100 Million Years of Food

Title: 100 Million Years of Food – What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today

Author: Stephen Le

Publisher: Picador, 2016 (First)

ISBN: 9781250050410

Pages: 309

While it is undeniable that human health is in its most marvelous phase ever in its history, it is really hard to come across a person entirely satisfied about his state of health. Awareness and the tons of information on ailments reaching the common man has helped to ward off diseases, but the apprehensions about newer and stranger diseases keep the society on tenterhooks. As I write these words, the South Indian state of Kerala is in the throes of a battle against a previously unheard of viral disease caused by a kind of deadly pathogen known as the Nipah virus. Sometimes, the food we eat also forms the channel through which harmful bacteria and viruses reach our body. Even if we lay aside the menace of microbes for the time being, it is arguable whether we keep a healthy diet. With the changes in habitat and lifestyles, most people follow a diet that is greatly at odds with that of their ancestors. Also, the cherished notions about food and nutrition often turn out to be wrong when viewed in a broad context. This book is a valiant effort to reach an understanding of what our ancestors – not all of them humans, of course – ate in the last 100 million years of evolutionary history. It explains what we should eat and how we should lead our lives by combining the latest in scientific studies with a dose of evolutionary biology and a review of how people past and present ate and lived. It offers practical suggestions for tweaking the ancestral habits and inserting them into our daily lives to avoid or delay the onset of major chronic diseases. Stephen Le is currently a visiting professor of biology at the University of Ottawa. He received Ph.D in biological anthropology in 2010 and is an ethnic Vietnamese settled in Canada.

The eating habits of our primate ancestors underwent dramatic changes as a result of minor upsets in the genomic roadmap. Around 60 million years ago, our primate forebears lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C due to a genetic mutation in a single gene called GLO. They tided over this handicap by taking to fruits rich in the vitamin and were abundantly available in the surroundings. Similarly, between 40 and 16 million years ago, our ancestors progressively lost the genes for building uricase, the enzyme helping to dispose of uric acid from the body. As a result, uric acid levels in primates rose 3-10 times higher than other mammals, which however helped them to store fat, particularly after eating fruit.

The book repeatedly handles the pros and cons of eating liberal quantities of meat and dairy products. Meat is the greatest source of protein and in the long history of food, our affection for fruit pales in comparison to our affinity for meat. However, choosing an unusually large slice of meat comes with its own problems. Humans can’t consume more than 35-40% of calories in the form of protein due to the accumulation of toxic levels of ammonia and urea as byproducts of digesting and metabolizing protein. Fat and carbohydrates thus provide the bulk of calories needed by us. Stephen Le’s assertion that vegetables are not our original food source may surprise ardent Vegs, but he explains it why. Humans don’t have the specialized digestive systems or teeth that herbivores like guerillas or cows possess to grind and digest large quantities of unprocessed plant foods. The author shocks dairy enthusiasts as well with his prescient remark that compared to milk, alcohol is child’s play. In fact, milk is the most complex substance people consume.

Over the eons, our diet shifted from insects to fruits, meat, agricultural products like wheat, rice, potatoes and corn and then to milk and alcohol. Modern societies consume all these different genera of foods, but we are still unsure about what constitutes an optimal diet. Le asks rhetorically whether a healthy man in a great mood and being fertile and stronger at a younger age is to be emulated than another healthy old man delaying cancer for a couple of years and hanging out with his great-grandchildren. The book contains many good chapters on the tinkering required in diet for a healthy life. Calorie restriction is a good method for longer life, but studies point out that the calorie intake of modern people is much the same as primitive hunter gatherers. But the latter were slim and fit while the former fights a losing battle with obesity. The fraction of obese people as a proportion of the whole goes steadily up in every society. Le surmises that our voluntary inactivity may be the key to our expanding waistlines. Watching TV and indiscriminate usage of automobiles to cover even short distances are killing us slowly. To make his point, Le visits Ikaria in Greece and Okinawa in Japan to showcase the efficacy of long walks which are mandated by the geography of these islands. Anyhow, the traditional diets are fast receding into oblivion in these places too.

The book’s moral is easily evident as it is reiterated many times in the text. To lead a healthy and longer life, we need to practice exercises of moderate physical activity, adhere to traditional cuisines, and eat more animal foods when older. Going after traditional diets forces the author to hunt for restaurants that serve such bizarre fare as insects and crickets in Southeast Asia.

What is disappointing in the book is its painfully evident bias towards unscientific fads of modern society such as organic farming and mindless opposition to genetically modified (GM) foods. Of course, this is not the place for a full discussion of the pros and cons of organic farming and avoidance of chemical pesticides, but it is fairly obvious that the organic movement is not going to be good for the food security of the world in the longer term. Having lower crop yields, organic farming is a wasteful exercise that squanders precious resources such as land, seeds, water, manure and manpower. This is especially significant when the supposed ill-effects of scientific agriculture using chemical fertilizers and judicious use of pesticides are nowhere to be found. Le advocates ban on the use of genetically modified foods till more tests on its long-term safety are conducted. This is a self-defeating argument. How can you test them if you ban it outright and continue to arraign it in the media and every available forum? Europe keeps them at arm’s length while America continues to enjoy its varied flavours. So, a definitive answer to this puzzle might not be long in coming after all, when we learn that 93 per cent of soy, 90 per cent of corn, 95 per cent of sugar beet, 93 per cent of rape seed and 30 per cent of alfalfa crops in US and Canada are already GM. In order not to scare away customers, the manufacturers prefer not to indicate this fact on the product package. The book’s unsubstantiated attack on MSG (monosodium glutamate) is unscientific as the perceived after effects of consuming it is both fanciful and unproven. Le claims that German researchers have found that MSG can cause headaches (!) when ingested in large quantities! Is it such a big deal? Le admits that scientists and mainstream media discuss MSG concerns as uninformed public hysteria.

The first part of the book is very witty when we follow the author travelling to many remote parts of the globe in search of novel foods and read about pleasing adventures. After the first few chapters, the narrative loses focus and degenerates to the level of a dietary and health handbook. This book is not a record of the varied culinary stages through which human societies reached where they are today, but rather on what they should eat for better health. It impels the readers to follow sustainable farming practices that do not snatch food away from the plates of future generations.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star