This diet, with the exception of refined
sugar, could have been pulled from the aisles of any American health food store. So what do we know about the health of
dynastic Egyptians? One would think that, based on a diet that essentially is verbatim what we are currently being extolled to eat in modern day America, these peoples were the paragon of health. Sadly, quite a different picture emerges from the historic record. They suffered pneumonia, tuberculosis,
leprosy, terrible gum disease, and bacterial and parasitic infections. Many were profoundly obese. And the extent of cardiovascular disease found among the mummified remains rivals that of America today. In other words, ancient Egyptians ate little fat, had virtually no refined carbohydrates, ate little meat (and no red meat), and had a diet very high in whole grains, and fresh fruits and vegetables—the very diet recommended by most nutritionists today and the basis for the ubiquitous Food Pyramid. Yet they were beset with the same health afflictions that plague modern man.
Same Place, Different Time and Different Diets
In 1980, Claire Cassidy, PhD, an anthro- pologist at the University of Minnesota and the Smithsonian Institution, published a study looking at two different populations arising from the same gene pool.
She studied the skeletal remains of the
farmers who lived from 1500-1675 AD in Hardin Village (an area in Kentucky) with those of the Indian Knoll hunter-gatherers who lived in the same region around 3000 BC. The two groups were virtually identical in all respects except for diet. They lived in the same geo- graphic region, dealt with the same climate, and had the same types of wild animals and plants from which to choose. The farmers ate primarily “…corn, beans,
and squash.” Wild plants and animals provid- ed supplements to a largely agricultural diet. In contrast, the hunters of Indian Knoll ate “very large quantities of river mussels and snails. . . . Other meat was provided by deer, small mammals, wild turkey, box turtle and fish.” As Dr. Cassidy summarized, “The Hardin Vil- lage (farmers’) diet was high in carbohydrates, while that at Indian Knoll (hunters’) was high in protein.”
Among the farmers, she found a lower life
expectancy for all ages, higher infant mortal- ity, greater degrees of arrested growth, iron- deficiency anemia (which was non-existent
NaturalNutmeg.com 37
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52