Now that you’re undoubtedly falling all over yourself with curiousity wondering about this “perfect food,” I must shamefacedly admit that despite the catchy title, no perfect food for humans exists. Even if there was such a thing, it would not be good for you.
What? Not good for you! A perfect food, which would go directly and completely into the bloodstream and contain all the necessary nutrients, would ruin your health. Your digestive system evolved to work with imperfect foods – foods with much material the body can’t use.
Humans have no “natural” food, like wild animals instinctively enjoy. Proto-humans went from eating mostly fruit (as arboreal apes), to eating whatever the hell they could get their hands on: roots, fruits, seeds, edible leaves, insects, grubs, and any animals they could catch, or their eggs.
1. Think about food.
Your body has its own internal chemistry and works hard to keep that pure. That’s what the immune system is all about. Yet to survive, the body must admit foreign substances through its well guarded frontiers. To take in material foreign to the body, separate out the useful parts, and inject them into the blood, flowing to all the cells – the amazing naturally intelligent digestive system operates this tricky and complex manouver which we take for granted, every day.
And where does this material come from? You can’t, like a plant, live on sunlight, water, and fresh air. Since the human body functions as an animal, it must consume parts of other living organisms. That’s a fact. Now, do you think those other organisms want to be eaten by you?
Imagine if a huge slobbering giant, with lots and lots of sharp teeth and very bad breath, sidled up and tapped you on the shoulder, “Excuse me, but would you mind very much if I eat your body? You see, it’s my rightful food.”
Would you politely reply, “Of course, help yourself! Glad to be of service.”
Or would you say, “If it’s all the same to you, I’d much rather you ate Joe. He’s just over there,” and then run like hell!
Animals don’t usually beg for the honor of jumping in your frying pan. If you hunt them, they have an annoying tendency to run away, or even fight back.
Clearly, animals don’t like to be eaten. Plants can’t scream or run away, but they probably don’t like it too much either. Plants, and fungi, have evolved all sorts of strategies to defend against animals eating them: thorns (roses), skin irritants (nettles), harsh chemicals (garlic), bad taste, hard exteriors (coconuts), even poisons (nightshade family, many mushrooms).
And in a strange reversal of roles, some plants even eat animals! (Venus Flytraps, etc.)
Plants make “antinutrients” to discourage animals from eating them. These may render the plant difficult to digest, prevent absorption of minerals, or cause other problems. Human cultures have developed ways to lessen these effects, including cooking, fermentation, and sprouting.
On fermentation: anaerobic bacteria, conversely, probably love to be eaten by you, so they can take up residence inside you. Your gut is microbe heaven: a protected environment with frequent showers of food. Well did Hippocrates say that all diseases begin in the gut. If “good” bacteria hang out in your gut, those tiny friends defend their turf, resisting invasions by “bad” microbes, thus helping to keep you healthy.
After eating, though apparently inside the body, material has not yet truly entered the body; it must first go through the intestinal walls. So the digestive canal is intermediate: an inside/outside place where the body can work on and prepare the food for absorption or rejection.
Suppose you eat a piece of bread. This bread was made from flour: ground up seeds of wheat. Your delicious slice may contain hundreds of seeds, each of which could have grown into a plant if your minions had not brutally cut short its life cycle. Do you deserve to live while destroying the lives of so many other beings? Well, that’s your fate. That’s your role, cast in the Cosmic Drama, the Dance of Shiva.
In the wild, only a tiny fraction of all the seeds produced ever grow into mature plants. Consider the number of seeds on a single dandelion flower. So when humans cultivate plants and use their seeds for food, reserving a portion for the next planting, they effectively emulate the wild conditiions in which most of the seeds perish unregenerate anyway.
It’s true that some plants have evolved symbioses with animals: producing a tasty treat in return for some advantage. Flowers exude a sweet nectar for insects (and hummingbirds) to eat; the eaters spread the pollen to other flowers so the plants can have sex. Some surround their seeds with sweet fruits. Animals eat the fruits and spread the seeds to far distances, often adding a nice lump of fertilizer. The plant borrows the animals’ gift of locomotion.
So does fruit win the “perfect food” prize? It tastes good, you can eat it usually with no preparation, straight off the tree, usually no or few antinutrients, contains vitamins, minerals, sugars, carbohydrates, and some, like avocadoes, have fats too. What’s the catch? In a word, protein. Fruits just don’t have the proteins people need.
Sorry, Fruitarians. We find no traditional cuisine based on fruit.
2. Should people eat meat?
I once heard a radio interview with a yogi who advocated eating 2 meals a day and fasting one day a week.
The interviewer asked (clearly a leading question), “Should we eat meat?”
The answer: “We should not eat meat, our gut is too long, it putrefies.
Now clearly this “guru,” though he looked down his nose at meat eaters, had not studied anatomy. According to Gray’s Anatomy, human gut length varies enormously.* The small intestine, which does most of the digesting, can be twice as long in some people as in others.
A word like “putrefy” elicits a strong emotional reaction: “Eeww, I don’t want meat putrefying inside me!” But that doesn’t make it true.
When I (rarely) eat meat, it usually digests quickly, certainly much more easily than boiled beans or lentils. More likely the beans, if anything, would “putrefy.”
Disregarding moral considerations, did evolution adapt the human digestive system to process meat?
Observations of chimpanzees in the wild show that they eat monkeys and other smaller animals when they catch them. They also eat insects and grubs. Humans and chimpanzees, our genetically closest animal relatives, diverged from a common ancestor some 6 million years ago. Probably our common ancestor also ate some meat.
Why meat? Again, protein in a concentrated and easily digestible (sorry, Fasting Guru) form.
In addition, clearly early humans relied on meat for at least part of their diet. Some anthropologists suggest that humans even hunted to extinction a number of large mammal species, such as mammoths, once they had the advantage of tool (and weapon) using and group cooperation. Studies of ancient as well as still existing hunter-gatherer groups reveal that they eat meat on average about 1 day in 3. Of course those in extremely cold conditions such as the Eskimo, eat much more.
Many cultures still incorporate insects into their diet. In Thailand street vendors’ carts display a variety of fried insects, a popular snack. I relished most the tasty silkworm larvae and a crunchy finger length beetle. One evening on a small island in the Mekong River, a youth darted around and pounced upon large flying beetles, stuffing them into a bottle. “Breakfast,” he informed me. Besides land animals, birds and fish, the Bible dictates rules about eating insects; the ancient Hebrews must have considered them normal food (Leviticus 11:21).
The digestive systems of animals adapted to their diet, through evolution. Grass eaters have a very complex system, the famous “four stomachs” of the cow. Science has found that humans require 9 amino acids, or types of protein molecules, and in a certain proportion, in order to synthesize all the other proteins. This proportion closely matches meat’s.
So yes, it looks like evolution did adapt humans to eat meat as part of their diet.
Brilliant ancient nutritionists in several civilizations designed plant based diets which supplied the equivalent proteins by eating certain combinations, such as legumes and grains. Thus the dahl and rice or chapaties of Indian cuisine, and the pinto beans and maize of Mexico. See the book Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lappé.
The soybean matches very well the human amino acids requirement but humans can’t digest it well (see “antinutrients”), so the Chinese developed soy milk and tofu, as well as using soybean sprouts. The ancient South Americans cultivated quinoa, and Asians buckwheat, both of which have the correct proportion of amino acids for humans.
Let’s set aside emotional and moral arguments and look at meat eating from a planetary stewardship point of view.
Humans already farm on basically all of the arable land in the world. Much arable land grows feed for animals** which in turn produce meat, milk, and eggs for human consumption – not efficient as one kilo (pound) of meat requires three or more kilos (pounds) of feed. Raising animals also requires much more fresh water per food produced than growing crops. It would make sense to use the arable land to grow food for humans instead of food for animals, in order to feed all the people.
Since some people will not want to give up meat and milk entirely, areas suitable only for grass can support livestock. The Hindu culture derives milk from cows and buffalo, sustained on food inedible by humans. Chickens can thrive on food waste and insects. Rice farmers raise fish in paddies as a symbiotic system. Humans and domestic animals can eat farmed insects which produce protein very efficiently, consuming food waste.
Many cultures consider it normal to eat meat or animal products with every meal. If those cultures would scale down to the average hunter-gatherer diet, that is to eat meat twice a week or so, it would help a lot. And maybe they can learn to enjoy eating insects. Let’s go have lunch at McBeetles!
Modern methods of mass production of animal meat, milk, and eggs produce animal food unhealthy for humans, and unnatural and harsh conditions for the animals.
3. Should people eat according to what the body desires?
Someone interviewed a chef at a swank New York City restaurant. “So what is it about your dishes that especially appeals to people?”
“Sugar, salt, and fat.”
Why do people crave these three substances? We all know too much of any can cause health problems.
Salt goes back to the origins of life. Early life evolved in salty seawater. When life expanded onto land, it carried the sea with it, internalizing the saltwater environment.
Abundant in the sea, on dry land salt becomes precious. Animals will range far for a salt lick. Primal instinct enjoys the taste of salt; so also humans.
Our collective sweet tooth derives from our simian ancestors. They lived in jungle environments eating mainly fruit. So, if it tastes sweet, yummy! In contrast, cats can’t even taste sweetness.
Hunting and gathering, living on wild plants and animals before the invention of agriculture and herding, our ancestors often couldn’t find enough fat. So the instinct evolved: when fat is available, eat as much as you can. Then the body will store it to help survive through lean times.
These instinctive cravings evolved because those who had them survived.
Now, modern people in industrialized countries can easily and cheaply obtain sugar, fat, and salt anytime they want. Just go to the nearest supermarket.
Some say, “Eat what your body wants. It will choose the food that’s most healthy.” This certainly applies to an animal living in the ecosytem to which it evolved. But humans don’t have an ecosystem anymore. We left the Garden of Eden long ago. Humans live, for the most part, in environments created by humans. So the body may choose junk food, because it tastes good. Of course it does: the manufacturers planned it that way. Potato chips (crisps): fat and salt. Ice cream: sugar and fat. And so on.
Who knows what’s the healthiest diet for humans? Science can help, at least.
In her book, Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit, Adelle Davis listed 40 basic molecules the human body needs. The list would be longer and somewhat different now. Undoubtedly she made some mistakes – she famously died of cancer – but the basic approach is sound.
4. Is the best diet the same for everyone?
One can distinguish three body types, based on the length of the small intestine, which can vary from about 4 1/2 meters to about 9 1/2 meters.* Of course people fall into a range; few match precisely one of the three.
The “roly-poly” Endomorph, with the longest gut, seems to get fat no matter what she eats. Oh, dear. Her long gut digests very efficiently and extracts the most nutrients from what she eats.
At the other extreme, the shortest gut Ectomorph can eat like a pig and still not get fat. Usually skinny with light musculature, these nibblers enjoy frequent snacks or small meals but “fill up” quickly.
The well-muscled mesomorph, in the middle, fares well with the classic three meals a day, and can get flabby or somewhat fat with poor eating habits and insufficient exercise. These “normal” types the media usually displays as models, and unfortunately, many ectomorphs and endomorphs make themselves miserable trying to emulate that.
The classic French cuisine seems designed for the endomorph: just a hot drink and a little bread or pastry in the morning: “petit dejeuner,” a large meal of several courses in the middle of the day: “dejeuner,” and a light meal in the evening, often leftovers from the midday meal.
Ectomorphs would enjoy the Spanish custom of eating “tapas:” small amounts of tasty food spread out over hours of drinking and conversation.
So you can see that there is no sense saying people in general should eat this way or that way. Bodies vary enormously. You have to find what’s best for you, your body type and your lifestyle. The endomorph might say, you don’t need so much protein. Look at me, I can live mostly on salads. The ectomorph would probably scoff at that. It’s not just what you eat, but what from that does your body assimilate?
An interesting question: is the variation in human gut length related to different periods of evolution? Perhaps Ectomorphs, with short guts, have genes from the more recent meat-eating period, and Endomorphs, with the longest guts, have genes dating back to the previous vegetarian ancestors. The more common Mesomorphs, with the in-between gut length, would be the compromise, the omnivores.
General principles about cuisine:
1. Eat fresh. Best still alive when you eat it, like sprouts and whole nuts. Also fermented (the bacteria are alive.) In general, the more processed (canned and packaged food), the less healthy.
2. Protein takes higher priority than carbohydrates. Those who think protein not important should study traditional cuisines. Or do they think our remote ancestors were just “dumb ignorant savages?”
3. Raw food benefits health. I recommend 25 to 30 percent of total bulk; some say more. Some people eat totally raw, and good for them, but it severely limits the kinds of food you can eat.
Those who claim super health from a completely raw food diet – maybe in some cases, but probably on account of two factors: first, they eat more fresh and less processed foods; second, they by necessity eat foods with less antinutrients.
Conclusion:
What diet is best for you? No simple answer. It takes study and observation. You have to notice what you eat, how it digests, how it affects your energy level, if it causes negative symptoms. This may play out over a full day or even two or three days or more after eating. For example: it took me a long time to figure out that milk and milk products cause skin problems (the results can be weeks later), that my body doesn’t do well with members of Solanaceae family (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, etc.), that peanuts are semipoisonous for me, that boiled legumes are difficult to digest, and so on. My body seems to be quite sensitive to antinutrients.
To find your own best diet treat it like a science. Do some research, and experiment and observe. Don’t just go with what you’ve been taught and conditioned.
The Ayurvedic and Chinese systems of medicine base interventions on balance. Many people in the West harbor the simplistic idea that if something is good, it’s good anytime and for everyone, and more is better. In fact, something that’s good for you at one time, might be bad for you at another time, something good for one person might be bad for another, and something good in certain amounts might be bad in greater amounts. There can be no formula for a good diet for you that will last for life, or one that will work for everyone. “Everything is a poison…” – Paracelsus
Notes
* Gray’s Anatomy 1918
Note 168: “Treves states that, in one hundred cases, the average length of the small intestine in the adult male was 22 feet 6 inches [6.76 Meters], and in the adult female 23 feet 4 inches: but that it varies very much, the extremes in the male being 31 feet 10 inches [9.54 Meters], and 15 feet 6 inches [4.65 Meters]. He states that in the adult the length of the bowel is independent of age, height, and weight.”
“…The large intestine extends from the end of the ileum to the anus. It is about 1.5 meters long,”
Total gut length male average 6.76 M + 1.5 = 8.26 Meters, male shortest 4.65 + 1.5 = 6.15 Meters, longest 9.54 + 1.5 = 11.04 Meters. ↩
** Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
“Grazing land covers about one quarter of the Earth’s land area and accounts for some 70 percent of agricultural land. Approximately one-third of the crops produced globally are used to feed livestock. Much of this crop and pastureland has been converted from forest and much is degraded, both of which release carbon stocks into the atmosphere. Livestock agri-food systems use significant amounts of water resources and contribute to biodiversity losses.
…Livestock consume a third of all cereals produced and use about 40 percent of global arable land. They occupy 2 billion ha of grasslands, of which about 700 million ha could be used to grow crops.
…About 3 kg of human-edible material, mostly grains, are needed on average to produce 1 kg of meat.” ↩