Research results: what is a healthy diet?
In order to obtain a profound answer to the question of what is a healthy diet, people should consider the results of animal testing, observational studies on humans, nutritional experiments as well as successful historical traditions.
Archeological studies impressively show that our ancestors who lived more than 10,000 years ago hardly showed any signs of caries, tooth displacements and other widespread ailments. The beginning of settlements and cultivations about 6,000–10,000 years ago and the increasing consumption of new food, like grain and milk products, went hand in hand with the first development of signs of arteriosclerosis and joint damage. But there was still no sign of cancer 5,000 years ago. (This was published in the American scientific journal Nature Reviews Cancer.) Why is that the case?
Countless scientific nutritional experiments on animals in the past 100 years draw a consistent picture:
When animals (regardless of their species) are given human food that is part of the typical “Western diet” they soon begin to develop the same diseases we “civilized” humans suffer from. For example, arteriosclerosis, cancer, myocardial infarction, high blood pressure, gall and kidney stones, joint degeneration, tooth decay, obesity, osteoporosis, neurodegeneration, diabetes, … This also includes afflictions that arise in the next generation: tooth displacement, narrow pelvic bones (lead to complicated births with females) or a nasal cavity that is too narrow (leads to reduced nose breathing) as well as behavioral disorders, retarded development, excessive aggressiveness or apathy. In an experiment carried out by Dr. Francis Marion animals required 100% natural food for three generations for all these damages to be reversed.7
Why have wild animals survived for centuries?
In comparison: How are those wild animals doing whose habitat (such as the jungle) has yet to be destroyed by human influence? From the point of view of these spared (so far) wild animals or naturally kept pets, our discussions on diseases or dietary rules must seem absolutely ridiculous. Please take the following with a little bit of humor:
Our closest relatives on earth, the apes and gorillas, but also other animals like rabbits, horses, deer or a herd of cows on a pasture could not care less about the epidemically increasing human diseases and the uncountable dietary rules. Neither do they know their “blood type” nor their “metabolic type”. They have no clue what amount of calories, protein, fat or carbohydrates their daily food contains. They don’t drink gallons of another species’ milk every day, not even pasteurized – at ultra high temperature and homogenized – in order to strengthen their bones. They don’t take any pills or alkaline powders or use Himalaya salt. They are all healthy with the same food, namely grass, wild plants and leaves or prey. And until their genetically preprogrammed deaths, they remain healthy and fit.
When animals are hungry, they eat uncooked, unheated vegetables or other animals, which supposedly are so very difficult to digest, in the evening or even at night – without any digestive problems, constipation, diarrhea, chills or loss in weight. Nether do they know what hypoglycemia is. Nor do they eat according to the five elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), nor to the constitutional Ayurveda teachings or according to the recommendations of F.X. Mayr or Dr. Mercola. The only diseases that are known to wild animals are caused by heat or cold, hunger, injuries or infections – but most of all it is due to humans.
An argument that is often brought against this comparison is that humans have a different digestive system than animals. Now let’s take a good look at those animals that are the most genetically similar to us, the apes (we share 99 % of the same genetic structure!8). There are no significant differences in our digestive processes and not even in the biochemistry of our digestive enzymes, the liver function and the relative length of the intestines.
What wild animals are doing differently to humans
• Wild animals eat all of their food raw. Humans have not been doing that for hundreds of generations.
• Wild animals only eat what they themselves are able to find, kill and “prepare”. But most humans eat meat and fish although they are not able to kill animals themselves.
• Wild animals predominantly eat “wild” food not cultured food. “Meat eaters” (predators) eat other wild animals; “plant eaters” eat wild plants. Humans instead continue to eat relatively new, overbred or genetically manipulated plant species (e.g. grains, milk and milk products, soy).
• Wild animals eat their food as a whole and unprocessed. Humans split up their produce and eat or drink only parts of it (refined sugar, refined flour, juices, industrial foods).
• Wild animals move. Humans do this less and less.
These provocatively formulated descriptions of wild animals show that they are almost completely innocuous to all widespread diseases. Is that due to their natural environment or their diet? The following are comparisons between observational studies made on free-living wild animals and experiments made with wild animals living in captivity. That animals can fall ill in their natural habitats was observed in the national parks in the US: wild black bears pitch into the garbage cans stuffed with food rests. From there on out they grow fatter and fatter from previously weighing 120 kg to weighing up to 250 kg. They also die earlier and in their shorter lifespan fall ill of previously unknown diseases – the same diseases humans are increasingly suffering from since industrialization. Experiments with captive wild animals proved the observation that nutrition plays a greater role in being healthy than genes, environment or sports do.
Trials and errors in the history of nutritional sciences
One look into the history of nutritional science gives us a better picture of why unnatural views on the “right diet” prevail in today’s society. I want to summarize this short review under the title “trials and errors”.9
Back in the days every farmer knew that the growth and health of his cattle was mainly dependent on the quality of their food (their diet). But these experiences were not endorsed with humans, as the human is assumed to be a “higher” developed species and hence less dependent on nature. The notion that a “menial” process such as the intake of food could have an influence on the development of our physical and mental well-being was generally rejected.
Is the calorie content important?
More than 100 years ago the German nutritionist Dr. Carl von Voit and his students Max von Pettenkofer and Wilbur Atwater came to the conclusion that the human is a combustion engine; and a combustion engine could only work if energy (for the sake of heat production) is ingested through food. The value of food was hence measured according to its calorie content. The more calories the food has the better. The amount of thermal energy that a human could produce from the nutrients, carbohydrates, fats and proteins, was determined in a measurement chamber financed by the Bavarian King Ludwig II.
One calorie is the amount of heat that heats a liter of water from 14.5 °C to 15.5 °C.
Fascinated by the measurements of von Voit, the American W. Atwater soon returned to the US. According to his assumption, it was only the energy content of food that is important for humans. Granted by the United States Department of Agriculture, he published a “guide” for foods that described how many calories could be bought for just 25 cents: 645 calories in the form of eggs, 2020 calories of milk, 2850 calories of cheese, 9095 calories in the form of sugar, 10285 calories in the form of wheat flour, 13720 calories in the form of corn flour.
Following this thought process, you must assume that it is pointless to eat calorie-poor eggs, fruits