The Jungle Effect: Notes on Indigenous Diets

In The Jungle Effect: The Healthiest Diets from around the World--Why They Work and How to Make Them Work for You (2008), Daphne Miller, MD, seeks to explore the traditional diets of some of her patients whose ethnic heritages haven't been generations of American-born and raised. When various patients from ethnic backgrounds outside of the United States were having health complications that people of their own heritage rarely had, Dr. Miller sought to question the "new" diet and look at the differences between the SAD (Standard American Diet) that seemed to be causing the health issues and the patients' native heritage diet. Following are a collection of anthropological discoveries she made in her search to form better diets for her patients:

• Research has shown the 80% of medical problems involving heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes and 40% of cancer cases could be avoided by following a healthy diet, exercising regularly, and avoiding tobacco.

• San Francisco bay area is a hot spot for breast cancer.

• "Nixtamilization" is a process used to treat maize in Central and South America. To prepare corn for consumption, corn is boiled in an alkali solution of lime and water which removes the tough outer layer of the kernels, and which also enriches the corn with essential nutrients like calcium, niacin, and certain amino acids. Without nixtamilization, Mesoamericans would have suffered from severe vitamin deficiencies, including pellagra (niacin deficiency). 

nixtamilization

• Table manners and patterns of eating are apparent in almost all cultures, and in countries that practice communal eating, one simply does NOT eat alone. That is, how one eats is extremely important in many cultures. Take Cameroon and Crete, for example. In both cultures one is absolutely expected to eat slowly--a practice that very much improves digestion, and interesting enough, less food is consumed. Also, in Okinawa, the dictum Hara Hachi Bu, or "eat only until you are eight parts full," is a standard reminder not to overeat. In outcome, Okinawans maintain their weight from age 20 to 100, Americans on the other hand typically put on one pound per year after the age of 30.

• Why are most toddlers disgusted by coffee, but many adults addicted? Because acidic, spicy and bitter foods are acquired tastes.

• Eskimo tribes (Inuits), until recently, ate whale meat, seal, fish, sea bird and caribou, and despite this indigenous diet comprising about 50% high protein and 30-40% fat, Eskimos eating this diet had some of the lowest rates of heart disease and cancer in the world. Why? Probably because their blood levels showed very high levels of two omega-3 fats: EPA and DHA, fats known to prevent many chronic diseases. Eskimos ate fats from seafood and wild game, which in turn synthesized their omega-3s directly from sea greens and vegetation from the tundra. 

• Peruvian villagers in Las Palmas in the Amazon eat the cashew fruit but avoid the nut, which is known to cause stomach cramps and nausea after a few hours of ingestion due to urushio, a toxin, in the nut. These Peruvians are amused to learn that Americans consider cashews a luxury food and cook them to make them edible.

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  cashew fruit and nuts - hot to grow them

• Thiamine deficient people will have mental confusion and problems walking, but eating a thiamine-rich meal of, for example, whole grains, beans, and lean meat, immediately improves one's sense of well-being.  

• The practice of adding spices like garlic, onions, chilis, turmeric, and ginger not only aid digestion but also delay food spoilage. Many also have anti-inflammatory qualities. These tangy, spicy additions are acquired tastes. 

• Many cultures developed fermented and pickled foods which they discovered aided their digestion: Icelandic skyr (yogurt), Greek yogurt, Cameroonian fou fou and millet beer, Korean kimchi, Japanese tempeh and natto, and German sauerkraut. 

various kinds of fermented foods

• Refining grains involves removing the two most nutritious parts -- the coarse husk and the oily inner germ. These two parts give bread a rough texture and a nutty flavor, but their removal leaves only a white endosperm, a fluffy form of starch with little nutritional value. Even whole-wheat bread (as opposed to whole-grain bread) is a highly refined food as it's made with flour which has retained some husk but no germ. Basically, the flavor is removed and sweetness remains.

• Lactose intolerance. A good portion of the world's population has some discomfort or difficulty after eating dairy products. This is because their bodies don't produce lactase, the enzyme for digesting the carbohydrate lactose. Blacks, American Indians, and Asians are large ethnic groups commonly known to have difficulties with milk, while northern Europeans, some tribes in East Africa and the Middle East are able to digest lactose into adulthood.

• The Pima Indians in Arizona have some of the highest rates of type 2 diabetes in the world. Scientists have found that the Pima have a host of gene mutations that may relate to insulin reaction and sugar processing. Ironically, the Pima's cousins, the Tarahumara Indians living several hundred miles south in Sonora and Chihuahua, have a low rate of diabetes.

• 35% of Hawaiians are considered to be morbidly obese with similar numbers suffering from diabetes type 2 and heart disease. Middle-aged Hawaiians 100 years ago had the bodies of 20-year-olds, so what happened? The traditional diets of taro, breadfruit, fern shoots, purple yams, kukui nuts, fish, and free-range chickens are now only available at expensive prices in supermarkets for tourists while the foods of modern convenience are the only foods subsidized.

• Type 2 diabetes in the past 70 years in the US has increased 700% and is now affecting even the younger population. The ethnic groups most dramatically impacted by this change are Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans and African Americans. 

• All carbohydrates are not equal. The traditional carbs (e.g. cheeky yam, black bean seed, bush onion)  eaten by Pacific Islanders and Aboriginals seem to have had a protective effect against diabetes while Western food carbs (russet potatoes, white bread, white pasta, mass-produced corn, and white rice) seem to switch on diabetes.

• Over 50 species of beans are native to the Americas.

• Cretans of two generations previous consumed a guesstimated 50 kilos of olive oil per year, and lived to be quite old. A health-challenged Cretan returned to the old ways of stone-pressing olive oil when he realized the pesticides and fertilizers he used were in his precious olive oil and getting in his water supply, He also realized the modern way of processing olive oil of washing with large quantities of water, which, since antioxidants are water soluble, was washing away the most important nutrient. He returned to natural living without fertilizers and started stone-pressing his olive oil again. Health problems resolved.

stone press for making olive oil naturally

• Depression, second only to heart disease, ranks as the highest health disability worldwide, and in the U.S., 20% of women are likely to experience depression and 12% of men. In Europe, depression rates for people over age 65 are influenced by seasonal affective disorder (SAD, or "winter blues") and by location, that is, Munich, London, Amsterdam, Verona, and Berlin have the highest depression rates, whereas Iceland (with its quite Northern, sunless winter) ironically had the lowest.

• Icelanders love their fish and consume 225 pounds of fish per year, while Japanese consume the second-most at 147 pounds annually. People in the US consume only 48 pounds. The countries with the lowest per capita fish consumption rate (e.g. West Germany, New Zealand, and the United States) have, perhaps not so surprising, higher depression rates. Icelanders believe that eating high omega-3 fish, depression is greatly reduced. 

• Lamb is almost as rich in omega-3s as fish.

• Swiss alpine cheese (from Switzerland) is a dairy product of free-range cows grazing on clover and moss-rich pasturage. The cheese from these cows have milk five times the omega-3 fats and has 20-30% less saturated fat than the standard US cheddar.

• Colon cancer, next to lung cancer, is the second biggest cancer killer in the US, affecting all ethnicities fairly equally. Western and southern Africa are cancer cold spots; it's suggested that they eat virtually no processed foods, large amounts of omega-3 fish, and their cooking oils are made from simple home-processing. Americans, on the other hand, eat a diet high in refined carbohydrates and meat, both of which promote bacteria in the gut. The traditional western and southern diet contain a diet rich in fiber, probiotics and nutrients, and the people evacuate much more frequently, which in turn eliminates the build-up of toxins more regularly.

• One of the staple foods of Okinawans is sea vegetables. Like maize in Mexico, potatoes in Iceland, and barley in Crete, sea veggies appear in an array of traditional dishes: raw in salads, pickled as sauces and relishes, dried for a snack or a wrapper for rice, cooked in soups, sweetened in jelly or ice cream. It also appears in traditional herbal medicines, cosmetics, and treatments for asthma to hemorrhoids to stomach ulcers. Studies have showed that the people eating the highest amount of sea veggies were the healthiest in villages.

various kinds of seaweed -- a seaweed salad