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The best diet is the one eaten for 1000s of years by your ancestors

by omosubi 5y ago

russdill 5y ago
Because they all lived long healthy lives I'm sure /s
- vimacs2 5y ago
  Sarcasm nonwithstanding, it took over 12000 years of technological advances for agricultural societies to catch up to their palaeolithic bretheran in terms of average life expectancy and even metrics like height. I'm not a primitivist by any means (I'm using a pc right now as it so happens) but we continue to have a lot to learn from modern hunter gatherer societies both in terms of social organisation and food consumption.
- Lammy 5y ago
  Of course some of us did a better job than others, but enough lived that Humanity (collectively singular) is still here, and to me it seems the only way for anyone to learn anything is via the negative image formed by all the ideas that didn’t work. Sorry I know this sounds a little woo-woo fruity, but that’s Humanity’s godlike power to transcend the limitations of our bodies’ material dimension where energy can’t be created or destroyed. Collectively we’re like a blockchain holding a mirror-image dimension of all the best ideas just by virtue of the other nodes not making it, growing over time as our new embodiments get to start at what from their point of view is “zero” despite being unknowably old and full of patches and bug fixes. Storage and retrieval are the same operation!
Graffur 5y ago
Do we know what they ate in detail?
- cryptonector 5y ago
  They certainly didn't eat margarine. Or refined sugars. Or simple carbs outside fruit. Etc.
cgrealy 5y ago
You mean the one for people whose life expectancy was less than half the modern day? Who lived completely different lives?
- jdminhbg 5y ago
  Pro or con the diet, the difference in life expectancy is mostly antibiotics.
  - finite_jest 5y ago
    Antibiotics rock, and I think penicillin is rightly praised as being as closed to a Panacea as it gets. However, we shouldn't underestimate the positive effect of better hygiene, vaccination, and advances in surgery techniques. I share the feeling that better nutrition is probably not as much of a significant factor in developed countries. For what it's worth, we are more obese than our ancestors. Our World in Data has this nice chart of life expectance by age in England and Wales [1]. I have this pet hypothesis that a good chunk of the increase in the life expectancy of the younger people in that chart is due to vaccination and better hygiene. And, for older ages, the a good chunk of increase is due to advances in surgery. The effect of antibiotics is probably more uniform across the ages. It is note-worthy that penicillin was discovered in 1928, so the increase in life expectancy before then can't be due to antibiotics. I have no expertise in this area, so you should take all of this with a pinch of salt. The Our World in Data chart is really cool though. That steep fall and rebounce due to the Spanish flu, and the contrast with COVID-19 with respect to affect on different age-groups is also interesting. [2] [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#it-is-not-only-about-child-mortality-life-expectancy-by-age https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#it-is-not-only-ab... [2]: I think comparing the naming of the diseases also tells us something about how society has changed.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > the difference in life expectancy is mostly antibiotics Life expectancy made huge gains throughout the century before antibiotics.
    - 5y ago

The best diet is the one eaten for 1000s of years by your ancestors

russdill 5y ago

Because they all lived long healthy lives I'm sure /s

vimacs2 5y ago
Sarcasm nonwithstanding, it took over 12000 years of technological advances for agricultural societies to catch up to their palaeolithic bretheran in terms of average life expectancy and even metrics like height. I'm not a primitivist by any means (I'm using a pc right now as it so happens) but we continue to have a lot to learn from modern hunter gatherer societies both in terms of social organisation and food consumption.
Lammy 5y ago
Of course some of us did a better job than others, but enough lived that Humanity (collectively singular) is still here, and to me it seems the only way for anyone to learn anything is via the negative image formed by all the ideas that didn’t work. Sorry I know this sounds a little woo-woo fruity, but that’s Humanity’s godlike power to transcend the limitations of our bodies’ material dimension where energy can’t be created or destroyed. Collectively we’re like a blockchain holding a mirror-image dimension of all the best ideas just by virtue of the other nodes not making it, growing over time as our new embodiments get to start at what from their point of view is “zero” despite being unknowably old and full of patches and bug fixes. Storage and retrieval are the same operation!

Graffur 5y ago

Do we know what they ate in detail?

cryptonector 5y ago
They certainly didn't eat margarine. Or refined sugars. Or simple carbs outside fruit. Etc.

cgrealy 5y ago

You mean the one for people whose life expectancy was less than half the modern day? Who lived completely different lives?

jdminhbg 5y ago
Pro or con the diet, the difference in life expectancy is mostly antibiotics.
- finite_jest 5y ago
  Antibiotics rock, and I think penicillin is rightly praised as being as closed to a Panacea as it gets. However, we shouldn't underestimate the positive effect of better hygiene, vaccination, and advances in surgery techniques. I share the feeling that better nutrition is probably not as much of a significant factor in developed countries. For what it's worth, we are more obese than our ancestors. Our World in Data has this nice chart of life expectance by age in England and Wales [1]. I have this pet hypothesis that a good chunk of the increase in the life expectancy of the younger people in that chart is due to vaccination and better hygiene. And, for older ages, the a good chunk of increase is due to advances in surgery. The effect of antibiotics is probably more uniform across the ages. It is note-worthy that penicillin was discovered in 1928, so the increase in life expectancy before then can't be due to antibiotics. I have no expertise in this area, so you should take all of this with a pinch of salt. The Our World in Data chart is really cool though. That steep fall and rebounce due to the Spanish flu, and the contrast with COVID-19 with respect to affect on different age-groups is also interesting. [2] [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#it-is-not-only-about-child-mortality-life-expectancy-by-age https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#it-is-not-only-ab... [2]: I think comparing the naming of the diseases also tells us something about how society has changed.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > the difference in life expectancy is mostly antibiotics Life expectancy made huge gains throughout the century before antibiotics.
  - 5y ago