86Thousand400: Modern Food is Killing our Inner-Caveman

1. Early humans refined their biology in a low carbohydrate environment

- The fortuitous presence of the Continental Shelf off the Southern Cape coast helps explain why modern humans are so poorly adapted to eat a diet full of highly refined and easily absorbed carbohydrates. For at Pinnacle Point, early humans enjoyed the bounty of the protein and fat-rich sea foods

- Blood concentrations of both glucose and insulin must be kept as low as possible as both cause long-term detrimental effects. The long term damage that occurs in diabetes is due to the effect of persistently elevated blood glucose concentrations on many different organs. A key action of insulin is to rapidly lower the blood glucose concentration to limit that damage.

- But if insulin is persistently elevated, as occurs in those with Insulin Resistance (IR) eating a high-carbohydrate diet, the insulin adds to the glucose-induced damage. Insulin is now considered to be an added factor explaining the increased risk for cancer, ageing and dementia in those habitually eating high carbohydrate diets.

- The key action of insulin in the obese with IR unable to burn much carbohydrate as a fuel, is to remove the glucose from the blood stream and convert it into fat in the liver. But insulin also prevents the body from burning that fat as fuel. So all the extra dietary carbohydrate becomes locked up in the body's fat cells. #disaster

2. Humans do not have any essential requirement for dietary carbohydrate.

- Humans cannot survive unless they include fat and protein in their diets. But carbohydrate serves only two functions in humans - must be either burned as energy fuel or stored as fat; it cannot be used to build any of the body's structures

- Persons with IR have a reduced capacity to burn carbohydrate as a fuel both during exercise and when at rest, or to store it as glycogen

- Thus the paradox: the single macronutrient, carbohydrate, which has established detrimental effects on our bodies, and for which the human body has no requirement, is the one elevated to the status of a super-health food by the 1977 United States Dietary Guideline Association

3. Humans Differ in the ease with which they will gain weight when exposed to a high-carbohydrate diet

- Those with the highest degrees of IR will develop the visible manifestations of this condition, such as the onset of obesity and T2DM, at the youngest ages

- The prevalence of IR increases with age - in the US it is claimed that 75% of adults over age 65 have IR. Persons with IR are never able to eat much carbohydrate if they wish to optimise their health. IR does not improve with age - it is more likely to grow progressively worse

4. Hunger is the ultimate determinant of the over consumption of calories

- Obesity cannot occur without an over consumption of calories

- Hunger is regulated by two factors in the foods we eat - their bulk and their nutrient density

- Nutrient-dense foods turn off hunger for much longer

- Most people eating high-carbohydrate diets must eat every three hours

- Foods with high nutrient density satiate hunger over much longer periods - six to 12 hours

- When persons change from eating carbohydrate-rich but nutrient-poor foods to nutrient-dense "real" foods of the kind that we have always eaten is that within a few days, hunger disappears. With hunger satiated, we are free to eat only when circumstances are right - that is, when the right foods are available

5. Addictive foods produce continual hunger

- "Bliss point", the precise amount of sugar or fat or salt that will send consumers over the moon, so processed foods are engineered specifically"Healthy, low-fat"

- Reduce the addictive nature of the foods generating 2 billion dollars a year from the sale of sugary breakfast cereals.

The response was decided that its responsibility was to generate profits. Not to worry about the health of those using its products!

- Socio-political-economic problem to produce cheaper foods by subsidising farmers for the production of maize and soy. This led to the growth of the processed food industry, the profitability of which is driven by cheap, addictive, long lived, high carbohydrate foods that humans find irresistible.

- The result is that for the first time in our 3.5 million year evolution, after 1980 humans began to eat more calories than they require for their optimal health. And as a consequence, they grew fat. The only reasonable prediction is that unless there are some radical reforms, led by the worlds politicians, humans will continue to grow even fatter with each succeeding generation

- Governments need to be prepared to legislate against industries producing those addictive foods that are driving the epidemic. The world's politicians have a simple choice: continue to allow the unrestrained production and marketing of the processed foods that are the direct cause of the growing obesity/diabetes epidemic, in which case governments will have to invest exponentially more money in treating the medical consequences of that choice. Or promote the provision and consumption of real foods with the ultimate elimination of highly addictive processed foods. This will cause the loss of jobs and tax revenue but will dramatically improve the nation's health whilst reversing rising medical costs. So the money saved on sustaining a nation's ill health can be used to grow a truly healthy and productive nation

- The nation that first take this radical step will be those that dominate our collective global future