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And yet some of the healthiest people on earth eat vegetable heavy diets... The archaeological record shows that hunter-gatherers had an abysmally short lifesp

by Mikeb85 12y ago

And yet some of the healthiest people on earth eat vegetable heavy diets... The archaeological record shows that hunter-gatherers had an abysmally short lifespan, and were far from healthy... Pretty much every positive development in human health history happened after the advent of agriculture. Hunter gatherers were lucky to live past 30... I'd guess your 'low carb' diet still had more vegetables and grains than most hunter gatherers had access to...

martiuk 12y ago
Are you sure your number excludes early years deaths? I've seen this number bandied around and every time it include stillbirths and early years deaths.
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  It's not an average...
  - martiuk 12y ago
    So, what you're saying is... every hunter-gatherer died before they were 30? Sounds like an average to me.
lukifer 12y ago
> Hunter gatherers were lucky to live past 30 Most of the statistics about our ancestors having a 35ish life expectancy are skewed by high infant mortality, and high risk of death due to injury or other external ailments (a broken leg on the savannah can easily be a death sentence). A hunter-gatherer who surived those things would tend to live into their sixties or beyond.
- Mikeb85 12y ago
  Ask any archaeologist. Most adult hunter gatherers did not make it to 40. We're not talking averages, we're talking maximum life expectancy...
  - MisterBastahrd 12y ago
    Sure. They also had neither vaccinations nor antibiotics, had no understanding of bacteria, etc. Take any modern teenager and stick him back in the stone age and I doubt he makes it to 40 even WITH modern knowledge.
  - PeterisP 12y ago
    The modal age of death for hunter gatherers that survived to adulthood ranges from 65 to 72 among the reasearched cultures. Sure, a large proportion of them die at early childhood - "life expectancy" measures takes that into account by definition, as it measures the total average life expectancy; and if you get a 100 kids who live to 70 and 100 kids who die as infants, then the average life expectancy is 35.
    - Mikeb85 12y ago
      Maybe you could present a paper? Because amongst most hunter gatherers researched the modal age is much lower...
      - PeterisP 12y ago
        M.Gurven & H.Kaplan Longevity Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination has a conclusion of "The average modal age of adult death for hunter-gatherers is 72 with a range of 68–78 years." It's not about the ancient societies but is relevant because for this discussion the point is not history, but the effects of a hunter-gatherer diet. http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2...
krob 12y ago
Abysmal live spans? Do you forget how savage human history is? Humans are more likely to be killed by each other than by their food source. Do you know as fact that humans when they died did so from malnourishment? It's very possibly more likely due to some kind of famine which tended to happen from natural causes. Yes, humans could endure longer with vegetation because it's easier to maintain it for longer periods of time in raw form, but were they in better physical health from eating the same thing over and over again? I'd imagine they had horrible vitamin deficiencies during famines.
vacri 12y ago
The whole vegetarian vs meat-eater thing is something of a canard anyway. We're biologically omnivores. If you want to be a vegetarian, that's cool, but you need to ensure your diet covers the things you'd usually get from meats. But at this point, you're making a moral decision, not a nutritional decision - whether you get your protein from fish or from beans matters little to your body, as long as you get it. Hunter gatherers were lucky to live past 30... Not true. If you made it past 5-10 years, you were likely to live a fairly full adult life. Infant mortality was very high, but it wasn't like most people dropped dead before 30 if they survived early childhood.
- andyjohnson0 12y ago
  Wikipedia has some numbers [1] on life expectancy at various time in history. In the Upper Paleolithic, life expectancy at birth was 33 years, and by 15 years of age the total expectancy went up to 54 years. In Classical Rome, life expectancy at birth was 20-30 years, and by 10 years of age the total expectancy went up to 45-47 years. In Medieval Britain, life expectancy at birth was 30 years, and by 15 years of age the total expectancy went up to 64 years. This looks kind of mixed to me. Certainly, as you point out, people weren't "dropping dead at 30". But dying around 45 or 55 is not what people nowadays would call a "fairly full adult life" either. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy...
  - vacri 12y ago
    Those numbers work fine with what I said, they're fairly full adult lives. Life expectency has been rising over the past few decades with improvements to medical care, but only 50 years ago in the US, it was 70 years. If that's 'full', then the numbers above are 'fairly full', I think. Rome might be a touch short, but it's still much longer than the idea most people drop dead by 30. Certainly in a sociological sense, most people consider the years 60+ to be twilight years where you're not living life to the fullest - whether it's true or not, that's the perception.
lvh 12y ago
Even if "some of the healthiest people on earth eat vegetable heavy diets" is both true and the health is a consequence of the vegetable heavy diet, that's not countering a point the parent made. Parent was advocating an optimal protein, low carbohydrate diet. Parent didn't say how many vegetables are in said diet. (I am on a low carb diet with plenty of veg.)
jrapdx3 12y ago
True enough, life span was often short until fairly recent times. In the distant past there were many factors affecting life span, e.g., diseases, accidents, predation (by large feline species in particular), childbirth to name a few. However there is evidence of populations in pre-agricultural times which had favorable environments and consequently better health. In fact there was just published by the Smithsonian an interesting article describing findings in the 9000 year old Kennewick Man specimen. Of particular interest was a comment about the condition of the teeth: all intact, no cavities attributed to low CHO diet. Age at time of death was estimated to be 40 years old. Not bad for 9000 years ago. BTW I'd appreciate references you have to the differences in pre- and early post-agricultural health in human populations. Isolating dietary effects on health is difficult to be sure and a subject I'm always eager to learn more about. As far as my diet is concerned, vegetables are emphasized, especially the green, leafy kind. (Foods that are relatively high in protein, low in CHO.) I recommend, and practice myself, reducing grains to a minimum. As you no doubt know, protein, certain fats, a bunch of minerals and vitamins are essential to humans because we can't synthesize certain molecules--we must get them in our diet. Curiously, there is no essential carbohydrate. Our bodies can produce all the CHO it needs from non-CHO sources. That's not to say CHO intake is not useful, and it is useful as a source of calories. In the past when calories were expensive, less costly CHO sources of calories were valuable, in essence to prevent starvation. In the current era when calories are extremely cheap, high CHO intake is positively dangerous--it's easy to consume a surplus of calories. Interestingly, the data shows over the last 30 years there has been very little change in dietary fat intake in the USA, but sugars have increased dramatically. The rise in obesity has been attributed to inclusion of sugars in manufactured foods. The idea of decreasing dietary CHO intake, especially sugars, is logical. Gluten and corn intolerance is common according to reports. Wheat, corn and many other grain products are grass seeds. Grass and its seeds are frequently allergenic to humans, which supports the idea humans are not native grass eaters, hence the advice to minimize it.
- timcederman 12y ago
  No, not true - life span has always been long (ish), but life EXPECTANCY has been low due to infant mortality.
theodoree 12y ago
Lots of assumptions there mate. "some of the healthiest people on earth eat vegetable heavy diets..." That doesn't mean anything. That barely even makes any sense.

by Mikeb85 12y ago

martiuk 12y ago

Are you sure your number excludes early years deaths? I've seen this number bandied around and every time it include stillbirths and early years deaths.

Mikeb85 12y ago
It's not an average...
- martiuk 12y ago
  So, what you're saying is... every hunter-gatherer died before they were 30? Sounds like an average to me.

lukifer 12y ago

> Hunter gatherers were lucky to live past 30 Most of the statistics about our ancestors having a 35ish life expectancy are skewed by high infant mortality, and high risk of death due to injury or other external ailments (a broken leg on the savannah can easily be a death sentence). A hunter-gatherer who surived those things would tend to live into their sixties or beyond.

Mikeb85 12y ago
Ask any archaeologist. Most adult hunter gatherers did not make it to 40. We're not talking averages, we're talking maximum life expectancy...
- MisterBastahrd 12y ago
  Sure. They also had neither vaccinations nor antibiotics, had no understanding of bacteria, etc. Take any modern teenager and stick him back in the stone age and I doubt he makes it to 40 even WITH modern knowledge.
- PeterisP 12y ago
  The modal age of death for hunter gatherers that survived to adulthood ranges from 65 to 72 among the reasearched cultures. Sure, a large proportion of them die at early childhood - "life expectancy" measures takes that into account by definition, as it measures the total average life expectancy; and if you get a 100 kids who live to 70 and 100 kids who die as infants, then the average life expectancy is 35.
  - Mikeb85 12y ago
    Maybe you could present a paper? Because amongst most hunter gatherers researched the modal age is much lower...
    - PeterisP 12y ago
      M.Gurven & H.Kaplan Longevity Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination has a conclusion of "The average modal age of adult death for hunter-gatherers is 72 with a range of 68–78 years." It's not about the ancient societies but is relevant because for this discussion the point is not history, but the effects of a hunter-gatherer diet. http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2...

krob 12y ago

Abysmal live spans? Do you forget how savage human history is? Humans are more likely to be killed by each other than by their food source. Do you know as fact that humans when they died did so from malnourishment? It's very possibly more likely due to some kind of famine which tended to happen from natural causes. Yes, humans could endure longer with vegetation because it's easier to maintain it for longer periods of time in raw form, but were they in better physical health from eating the same thing over and over again? I'd imagine they had horrible vitamin deficiencies during famines.

vacri 12y ago

The whole vegetarian vs meat-eater thing is something of a canard anyway. We're biologically omnivores. If you want to be a vegetarian, that's cool, but you need to ensure your diet covers the things you'd usually get from meats. But at this point, you're making a moral decision, not a nutritional decision - whether you get your protein from fish or from beans matters little to your body, as long as you get it. Hunter gatherers were lucky to live past 30... Not true. If you made it past 5-10 years, you were likely to live a fairly full adult life. Infant mortality was very high, but it wasn't like most people dropped dead before 30 if they survived early childhood.

andyjohnson0 12y ago
Wikipedia has some numbers [1] on life expectancy at various time in history. In the Upper Paleolithic, life expectancy at birth was 33 years, and by 15 years of age the total expectancy went up to 54 years. In Classical Rome, life expectancy at birth was 20-30 years, and by 10 years of age the total expectancy went up to 45-47 years. In Medieval Britain, life expectancy at birth was 30 years, and by 15 years of age the total expectancy went up to 64 years. This looks kind of mixed to me. Certainly, as you point out, people weren't "dropping dead at 30". But dying around 45 or 55 is not what people nowadays would call a "fairly full adult life" either. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy...
- vacri 12y ago
  Those numbers work fine with what I said, they're fairly full adult lives. Life expectency has been rising over the past few decades with improvements to medical care, but only 50 years ago in the US, it was 70 years. If that's 'full', then the numbers above are 'fairly full', I think. Rome might be a touch short, but it's still much longer than the idea most people drop dead by 30. Certainly in a sociological sense, most people consider the years 60+ to be twilight years where you're not living life to the fullest - whether it's true or not, that's the perception.

lvh 12y ago

Even if "some of the healthiest people on earth eat vegetable heavy diets" is both true and the health is a consequence of the vegetable heavy diet, that's not countering a point the parent made. Parent was advocating an optimal protein, low carbohydrate diet. Parent didn't say how many vegetables are in said diet. (I am on a low carb diet with plenty of veg.)

jrapdx3 12y ago

True enough, life span was often short until fairly recent times. In the distant past there were many factors affecting life span, e.g., diseases, accidents, predation (by large feline species in particular), childbirth to name a few. However there is evidence of populations in pre-agricultural times which had favorable environments and consequently better health. In fact there was just published by the Smithsonian an interesting article describing findings in the 9000 year old Kennewick Man specimen. Of particular interest was a comment about the condition of the teeth: all intact, no cavities attributed to low CHO diet. Age at time of death was estimated to be 40 years old. Not bad for 9000 years ago. BTW I'd appreciate references you have to the differences in pre- and early post-agricultural health in human populations. Isolating dietary effects on health is difficult to be sure and a subject I'm always eager to learn more about. As far as my diet is concerned, vegetables are emphasized, especially the green, leafy kind. (Foods that are relatively high in protein, low in CHO.) I recommend, and practice myself, reducing grains to a minimum. As you no doubt know, protein, certain fats, a bunch of minerals and vitamins are essential to humans because we can't synthesize certain molecules--we must get them in our diet. Curiously, there is no essential carbohydrate. Our bodies can produce all the CHO it needs from non-CHO sources. That's not to say CHO intake is not useful, and it is useful as a source of calories. In the past when calories were expensive, less costly CHO sources of calories were valuable, in essence to prevent starvation. In the current era when calories are extremely cheap, high CHO intake is positively dangerous--it's easy to consume a surplus of calories. Interestingly, the data shows over the last 30 years there has been very little change in dietary fat intake in the USA, but sugars have increased dramatically. The rise in obesity has been attributed to inclusion of sugars in manufactured foods. The idea of decreasing dietary CHO intake, especially sugars, is logical. Gluten and corn intolerance is common according to reports. Wheat, corn and many other grain products are grass seeds. Grass and its seeds are frequently allergenic to humans, which supports the idea humans are not native grass eaters, hence the advice to minimize it.

timcederman 12y ago
No, not true - life span has always been long (ish), but life EXPECTANCY has been low due to infant mortality.

theodoree 12y ago

Lots of assumptions there mate. "some of the healthiest people on earth eat vegetable heavy diets..." That doesn't mean anything. That barely even makes any sense.