What follows is inspired by the writings of the late health educator and fruitarian T. C. Fry, to whom I tip my hat for his clear insight into—and passionate advocacy for—true human health, vitality and longevity.
In explorations about the optimum human diet, I have finally been persuaded by the argument from design. Let me explain:
The story begins like this: Imagine yourself out in nature, long before pots and pans and tools and utensils have been discovered or invented. We're talking about the tens of millions of years before the advent of the Ice Ages some million or so years ago.
For countless eons, but something like 60 million years or so, our primate bodies developed and evolved in the jungles and forests and plains of Africa. This is the time before tools, before language, before fire, before anything at all other than simply living naturally in nature.
This is the period, and the condition, for which and to which our bodies fundamentally developed and evolved. The body that we have now is fundamentally the one we developed then, over that 60 million years. Compared to that, in evolutionary terms, all the time since then is a mere drop in the bucket.
Now imagine yourself during that time. You're a proto-human, and you're foraging for food. What attracts you? What serves you? What kind of food are you looking for?
As one example, are you a root grubber? Are you digging in the earth to find roots? Not really. Root grubbers have snouts; we don't. Without tools, our hands are not well suited to digging in the earth.
And when we got the potato or the beet or the yam out of the earth, would we relish eating it in its raw natural state, covered with dirt? Not really. Root grubbers pass lots of dirt through their bodies, but we humans don't like dirt on our food. And we're not particularly attracted to the sight or smell of raw, uncooked roots.
Are we a carnivore then? Well, try this mental experiment: You have a rabbit in your hands; let's say you caught it somehow. As the rabbit squeals for its life and tries to get away, you crush it and bang it to death. Does that appeal to you?
And then you bite into the flesh, fur and all. You eat into the guts and smear blood on your face as you do so. Moreover, you would do this with great relish.
Does this sound like something you'd be attracted to? Hardly. Yet watch a true carnivore devour its prey in the wild, and you'll see that they do it with great pleasure. Of course: They're following their nature, what mother Nature designed them for.
Moreover, true carnivores have hydrochloric acid that's ten times more powerful than ours. They produce the enzyme uricase, which we don't, to neutralise the immense quantities of toxic uric acid contained in animal flesh.
True carnivores produce cholinesterase, which we don't, to counteract the large quantities of cholesterol contained in their natural food. And they have sharp claws and teeth for the ripping and killing and devouring of prey. None of this describes us.
Are we graminivores then, or eaters of grain? Imagine yourself out in nature with a handful of grain. The husks are still on the grain, because you have no way to get them off. So you devour a handful of this raw grain-with-husk. Does that appeal to you? Does it sound like your natural diet?
There are thousands of different kinds of grass and weed seeds, a few of which we call grains. Many birds live on such grass seeds alone, but raw grass seeds hardly seem like part of our natural human diet. Eating grains has only been a part of the human diet for 10,000 years, a mere flicker of an eye in evolutionary terms.
What about insects then? Are we insectivores? Does it appeal to you to catch a live, raw grasshopper and eat it? Does it appeal to you to lift ants out of an anthill and eat them? Evidently, this is not part of our natural diet either, because nature would have designed us to relish and enjoy our natural food.
Are we sucklings of animals? Can you imagine yourself getting underneath an animal and sucking its teats for food? Would that appeal to you? Yet that is how we would have to do it in nature.
Evidently we were not meant to suckle past the age of weaning. Except for certain Arabic and African societies, eating and drinking milk and milk products is only a few hundred years old.
What about fermented and rotten foods? In nature, would we be like buzzards or maggots, actively seeking out foods that are rotten or decomposing? On the contrary, we are naturally drawn to foods that are fresh and wholesome.
We drink wine, yet we're careful to throw away the fermented grapes (the ones from which wines are made) when we eat a bunch of fresh grapes. We recoil at putrid flesh.
In nature, we'd avoid foods that are decomposing. Neither their look nor smell would appeal to us. Evidently, decomposing foods are not a natural part of our diet.
Are we herbivores then?
This is Part 1 of a 3-part article. (Go to Part 2.)
—jim sloman, for 4/4/02
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