The Truth About Food - How to Eat Like an Ape!

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Article Title:

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The Truth About Food - How to Eat Like an Ape!

Article Description:

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It's pretty hard to work out what you can and can't eat these

days. Which is not a good situation given the alarming scale of

obesity and chronic illness in the US and UK. Can eating like an

ape improve your health? Can natural nutrition reverse the

effects of modern diets?

Additional Article Information:

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917 Words; formatted to 65 Characters per Line

Distribution Date and Time: 2007-02-06 12:12:00

Written By: Mike Kinnaird

Copyright: 2007

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The Truth About Food - How to Eat Like an Ape!

Copyright © 2007 Mike Kinnaird

Passion for Health

http://www.passionforhealth.org

It's pretty hard to work out what you can and can't eat these

days. Which is not a good situation given the alarming scale of

obesity and chronic illness in the US and UK.

Can eating like an ape improve your health? Can natural nutrition

reverse the effects of modern diets?

BBC2 decided to find out and got some volunteers to go 'back to

nature'...

The 'Evo Diet' Experiment

Take one zoo enclosure in Devon, England - only metres away from

the great apes. Put in some huts and tents. Add 9 people with

dangerously high blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Add a

dietician prepared ape diet and then simmer for 12 days.

High blood pressure and cholesterol are high risk factors for

heart disease and strokes. The program pointed the finger at too

much saturated fat in modern diets which increase bad

cholesterol. This sticks to the walls of arteries and eventually

causes blockages, leading to heart attacks and strokes. Was 12

days enough to make any difference to this risky state of

affairs?

The Diet

The diet goes back 6 million years – to when the evolution of man

and the great apes diverged. At that time, it's well accepted

that we ate a largely vegetarian diet, pretty much as the great

apes do today. 5Kg (11lb) / 2,300 calories per person of raw

fruits, vegetables, and nuts / seeds were delivered in cool

boxes. A single olive soaked in brine provided the salt allowance

for each day.

In the second week, there was a nod to more recent changes in

humans diets – from 3.5 million years ago to 350,000 years ago

due to stone tools, hunting and fire. Some paleontologists

believe that it was meat eating that increased our brain size and

gave us the evolutionary edge. The volunteers got to go fishing

and had a meal of fresh grilled mackerel – just the one meal then

it was back to veggies. To put these time-scales in perspective,

we saw that farming only occurred within the last 10,000 years

and processed foods mainly within the last 100 years.

The beauty of a diet plan like this is that you eat it as it

comes... no packaging, no preparation, no cooking and all the

left-overs are biodegradable. But do we have all day to munch on

raw food? How practical is it in the modern world?

The Results

What really surprised me was that there were no symptoms of

detoxification, once the initial caffeine withdrawal was over. No

moodiness or sickness at all, just lots of giggling going on.

They seemed to be in very high spirits.

An unexpected side effect of the diet was weight loss. But then

they didn't finish their food, so you'd expect weight loss. By

bedtime on the first day they were still munching away! Other

side effects were lots of trips to the loo and lots of farting!

The results – staggering - an average of 23% reduction in

cholesterol. Blood pressure returned to normal in everybody. And

all this without any serious exercise, although we did see them

kicking a ball about on one occasion.

One guy – the most worrying case of the group reported " lots of

energy " and " sleeping well " . His insulin level went from 20.7

to 8!

The response in camp to the mackerel was very interesting – they

were gagging for it! " Heaven " , " Delicious " , " I'm glad it

was cooked, but if it wasn't I probably would have gone for the

raw method " .

Life and Death Stuff

It's interesting to note that the volunteers looked healthy

enough at the start and yet " their diet could be killing them " .

It always pays to look beneath the surface of things where health

is concerned.

The program showed how quickly health can change for the better

given the right conditions. But make no mistake – this is life

and death stuff we're talking about. If these folks hadn't

changed, all the signs showed they were likely to develop life

threatening conditions. Why wait 'til you have high blood

pressure and cholesterol?

Conclusions

The program explained...

" Scientists believe that many of our modern health problems stem

from a mismatch between what we ate as we evolved and the food we

eat now "

I think it's fair to say that many do. But this information also

eludes many scientists and health professionals who don't really

consider the evolutionary picture when giving out health advice.

This is a really under-studied area of nutrition.

This was a very light hearted look at our ape ancestry with a

serious message. I think many people will have dismissed the

program as a stunt and the diet as impractical but there are many

folks following raw vegan 'ape' diets such as this. I'd like

to see the actual list of food they ate. And I'd like to see

longer term studies – over years, decades, exploring the whole

evolutionary idea properly. I'd like studies adding animal foods

into a diet like this to see the health impact. This is important

stuff!

It's a shame there wasn't a real-life application of the ideas

behind the diet, we weren't left with much we could take away

apart from 'eat lots more fruit and veg'

The most important thing about this program is the mainstream

exposure. The idea of eating a diet of natural, healthy food, in

a way that we evolved to eat, is now in the minds of a lot of

people. Hoorah!

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Mike Kinnaird has studied health and nutrition for over 20

years, to overcome long-term chronic illness. Discover the

7 sure-fire steps to beating bad habits and kickstarting

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