Ancient Egyptians

[alibabka]

I'm nearly finished reading Protein Power. Several times they've mentioned ancient Egypt as an example of why a grain based diet is unhealthy, but, unless I missed it, they don't give specifics. I recall learning elsewhere that the pyramid builders subsisted on bread and beer. Does anybody know what documented health problems plagued the ancient Egyptians?

[Natrushka]

The specific reference to the health of the Egyptians is in the last pages of the book. If memory serves archeologist and paleoanthropologist discovered that many of them suffered from coronary disease (plaque, heart disease, arterial degeneration), obesity (large folds of skin) and extreme tooth decay. Comaprisons between the Egyptians and hunter gatherers showed that the hunter gatherers had strong bones, healthy teeth and no signs of any degenerative diseases such as arthritis etc. The Eades also discuss this in Protein Power Lifeplan.

Nat

[alibabka]

Thanks, Nat! :)

[Karla]

I read the same thing in a book about the daily life of the ancient Egyptians. In the section on diet they mentioned that it was mainly beer and bread, and that only the wealthy ever saw red meat. They also ate fish from the Nile, birds, dates and honey.

Then in the section on medicine they mentioned that, until archaeologists started xraying mummies they had assumed that, because of the low fat/low protein/high carb diet there would be little artheriosclerosis or other signs of heart disease. What they did find on many, many mummies were folds of skin indicating that they had been fat, plus arteries full of plaque.

I had to laugh because the next comment was that the archaeologists found this discovery to be puzzling! DUH!

[odd sock]

Without wanting to offend anyone, I would like to state that this type of discussion makes me extremely crazy and even a little angry. Although I respect the Eades as doctors and for their work in promoting a LC lifestyle, they are irresponsibly making claims loosely supported by inconclusive archaeological evidence.

Going through the bibliography of Protein Power , I recognised several of the titles. I don’t recall having read any statement that the Egyptians had poor health due to a diet of high carbohydrate consumption. Have the Eades simply made their own conclusions based on the few studies presented? There have been requests for information on Egyptology engines by other researchers looking for evidence to support the publication:
“28/2/99: MUMMY AUTOPSIES, OBESITY, AND HEART DISEASE”
“I'm an information researcher and writer in nutrition and health and am finishing up a review for health professionals of the Protein Power diet book promoting a low-carbo/high-fat diet. The authors bolster their case by claiming that autopsies of ancient Egyptian mummies reveal a surprisingly high degree of heart disease and obesity and blame a plant centered diet rich in whole grains, fruits, and veggies (with a little meat thrown in). This runs contrary to nearly all epidemiological studies which show that populations like the Tarahumaras and rural Chinese who subsist on low-fat/high-carbo/high-fiber traditional diets are indeed as healthy as those on the traditional moderate-carbo/moderate-fat Mediterranean diet (as long as they remain physically active). Was mummification confined mainly to the upper classes who were likely to have "affluent" diets high in animal fat and low in fiber, fruit, veggies, and whole grains? Did they get less exercise than the working class? Could a high incidence of schistosomiasis be involved? Thanks in advance for your help.” [name and e-mail withheld]

On the Internet, other less accredited individuals take this information from Protein Power and run rampant. Not only do they parrot the Eades, they also start adding in extra ailments that the Egyptians did not suffer from, added in for dramatic effect. This isn’t the Eades’ fault, but doctors and nutritionists should not make published judgements on archaeological findings without considering all the issues nor should they be taking the interpretations of archaeologists out of context.

Just for background information, a wide variety of foods were consumed in ancient Egypt, not just bread, beer, and onions. The diet of the Ancient Egyptians was noted by Herodotus in 450 BC. His writings give us some of an idea of how varied their diet actually was:

"They eat bread making loaves which they call "cyllestis ", of coarse grain. For wine they use a drink made of barley..They eat fish uncooked dried or either preserved with brine. Quails and ducks and small birds are salted and eaten raw; all other kinds of birds as well as fish (except those that the Egyptian hold sacred) are eaten roast and boiled.”

Beets, sweet onions, cucumbers, radishes, artichokes, asparagus, turnips, garlic, lettuce, chickpeas, beans, lentils, peas, figs, grapes, dates, raisins, barley, and wheat were the staples of the Egyptian diet. Meat and fowl were eaten, including beef, mutton, pig, geese, pigeons, herons, pelicans (kept for their eggs), cranes, and wild ducks. Roast quail was considered to be a delicacy and there are even accounts of hyenas and hedgehogs being fattened up for the cooking pot. Fish such as catfish, mullet, bolti, and perch were caught from the Nile. Farms supplied milk, cheese (much like quark and produced as early as the First Dynasty), and butter. Honey was also used as a preservation agent as well as sweetener. Seasonings used in common cooking included salt, pepper, cinnamon, coriander, cumin, aniseed, conyza, dill, safflower, parsley, fenugreek, silphium, and thyme. They also consumed a great deal of flaxseed. The Egyptians had more than 40 different words for breads and cake made from a variety of flours, milk, eggs, fat, butter, honey, and fruit. Most Egyptian bread was made from the flour of emmer wheat, but some special varieties used for offerings were made from barley. When making bread, flour was ground on stones, which meant that small particles of the rock were mixed into the flour. This did damage to Egyptian teeth—not a diet of carbohydrates.

http://www.toledomuseum.org/learnMore_mummy.html
Teeth and Diet
“The diet of ancient Egyptians explains their dental problems. An almost complete lack of sugar in their diet meant that cavities are rarely found except in the teeth of the very wealthy who could afford sweets. But gradual flattening and loss of teeth was due to a diet of bread made from wheat ground by adding sand to the millstones. The sand remained in the baked bread and wore down tooth enamel over the years, leading to tooth loss and gum infection.”

Just as today, the wealthier members of society were access to the greater variety and quantity in foodstuffs. The upper class of Egyptian society included, but was not limited to, the pharaoh and his widely extended family, advisors, ambassadors, priests, and courtiers. These are the members of society who would be eating large quantities of meat relative to the greater population, along with sweets and carbohydrates. Herodotus comments on daily meals:

“The common people had three meals a day (Pyramid Texts, 404) the king and the court, five."

It is possible, as some have conjectured, that the upper class have inactivity and indulgence to blame for poor health. To read some of the ‘literature’ on the Internet, one could easily believe that the great nation of Egypt were all falling over dead because they ate the wrong percentage of carbohydrates rather than dying from the plethora of diseases and hazards of ancient living. Many people espousing the poor health and diet of the ancient Egyptians point to medical papyri which instruct how to treat abscesses, methods of combating obesity, and show the revelation of diabetes. What they don’t tell you is how small a percentage this information is in the medical texts. The most common ailment was actually broken bones and problems related to parasitic infestation. Much larger treatises are dedicated to birth control.

The nobility are also the people in death who make up most of the mummies found and studied. In the early days of mummification only the kings were definitely conceded the opportunity to attain an exalted afterlife. Gradually, nobles and priests also began to join the pharaoh in being mummified. It wasn’t until the late Eighteenth Dynasty (1546-1319 B.C.), when liberalization of religious concepts extended the privilege of an afterlife to those in less fortunate circumstances than kings and nobles. But, because the procedure for mummification was so costly, it was a luxury only the upper class could reasonably afford. The Eades’ “Curse of the Mummies,” as I understand it, deals with a period of almost 3000 years, from 2500 B.C. to A.D. 395. The mummified commoner, and by this I again mean those of the upper-class, were not even represented in the greater part of this timeline, much less the lower class. How is it, then, that we are to draw conclusions if the sample group is from one very small section of society? For example, a number of sources have cited a calcification (arteriosclerosis) of the femoral arteries of both legs and also present in the carotid arteries of the 96 year old Rameses II. (Ikram, Salima and Aidan Dodson. The Mummy in Ancient Egypt: Equipping the Dead for Eternity. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1998, p. 326. ) By this we should judge his subjects? It would be as if 2000 years into the future someone dug up the Queen of England and judged all Brits by her heath and genetics. As for the “revelation” of obesity in mummies, it isn’t surprising to those who have seen any small percentage of Egyptian statuary. Many, many examples exist of the artistic depiction of obese individuals. They also happen to be all of the nobility and priest caste. Who wants monuments of peasants?

There is even a consensus among some in the profession that the ancient Egyptians as a whole did NOT suffer from heart disease:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/pharaohs/secrets4.html
*Deciphering Disease in Ancient Mummies
"The ancient Egyptians, however, rarely suffered from the diseases the western world knows best: cancer and heart disease. And that points out one of the best reasons to study the diseases of the ancients, Dr. Sullivan says. "Today we are very tied up with modern diseases like coronary heart disease and cancer, which are really the products of the fact that we actually live too long. But if you look at the rest of the developing world, you are looking at infectious diseases that have been around for millennia and that relate to the development of civilization."

History may or may not support the LC WOL. No report, account, interpretation, or source is infallible. There are archaeologists and anthropologists who choose to ignore the obvious because they have not personally seen the evidence, choose to side with the dominant paradigm, or simply have not been able to keep up with the most contemporary findings. It would be extremely unprofessional, though, for archaeologists to take for granted that findings equate fact. Unfortunately, anyone can pick up a book and assume as much, without question of context or circumstance.

I have no personal declaration of opinion for either theory. LC is fantastic for me. My suggestion is not to judge your diet by what somebody did 4000 years ago and don’t use it to support your WOL/WOE because someone may have gotten the figures wrong. Do it because it makes you feel and look wonderful.