful for you.

01:16:10You know, and people here at the checkout in this little town, they see me checking out and I'm pretty

01:16:15good about how I eat.

01:16:16And they see and they just think, boy, I wish I was going to your house for dinner.

01:16:19You know, but I've loaded up the steaks and the roasts and all the fresh greens and salads.

01:16:23It was much more colored.

01:16:24And then here comes somebody right behind me with, you know, and they're kind of hiding their stuff because they

01:16:28know what I do and how I think about it.

01:16:29And I had a patient one time that told me, she said, you know, Dr. Steven, after reading about this,

01:16:34and I realized that nothing we bought was good for us.

01:16:37Nothing we ate was good for us.

01:16:38I shop very differently now.

01:16:40That's a lot quicker shopping.

01:16:41I'm just in and out.

01:16:42I grab these two things and I'm right out.

01:16:44I don't have to peruse the aisles and trying to figure out is this good for me or that.

01:16:47I already know it's not.

01:16:48When we started eating meats, that allowed the brain to double in size.

01:16:51Over 25% of our energy is used in the brain.

01:16:56And I've seen studies as high as 70%.

01:16:59I don't know what factors they're looking at.

01:17:02So we got this compact source of food, which was animal with their proteins and fats, that very nutrient dense.

01:17:11And that allowed us then to double the brain size.

01:17:15So, you know, we don't want to forsake that.

01:17:18There's a reason why that worked that way.

01:17:20And when we do, we get into trouble.

01:17:24And, you know, sometimes I feel like we're on the precipice here of falling off.

01:17:27If we don't, I feel like that, you know, maybe we've just learned just enough in time through Cordain and

01:17:33Boyd Eaton, et cetera, that that's going to give us the knowledge.

01:17:37We'll grab ourselves before we fall off the precipice of health here.

01:17:41We're just going, it's going fast and nobody's paying attention.

01:17:45Everybody's got their individual plan for themselves, basically, to perpetuate their wealth or what have you.

01:17:53And instead of looking at the big picture, they're not thinking about their kids, their grandkids.

01:17:57I mean, nutritionists, a lot of them are saying that the children born today won't outlive their parents because they've

01:18:00never had good nutrition.

01:18:02And I've got 11-year-old type 2 diabetics in my practice.

01:18:07Type 2 is a dietary-induced diabetic?

01:18:09Dietary-induced.

01:18:10And when I first graduated medical school, I never saw anybody under 55 with type 2 diabetes.

01:18:15I've got children who haven't even hit puberty yet, and they've got type 2 diabetes.

01:18:20And so we've made a lot of mistakes here, and hopefully we can turn this around.

01:18:28My 10-year global search for the perfect human diet has been an amazing and enlightening treasure hunt,

01:18:33revealing a wealth of ancestral and traditional dietary insights,

01:18:37as well as the most recent anthropological understandings of our species' dietary evolution.

01:18:42But what I find most fascinating is the knowledge that has been unlocked through technological advancements

01:18:47in the anthropological sciences, namely, hard scientific proof of what was previously unknowable,

01:18:54what we actually ate to develop the health, strength, and brain power to become the dominant species on the planet.

01:19:01We can now clearly see that whenever and wherever domesticated grains and plant foods became our species' major source of

01:19:08protein,

01:19:09our health declined.

01:19:10And that animal proteins and fats are irreplaceable in an optimal human diet.

01:19:16This knowledge is a game-changer.

01:19:19Clearly, the prevailing media and government message is that meat and animal protein are inherently unhealthy,

01:19:24and we should be eating less.

01:19:25But I hope that what we've learned on our search will elevate and inspire the public conversation

01:19:30to include the fullest range of what is now known about the authentic human diet,

01:19:35and that it will eventually be enthusiastically embraced by our government officials when forming public policy.

01:19:42Do I think we can find our way out of the obesity epidemic?

01:19:45I mean, the techniques are there to get us out of it.

01:19:48Whether people choose to adopt those techniques and methods is another question.

01:19:53If they do, unquestionably, we can get out of it. It's easy to get out of it.

01:19:57What's the definition of a fad?

01:19:59Generally, a fad is a short-term thing that a whole bunch of people are, to use a word that

01:20:04didn't used to exist,

01:20:05just glomming onto because somebody has just decided to publicize it or make it famous.

01:20:10And so let's see, could a fad diet be something that our ancestors were eating for thousands of years?

01:20:17I don't think that fits into the word fad.

01:20:19I didn't invent this diet. All we did is we uncovered what was already there.

01:20:25We uncovered the diet that all human beings ate on this planet until 10,000 years ago.

01:20:31So we did detective work in finding out what that diet is, but don't attribute this diet to me.

01:20:37There will be other scientists that will come along.

01:20:39But the fundamental tenet of this diet will not ever be shown to be wrong because it's based upon our

01:20:45genes

01:20:46and it's based upon evolution through natural selection.

01:20:49I think you have to go back to what we are being most successfully adapted to at this point.

01:20:54So I think the processed, I mean the refined sugars, if you're going to get rid of those,

01:20:58I think you have to have more exercise that has to be built in.

01:21:01I mean our Paleolithic humans were moving around all the time.

01:21:04There's a lot of exercise.

01:21:05I think meat eating is important.

01:21:08And processing food like cooking meat and all those kind of things,

01:21:11it's what separates us as a primate from the other primates, I think.

01:21:15We have the same biology that our ancestors did,

01:21:19and that biology is oriented toward the lifestyle, including the diet, that they enjoyed at that time.

01:21:27Very often the word convenience comes up.

01:21:29You know, this is not convenient, that's not convenient.

01:21:31And I've said over and over and over again, health is not convenient.

01:21:35But it's not half as inconvenient as a fatal illness.

01:21:39Which would you like to choose?

01:21:41I know that for me, once I understood the full story of our dietary evolution,

01:21:46it made sense to embrace the perfect human diet's optimal method of eating

01:21:49in order to live a full, healthy and happy life.

01:21:52Especially given my heart condition.

01:21:54I've been eating this way for more than five years now.

01:21:57And much to the amazement of my doctors,

01:21:59my blood work clearly illustrates that was absolutely the right decision.

01:22:03But what gives me the most hope that we can solve our epidemic of obesity and chronic disease,

01:22:08is that there is both a new ground swell of interest in ancestral health,

01:22:12and more practicing physicians like Dr. Lane Sebring

01:22:15are successfully using these evolutionary nutrition principles with patients,

01:22:19proving daily that eating a perfect human diet of human foods

01:22:23and eliminating non-human foods makes sense, ends patient confusion,

01:22:28and most importantly, is both practical and sustainable.

01:22:33Thankfully, we don't have to wait for the government or the media

01:22:35to expand their scientific understanding to take advantage of these crucial discoveries.

01:22:40This is a method of eating any of us can adopt, beginning with our next meal.

01:22:44As David Getoff pointed out earlier,

01:22:47there are those who will cry that this is just another fad diet,

01:22:50a passing obsession that will be forgotten in a few short years.

01:22:54But when I asked Lauren Cardane's colleague, Dr. Boyd Eden, about that misconception,

01:22:58I think he summed it up perfectly.

01:23:01If this is a fad diet, then it's a 2 million year old fad.

01:23:30lol

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