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Old Tue, May-25-21, 05:59
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WereBear WereBear is offline
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Plan: EpiPaleo/Primal/LowOx
Stats: 220/130/150 Female 67
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Location: USA
Default The Value of Eating What Your Ancestors Ate

Mark Sisson says what I've been saying:

Quote:
Everyone understands the intuitive power of eating the way our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate for hundreds of thousands of years. Sure, there’s a lot of variation throughout the eons. Changing climates and human migration patterns determined the culinary landscapes available to our ancestors, and the proportion of animals to plants in the diet varied across latitudes. There was no One Diet to Rule Them All, but there were patterns and trends that we can surmise and approximate. And we know what they didn’t have access to: the industrial foods of the modern era.

The Value of Eating What Your Ancestors Ate


I have found that exploring my own genetic heritage, where the branches seem to be running in similar directions, wound up similar to Mark's, as he describes here:

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My experience is that eating the specific foods your direct ancestors consistently consumed resonates across your genome. This sounds ridiculous to the strict calorie-counter with a lifelong subscription to Cronometer, but consider that vitamins weren’t discovered til the early 20th century. Nutrition is still a young field. We know very little. There’s a lot in food that we’re probably missing, and those things could be interacting with your genes. Your genes might “expect” them, even if we can’t yet identify them.

Some of it we can predict and analyze. I think back to the time I had my own ancestry and DNA analyzed. Turns out I’m of Scandinavian stock, and some of my most recent ancestors were in Normandy (the part of France settled by Vikings). Sisson itself is a Norman surname, one that arrived on the shores of England in 1066 with the Norman invasion.


Likewise, I turn out to have a lot of Northern European genetics, according to a family member who got their DNA done. Being so sick had a few advantages in that I could tell, with real and instant kinds of feedback, what my body wanted to eat, and -- more and more -- what it did not.

And my seat-of-the-pants experimenting mirrors Mark's discoveries.

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It also turns out that I need more long-chained omega-3s in the diet because my body isn’t very good at elongating short-chained omega-3s into the long-chained “marine” ones. I need to eat more fatty cold water fish—which happen to be some of my favorite foods—to get both omega-3s and vitamin D. Wouldn’t you know: both Vikings and Normans ate a ton of fish, including cod (whose livers are incredibly rich in vitamin D and DHA) and salmon (which is very high in omega-3s and decently high in vitamin D). Even the pork my Norman ancestors raised were high in omega-3s, as Norman pigs’ diets were supplemented with fish scraps.

It turns out that I have an elevated risk for soft tissue and connective tissue injuries, a likely indicator that I need more collagen and glycine in my diet. Sure enough, a mainstay in Viking, Norman, and medieval European diets in general were soups and stews made with animal bones and joints and skin rich in collagen. And here I am today, putting collagen in my coffee and even selling the stuff in stores across the world.


This gets me in total agreement with Mark, and indeed, our collective experience here on the Forum. I was emboldened to discard all common -- and incorrect -- wisdom on the subject of what to eat. Because my whole life is about running counter-clockwise to it, and the more I go my own way, the happier I am.

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Now, some people find this kind of content controversial. When I suggest something like this, I’ve had people say things like “even suggesting there are differences between human populations is wrong.” Some people worry it will feed divisions that already exist. Man, that’s a myopic view. I think the opposite is true. This is a way to celebrate our differences and connect to our past. It’s beautiful, really.

To me, it’s far more insulting and limiting to suggest that we are all identical to each other, carbon copies, interchangeable, fungible. That’s boring, and it’s frankly incorrect. Anyone with eyes (and taste buds) can take a look around and see that differences exist in the dietary habits and cuisines of different ethnic groups. These differences aren’t all arbitrary. There are hints at real physiological consequences for how we metabolize different foods.
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