among the hunters), and widespread tooth decay. There was thirteen times greater evidence of disease in the long bones of the farmers compared to the hunters. In summary, Dr. Cassidy concluded that, “The agricultural Har-
din Villagers were clearly less healthy than the Indian Knollers, who lived by hunting and gathering.” She attributed the health differ- ences to diet: “The health data provide convincing evidence that the diet of the agriculturists was the inferior of the two. The archeologi- cal dietary data support this conclusion.” Another anthropologist at the Smithsonian, Dr. Kathleen Gor- don, came to the same conclusion. “Not only was the agricultural ‘revolution’ not really so revolutionary at its inception, it has also come to represent something of a nutritional ‘devolution’ for much of mankind.”
The Problem with the Pima
According to author Gary Taubes, in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories, for more than 2000 years the Pima Indians of south- western United States lived as both hunter-gatherers and farmers. Wild game was abundant, as were fish and clams in the Gila
River. In 1787, as noted by Jesuit missionaries, the Pima also raised cattle, poultry, wheat, corn, beans, melons and figs. In 1846 U.S. Army battalion surgeon John Griffin described the Pima as “spright- ly” and “in fine health.”
With the advent of the California gold rush, the fate of the Pima took a decidedly negative turn. Settlers increasingly diverted waters from the Gila River to irrigate their own lands, decimating the fish population. Game was hunted to near extinction. By the mid-1890s the Pima were relying on government rations to avoid starvation. In a matter of years the Pima diet was transformed into one of almost exclusively carbohydrates supplied by the government, mostly sugar, coffee, canned goods, and refined flour. The result? Obesity skyrock- eted to unprecedented levels.
A Whale of a Diet
In the early 1900s several researchers lived among the Inuit Es- kimos of Canada and Alaska. Harvard anthropologist-turned-Arctic- explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson noted that the Inuit diet was primarily caribou meat, “with perhaps 30 percent fish, 10 percent seal meat, and 5 or 10 percent made up of polar bear, rabbits, birds and eggs.” According to Stefannson, the Inuit considered fruits and vegetables “not proper human food,” though they occasionally ate some roots in times of dire necessity.
Canadian anthropologist Diamond James, who lived among the indigenous tribes in Alaska and Canada from 1914-1916, further added that the Inuit paid little attention to the carbohydrates in their environment “because they added nothing to their food supply.” He noted that during one particular three-month stretch they ate “no fruit, no vegetables; morning and night nothing but seal meat washed down with ice-cold water or hot broth.” Stefansson insisted that the Inuit were among the healthiest if not the most vigorous populations imaginable, capable of perform- ing intensely laborious tasks for hours on end. He was so impressed with the health of the Inuits that he himself became the subject of a year-long diet experiment with fellow researcher Karsten Anderson. Under the close supervision and scrutiny of a team of a dozen respected nutritionists the two ate nothing but meat for one year. Their blood and urine were monitored regularly, both for research purposes and to assure that the two subjects didn’t “cheat” and eat carbohydrates. They ate 2600 calories daily: 79% from fat, 19% from protein, and roughly 2% carbohydrate (from the glycogen stored in the animal muscle). At the end of the year there was no deterioration of health, no evidence of vitamin or mineral deficiencies, and no kidney damage. (Stefansson also lost 6 pounds over the course of the year, while Anderson’s weight remained unchanged.) The results led a New York Times reviewer to write in 1946, “Mr. Stefansson makes the mixed-diet technicians and the nuts-and-fruits addicts look ter- ribly silly.” How could these researchers, and populations such as the Inuits
and even prehistoric man, have fared so well eating just meat? The answer is surprising.
Animal food contains all of the amino acids required by hu- mans. (Amino acids are the building blocks of protein. There are 16 amino acids—8 essential and 8 non-essential. While all 16 are required for human health, essential amino acids are the ones that the body cannot synthesize on its own and must be obtained through the diet.) Animal meat contains the amino acids in such a ratio that maximizes their utility to humans. Furthermore, animal meat contains 12 of the 13 essential vita- mins in large quantities. It is a particularly good source of vitamins A, E, and the complete family of B vitamins. In fact, vitamins D and
38 Natural Nutmeg October 2012
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