Over a half decade ago Professor Jared Diamond, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel, famously wrote

“The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.”

Dr Diamond was referring, of course, to the devolution of human health that took place as mankind suffered the corporal transformation driven by the mismatch between hunter-gatherer genes and an agricultural diet and lifestyle. Smaller stature, decreased cortical bone thickness, obesity, increased incidence of infectious diseases, dental caries, periodontal disease, vitamin deficiencies, and even famine – all common in agriculturists – were not, for the most part, the lot of pre-agricultural man.

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In an example of more brain damage from the mainstream medical press, a recent online article from heartwire savaged the low-carb diet as a treatment for diabetes along with one of its main academic proponents.  This piece, when read critically, provides a blueprint for how to subtly (and not so subtly) disparage an idea that doesn’t meet mainstream approval.  And it shows why the low-carb diet – despite the mountains of evidence demonstrating its superiority – continues to have difficulty gaining traction.

Here’s the story.  Dr. Eric Westman, from Duke University, gave a talk at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) conference last month in Stockholm.  Dr. Westman made the point in his talk that since 98 percent of the research presented at diabetes meetings involved a pharmaceutical approach to treatment perhaps it was time to take a look at the benefit of lifestyle changes, specifically diet, to treat the disease.  He went on to provide data showing the benefits of low-carbohydrate diets in the care of diabetic patients.

As might be expected, the mainstream – and let me assure you, the EASD meeting was the most mainstream of mainstream meetings – didn’t like what they heard.  Neither, apparently, did the writers at heartwire, another mainstream organization.

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When I wrote the Overcoming the Curse of the Mummies chapter in Protein Power, I wrote mainly about the evidence of disease found in the mummies of ancient Egyptians and correlated this disease with their high-carbohydrate diet.  Along with all the material on mummies, which is the part everyone seems to remember, I wrote about a study done in the United States in the 1970s that persuasively demonstrated the superiority of the hunter diet as compared to an agricultural diet, which no one seems to remember.  I came across that study a couple of days ago and decided to present it in a little more detail than I was able to in Protein Power.

The anthropological record of early man clearly shows health took a nosedive when populations made the switch from hunting and gathering to agriculture. It takes a physical anthropologist about two seconds to look at a skeleton unearthed from an archeological site to tell if the owner of that skeleton was a hunter-gatherer or an agriculturist.

Unlike the Egyptian mummy data, there is usually no soft tissue material left when remains of early man are found.  But the skeletal remains of hunter-gatherers show them to be much healthier than agriculturalists.  Hunter-gatherers had better bones, had no signs of iron-deficiency anemia, no signs of infection, few (if any) dental cavities, fewer signs of arthritis and were in general larger and more robust than their agriculture-following contemporaries.  One of the theories as to why postulates that hunter-gatherers lived in smaller, more mobile societies.  Consequently, they weren’t as likely to get communicable diseases and were able to travel to find food, whereas agriculturists were rooted to one spot, lived in larger groups, making the spread of disease more likely, and they were subject to lack of food if a drought or other natural disaster decimated their crops.

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Ten or twelve years ago we wrote in Protein Power about the data contained in the vast amount of ancient Egyptian mummies. We pointed out that several thousand years ago when the future mummies roamed the earth their diet was a nutritionist’s nirvana. At least a nirvana for all the so-called nutritional experts of today who are recommending a diet filled with whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, and little meat, especially red meat. Follow such a diet, we’re told, and we will enjoy abundant health.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way for the Egyptians. They followed such a diet simply because that’s all there was. There was no sugar – it wouldn’t be produced for another thousand or more years. The only sweet was honey, which was consumed in limited amounts. The primary staple was a coarse bread made of stone-ground, whole wheat. Animals were used as beasts of burden and were valued much more for the work they could do than for the meat they could provide. The banks of the Nile provided fertile soil for growing all kinds of fruits and vegetables, all of which were a part the low-fat, high-carbohydrate Egyptian diet. And there were no artificial sweeteners, artificial coloring, artificial flavors, preservatives, or any of the other substances that are part of all the manufactured foods we eat today.

Were the nutritionists of today right about their ideas of the ideal diet, the ancient Egyptians should have had abundant health. But they didn’t. In fact, they suffered pretty miserable health. Many had heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity – all the same disorders that we experience today in the ‘civilized’ Western world. Diseases that Paleolithic man, our really ancient ancestors, appeared to escape.

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An intriguing article appeared in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute showing a correlation between periodontal disease and the development of pancreatic cancer. There have been a couple of studies correlating tooth loss with pancreatic cancer, but this is the first study I’ve seen that looks at periodontal disease and cancer of the pancreas.

You don’t want to get any kind of cancer if you can help it, but you really don’t want to get cancer in your pancreas. The virulence of cancers are usually defined by their 5-year survival rates, meaning what percentage of people who are diagnosed with a particular cancer are still alive 5 years later. The lower the 5-year survival rate, the deadlier the cancer. According to the latest statistics from the American Cancer Society (ACS), breast cancer has a 5-year survival rate of 88.5 percent, which means that out of 100 patients who are diagnosed with breast cancer, 88.5 of them will still be alive 5 years later. For lung cancer, a pretty deadly cancer, the 5-year survival rate is 15 percent. The 5-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is 5 percent, making it the most deadly of all the cancers listed in the ACS list. Pancreatic cancer is a good one to avoid.

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