Homo sapiens has existed for 150,000 to 200,000 years, changing from hunting and foraging to agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution (NR) 10,000-15,000 years ago. So at one extreme, we have been farmers for 15,000 of our 150,000 years, or 10% of our existence, and at the other,  we have been farmers for 10,000 of our 200,000 years, or 5% of our existence.

Ok, the math portion of this post is over.

All the history, civilizations, literature, music, science, language, technology, and memes we know today were created during the 5-10% period. What the heck were we doing for most of our existence? Hunting, foraging, grilling, singing, drawing, making tools, making clothes, butchering, grinding, dancing, collecting, dreaming, making weapons, burying our dead, gathering around the fire, reproducing, socializing, and sharing food.

I mostly want to talk about food, my current obsession. Nutrition is just as complex as rocket science and less well-understood. Researchers are now starting to notice how perfectly whole foods match our needs. Foods that provide free radicals also include anti-oxidants. Fructose in fruit is enclosed by fibrous cell walls. Healthy soils provide foods with a wide variety of micronutrients we require in tiny but crucial doses.

That’s because our food evolved with us.

Having to search for food for every meal sounds horrific to those of us raised near a grocery, but it is not a problem for people who understand their environment thoroughly, including seasonal and multi-year cycling and occasional extreme events. Trees and wild animals deal with such, so certainly humans can.

So for 90-95% of our existence, we had to pay attention to a lot of details about finding and preparing food, as well as be alert to opportunities–beehive? lone eland? schooling fish? We ate a wide variety of foods. We ate what we needed but no more.

We also moved more and lifted more. The average prehistoric adult had strength and endurance comparable to those of a high school cross-country runner today. *

Post NR, we became farmers, millers, bakers, specialists with limited skills; started eating only what we could cultivate or domesticate; and become drastically more sedentary. Today 60% of global human caloric intake comes from wheat, rice, and corn, far from the most nutritious foods on the block. Our brain size has shrunk by approximately the size of a tennis ball. ** Our fitness–well, you know.

When we eat whole foods, our omega-3 to omega-6 ratio stays in balance, near 1:1. When we eat grapeseed oil, made from processing grape seeds left over from winemaking, the ration is 1:700. Dried fruit contains sulfur. Non-organic produce comes from sterile soils and therefore lacks micronutrients. Organic expeller-pressed canola oil has up to 5% trans fat.

Industrial food processing did not evolve, nor was it created, to preserve our health.

I’m religious about spreading this Word because giving up most grains and processed oils, eating only two or three times daily, and fasting 12-16 hours a day has produced amazing results for me in only three months. Speaking of religion, if you don’t believe our whole foods evolved with us, then please believe whole foods were Designed to make us healthy. Just eat them.

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* https://www.outsideonline.com/1923776/how-far-fitness-has-fallen

** https://phys.org/news/2011-06-farming-blame-size-brains.html