The Health Advantage | Site / Carbohydrates And Health browse

Evidence that carbohydrates contributed to poor health can be found from fossils obtained both before and after Paleolithic times. During the last forty thousand years, skeletal remains have provided important clues. At the beginning of this preagricultural period, the anthropologist Lawrence Angel found that adult males averaged 5 feet 11 inches in height and adult females about 5 feet 6 inches. Twenty thousand years later, after agriculture and carbohydrate consumption were abundant, the males averaged 5 feet, six inches and the females averaged 5 feet. . . Tooth loss at death shows a similar trend. In 30,000 B.C. adults died with 2.2 teeth missing; in 6,500 B.C. they averaged 3.5 missing; during Roman times there were 6.6 teeth missing. These trends suggest that health was compromised by the introduction of large amounts of carbs into the diet, and that the negative effects were experienced from the beginning. . . From Life Without Bread: How a Low Carbohydrate Diet Can Save Your Life by Christian B. Alan, PhD and Wolfgang Lutz, M.D., p 190

Government-sponsored guides to healthy eating, such as the USDA’s food pyramid, which advocates six to eleven servings of grains daily for everyone, lag far behind current research and continue to preach dangerously old-fashioned ideas. Because the USDA’s function is largely the promotion of agriculture and agricultural products, there is clear conflict of interest inherent in any USDA claim of healthful benefits arising from any agricultural product. Popular beliefs and politically motivated promotion, not science, continue to dictate dietary recommendations, leading to debilitating and deadly diseases that are wholly or partly preventable. . . (p7) This is the extremely complex problem we face. Many people eat grains daily because they are cheap and abundant, yet science is reporting that these very same grains are bringing us to the brink of an enormous health crisis. From Dangerous Grains by James Braly, M.D., and Ron Hoggan M.A. Pp 6-7

There is a persuasive convergence of evidence against grains from several fields, including medicine, genetics, and archeology. From Dangerous Grains by James Braly, M.D., and Ron Hoggan M.A p19

''We know that throughout most of recorded history humans usually lived short, difficult lives replete with famine, pestilence, and a high infant-mortality rate. We sometimes assume that this was also the case for their preagricultural, prehistoric hunter-gatherer ancestors, yet this is probably not the case. In fact, the available evidence from studies of modern hunter-gatherers suggest just the opposite. . . Several isolated groups of hunter-gatherers were still in existence during the twentieth century. They had maintained their traditional lifestyle and were carefully observed by scientists like Vilhjalmur Stefansson [and Weston A. Price, Sir Robert McCarrison and others]. In addition to enjoying more leisure time than many people living in industrialized nations, such hunter-gatherers often lived long, healthy lives [healthy being an operative word here]. . . From Dangerous Grains by James Braly, M.D., and Ron Hoggan M.A p22

[Conversely and as a consequence of grain-based agriculture] Our agricultural ancestors became smaller, their bones became weaker and more diseased, and the size of their brains diminished. Human brain size, based on head circumference, has diminished approximately 11 percent since the advent of agricultural societies. Modern European hunter-gatherer men and women stood five to six inches taller than farmers of a few generations later. Only recently, as a result of DNA analysis, has it become evident that the shorter farmers were actually descendants of the taller hunter-gatherers. There are many archeological excavations throughout the world that indicate this cereal-associated dynamic, regardless of where agriculture was begun. Clearly, the nutrient-rich hunter-gatherer lifestyle is most likely the factor that decreed the five to six inches difference in stature. From Dangerous Grains by James Braly, M.D., and Ron Hoggan M.A p24

And excerpts from The Milk of Human Kindness Is Not Pasteurized by Wm. Campbell Douglass, M.D.

P211: Archeological studies have shown that Cro-Magnon man ate bear, lion, hyenas, wild horse, and the wooly rhinoceros. In America the Paleolithic Homo sapiens ate the wolf, beaver, and the American camel. . . In China, Peking Man was found to have lunched on camel, deer, elephant and ostrich. . . [In fact] there is no society in the world that is entirely vegetarian. The Hindus of India come closest. Dr. Leon Abrams [in a 1967 article in "Natural History Magazine"] reports on India, “. . . the greater percentage of the population, who subsist almost entirely on vegetable foods, suffer from kwashiorkor, other forms of malnutrition, and have the shortest life span in the world."

P215: The Director of the National Museum in Iceland says that it is definitely established that during 600 years, 1200 to 1800 in Iceland, there were no dental cavities. The foods they ate were milk and milk products, mutton, beef and fish. They ate no carbohydrate. The only exception to this was a little moss soup in summer, but this was a rare “fun food” of little nutritional importance. . . Two Indian tribes reveal the same thing. The prehistoric Indians of California were Vegetarians, unlike most folks of that period, and they had tooth decay. In contrast, the Sioux Indians lived on buffalo meat and were devoid of cavities. The Pueblos worshipped the Corn God, but he was not grateful. They have the most wretched teeth of all the American Indian tribes. . . They lived on corn, squash and beans. The Laplanders, who ate mostly reindeer meat during the 18th century, rarely had cavities. Modern Laplanders have a decay rate of 85% of their teeth.

Pp217-218: Quoting from a book titled The Fat of The Land published in 1956 and written by an inveterate explorer (and doctor) by the name of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Douglass describes Stephansson's dietary findings as "totally opposite to modern nutritional thinking." Here's what Stephansson said, "In 1906 I went to the Arctic with the food tastes and beliefs of the average American. By 1918, after eleven years as an Eskimo among Eskimos, I had learned things which caused me to shed most of those beliefs.”

Douglass continues with a description of dietary “truths” which are still believed to be true today by practically all schools of nutrition and which Stefansson proved to be incorrect:

1) To be healthy you need a varied diet composed of elements from both the animal and vegetable kingdom.
2) Eating the same thing daily for prolonged periods causes a revulsion against food;
3) One must eat fruit for a “balanced” diet;
4) One must eat vegetables for a “balanced” diet;
5) Nuts and coarse grains are necessary;
6) Certain harmful bacteria will flourish in the intestines if you eat too much meat;
7) The less meat you eat the better. It will cause arthritis, hardening of the arteries, high blood pressure, and a calcium deficiency;
8) You should in fact be a vegetarian;
9) Without fruits and vegetables, especially fruits, you will get scurvy;
10) Man cannot live on meat alone. Your kidneys will stop working. [With one important caveat; meat without fat is an incomplete food and you can become ill if you try to eliminate fat.]