A short history of refined carbs every Finn needs to read

Global cooling around the last modern ice age, 2.5 million years ago, meant early humans found fruits and vegetables scarcer. This helped bring about the adaptation of hunting and gathering. This evolved our bodies via natural selection to be the way they are today. Archaeology shows early humans learnt to control fire about one million years ago. Cooking sites appear frequently around 400,000 years ago.

Cooking food enabled us to obtain enough energy to evolve our uniquely large brains and distinguish ourselves from other species through intelligence. Fossil records show hunter-gatherers were tall and healthy with little tooth decay. When not killed by another human or animal, they had a good chance of living into their 7th decade. Just 200,000 years ago, modern humans evolved as hunter-gatherers, eating wild animals for fat and protein with staples of fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds. The human genome has changed little since. Cultural Evolution has taken over as the dominant factor of change.

Hunter-gatherer societies have different diets. Far Northern climates get less fruit and vegetables during winter months and traditionally survive on a more animal and fish based diet. The Inuit are healthy living on almost exclusively fish and animals. These diets do not contain processed food, sugar or high-energy farmed cereal grains that form the basis of the modern human diet.

Agricultural Revolution

Some theories suggest we started farming primarily to get a reliable source of alcohol. It was only 12,000 years ago that we started eating grains in any quantity. The result was reduced height, a fatter lifestyle and shorter lifespan. Dying younger was not purely due to diet. Other factors such as famine and disease from farming animals were also components.

In ancient Egypt, people ate similar food to the recommended Mediterranean diet of whole wheat bread, barley, fruit, vegetables and olive oil but very little meat. Analysis of their mummified bodies reveals sickness, obesity, heart disease, tooth decay and short life expectancy. This dropped from 40 to 20 years. The Pharaoh’s daughter Princess Ahmose-Meryet-Amon, who died in 1550 BCE, likely led a sedentary life with an energy rich diet. A CT scan of her mummified body revealed atherosclerosis.

The Industrial Revolution brought about improvements in the quantity and quality of food available. It increased childhood life expectancy and made us less sick. In 1862, William Banting was an obese London undertaker. His doctor William Harvey restricted the amount of carbohydrates in his diet. His weight loss was so successful that he published a diary. Banting became a regular word in English meaning to diet by restricting carbs. It was the standard way of treating weight loss in all major European and North American medical schools until the end of World War 2.

Industrial Agriculture

Bread and porridge could feed more people and be stored for longer. Throughout the post war period, US industrial cereal farming gained power in political lobbying. They funded the scientific research they wanted to see and helped hide the studies that did not fit with their business model. Heart disease appeared in the 1920s and soared with the post WW1 popularity of smoking. The cereal industry was complicit in promoting the high carbohydrate and vegetable seed oil food fad through manufacturing the fear of saturated fat.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a Finnish economic analysis noted the government encouraged farmers to shift from exportable animal products to basic grains. This policy kept farm incomes from falling and enabled the country to feed itself better. Finland began changing grazing pasture into fields of wheat and sugar beets. These were processed into an all-purpose additive similar to high-fructose corn syrup.

Bad Science

More Finns died of heart disease than any other country in Ancel Keys’ famous study published in 1953. This study purported to show a relationship between dietary fat, cholesterol and the risk of heart attack. Of the 22 countries in the study, he cherry picked just 7 that supported his theory. In actual fact, there was no correlation at all. He did not factor in the huge rise in cigarette smoking that coincided with the sudden rise in heart disease.

Despite the unproven assertions, the 1977 US Senate under Nixon based its dietary recommendations on the discredited science of Ancel Keys. It also boosted the market for US cereal growers. Around the world, people took the American guidelines as the truth without looking critically at the evidence. The corresponding high carb, low fat diet with cereal consumption at the base of the nutritional food pyramid has coincided with the dramatic rise in obesity and diabetes since 1980.

Today the Clintons both eat a Paleo diet as does Jeb Bush. Despite the lobbyists’ desire for maintaining status quo, leaders are increasingly avoiding grains.