My regular readers have had to endure months of my banging on about my "diet". I think I have not described what I am trying to do broadly enough for while what I eat is having a massive impact on me, I think that the larger context is more helpful.
What can we learn from our past that can help us make a better people - healthier, happer and more fulfilled?
I ask this question becuase it is clear that more of us now are none of these things.
My bet is that the more we fit who we really are the more we will indeed be healthier, happier and more fulfilled.
So my question to myself and so to you is - How far have I drifted away from a good fit with my innate Human Nature? After months of thinking about ths, I have come up with this simple model.
The best Fit with the food that we are evolved to eat. The best Fit with the social conditions that we are evolved to do best in. And the best Fit with the needs of our body and its place in the natural world.
The ideal would be a total Fit based on our evolution. So what to aim for? What do we know abut what this best fit should be?
We have a pretty good feel for this.
We are not "Instant" People. You and I are simply a Face applied to millions years of primate evolution and of course to 4 1/2 billion years of evolution. So let's look at
- Food
- Social
- World
Food
There is an important shift in this progression. Did you notice it? It is about 2 million years ago when we lost our ape like massive chewing jaw and we lost much of our gut and so became more gracile. Some thing caused us to lose the ability to chew for hours and to digest plants. Whatever it was also gave us a jump in height as well. We also lost most of our body hair. Our brains also doubled in size.
What could have done that? Only more and easily accessed protein. Wranghm suggests that we probably tamed fire. This enabled us to eat more meat. That it turn made for larger brains. That in turn made for better hunting and so on. As we hunted more, we lost our hair.
The main ingredient for this breakthrough from primate to human must have been that we could get and also consume a lot more protein. Meat is the centre piece of such a breakthrough.
Cooking is the vector to this massive increase in the consumption of meat. Try this. Try and eat a 10 ounce steak 2 inches thick raw. You will be exhausted before you get half way through. Before cooking all we could eat was the easy stuff - eyeballs, the liver etc. We would have had to leave 90% of the carcass. What society would have invested in the risks and effort of hunting if this was the only reward?
Fire and hunting for meat also shaped our body and our social structure. With fire, we could lose most of our hair.
As a result, man in Africa had developed a brilliant hunting strategy. We can run in the sun. We are not fast, but like wolves in winter, we can run down anything. In the middle of the day, the largest animal can be reduced to a wreck.
This kind of hunting also changed our social setting. All primates, except for Bonobos DO NOT SHARE food. Wolves do. This suggests that we evoled like wolves into highly social and cooperative groups. We must have had very similar social conditions to a wolf pack. No wonder that Dogs became our closest ally! We evolved to share a similar culture. A Culture that evolved from how we got our food.
So here is the choice we have for what we eat. On the left is the "Official" line for the healthy diet for a Diabetic!!!!! On the right is what we are designed to eat.
Oh but you may say, we can evolve to eat anything?
No we cannot and don't. If you are a Swede, your skin colour is not going to evolve unless you breed into another race. If you are a whale, you are NEVER going to get your gills back. It would be more than great if they could but they can't.
Grains are a modern food. Highly processed foods are not even food at all.
Social
Of course everything is connected. There really are not any categories. It's just that I don't know how to discuss this without making neat categories. So bear with me.
How we got and ate our food made us human. We became highly cooperative. In sharing food around the fire we probably developed language. (Putnam)
Our ideal social structures have know boundaries and an optimal culture.
The ideal culture is tribal - that is that all in the group are bound up in the real issues of survival. Like a submarine crew (Tom!) There is a hierarchy but all share the same living conditions and all live or die togther. As Tom, my submariner friend will attest - this is a social world that is very high performance and where you feel great - no matter whether you are on the top or the bottom rung of the ladder.
Submarine crews are also small. Few would exceed the Maximum Dunbar number of 144. So all know all. Life is lived in public on a sub. You live with your ship mates. The same is true for firemen. This is why the issue of women in firehalls or on subs is so tricky. The real issue is not skill it is intimacy. Tribal life is intimate. You do not leave part of you ashore or at home. All of you is in the tribe.
In the ideal social setting there is no distinction therefore between work and home. They are the same. Those of us that Freelance have this life again.
Those of us that Freelance also are Hunter Gathgerers again too. We rely on the tribe and our knowledge of the hunting grounds to give us food. We make love to our partner ansd we raise children with them. We do not pretend to be robots.
How much trust do you have in your social world? Do you have a group of more than 8 who really care for you and you for them? If you don't, you will not be well. You not designed to be alone in the world.
World
You are also not designed to be removed from your body or the natural world around you.
Our ancestors did not take exercise. They were "active"! Active in the world. Every day involved carrying a two year old and firewood. Our running down an animal and carrying it back to the camp.
Being active does not mean these obvious things either.
I find it ironic that even the chair is very modern. 500 years ago in Europe only Kings sat in chairs. The rest of us sat on benches or stools. We mostly stood or squatted. Our bodies were moving all the time.
We also inhabited the natural world and our bodies made all sorts of exquisite adjustments to light. How do you sleep? Not well. Maybe too much light at the end of your day.
Simply being a part of the natural world is good for us.
So all these 3 aspects of our lives are part of the best fit that we can have.
This man is in his 60's. He is a chief. Compare yourself with him. Not just the abs! Can you feel his energy?
This is what we are designed to look like and to be like. If we live this life, we can expect to be fit, active, healthy happy and fulfilled.
So here is your homework. Think about each of these sections. How close are you to the Robot or to the Garden Of Eden?
If you are far away, what might you be able to do to get you closer to the best Fit?
Food is a good place to start. You have the most control here.
Again it is not as simple as buy the right food. Making food was itself a collective gift - eating it together the centre of human society. Food is not just energy but the social glue.
And Guys, the more you help in the kitchen, the more you listen and pay attention at the table, the more you will be rewarded in other ooms in the house. And parents, the more that happens at the family table, the more your kids learn to be humans and not monsters.
