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

Sailing Alone around the World

Captain Joshua Slocum, born in Nova Scotia in 1844 and who later became an American citizen, had been lured by the sea his entire life. At 14 he ran away to work as a cook on a fishing schooner and two years later when his mother died he left home for good, enlisting as an ordinary seaman on a British merchant ship bound for Ireland. Then from Britain he shipped again sailing for China, the Philippines, and Singapore, and by 18 he had been awarded the certificate of second mate.

Around 1870 he was given command of a merchant ship that he sailed out of San Francisco to Japan, China, the Spice Islands, and Sydney Australia, where he met an American woman, Virginia Albertina Walker, who he married. The two were well matched for ship life and together for the next 13 years sailed the world, with Virginia giving birth to and schooling their seven children (only four survived) on the various ships that Slocum commanded. 

But this ideal marriage to the sea and a wife did not last and Virginia took ill and died. Two years later Slocum married his cousin Henrietta aka Hetty and with a crew of 10, including two of Slocum's sons, the newlyweds set out for South America. The voyage was conflicted with problems -- a cholera outbreak, a smallpox epidemic, and a mutinous crew before finally running aground near Paranagua, Brazil. Stranded, Slocum salvaged what he could from the wreck and constructed the Liberdade, a 35-foot long "canoe" that he sailed for 5,500 miles home, the adventure that he later published in his Voyages of the Liberdade, 1890. Hetty was completely disenchanted with ship life, and on their honeymoon voyage at that, and the forever-after land-loving Hetty and old sea-wolf Slocum stayed married but pretty much only in name.

With the advent of steamships, sailing the seas became steaming the seas, yet old-school Slocum refused to adjust. In 1892 Slocum was offered the rotting shell of a 37-foot long oyster boat, the Spray, which Slocum rebuilt from the keel up. And with this oyster boat Slocum determined to circumnavigate the earth alone, a feat emphatically expressed as impossible.

Many books by Joshua Slocum titled Sailing Alone around the World. I read the Barnes and Noble 2005 edition. It came with a timeline of Slocum's life juxtaposed with world events affecting him (e.g. the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 affecting his solitary return) and a glossary of sea terms.

In April 1895 Slocum sets sail aboard the Spray. He had almost no money and lacked critical navigational equipment. The last leg of his journey he even lacked a map as the goat that had kindly been given him as a companion chewed through his ropes, equipment and seemed to have a palette partial for maps. On June 27 Slocum sails into Newport, Rhode Island, completing the world's first solo circumnavigation, a passage of 46,000 miles. 

To earn money for his journey, along the way at various ports he would entertain people in halls and informal places with his stories, charging them a small fee. At some of these ports he would stay but a few days or even hours while at others he would stay for extended periods of time, like at the southern tip of Africa where he was given a free rail pass and just wandered, enjoying the sites, for three months. On his return to the States, he achieved great fame and his adventures printed first as a serial and later as a book, Sailing Alone around the World, were well received. With the proceeds he was able to purchase a house on the Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. 

Yet, the sea still called and restless Slocum sailed off to the Caribbean for the winter of 1905, returning with rare Caribbean orchids for President Theodore Roosevelt. On November 14, 1909, the aging Slocum in the aging Spray set sail for South America, and the story of him and his Spray, which to this day is one of the most replicated boats due to its reliable and well-balanced construction, disappeared. 

Sailing Alone around the World (Barnes and Nobles 2005), p 230-231

Easter Island Orongo Birdman Culture

Rapa Nui National Park was created by means of the Supreme Decrees Number 103 on January 16th of 1935, of the Ministry of Lands and Colonization and it is under CONAF administration. All the island territory was declared Historic Monument which means that it is protected by the Law 17.288 of National Monuments. The park was declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1995. There is always a park guard in the following places : Orongo, Tahi, Rano Raruku volcano and Anakena beach.

What is Orongo?

It is a ceremonial center built for religious practices related to the cult of the Manutara and bird-man (tangata manu) competition. This village was seasonably used, that is, people stayed here for some weeks at the beginning of the spring every year. The one room dwellings built here were not present in other parts of the island. Although the architecture clearly reflects that of boat-houses (hare-paenga), the building system is similar to control towers (tupa). It is believed that this site began to be used by the end of the 16th century; however, the bird-man cult seems to have become more relevant later.

What is the importance of the site?

The cult of the ancestors, represented in the great quantity of carvings of megalithic statues or moai, was one of the most important characteristics of the prehistoric Rapa Nui culture and its manifestations are spread all over the island. However, from the 16th century Rapa Nui began to create megaliths as a religious and political expression and that is how a new religious cult emerged - with the god Make-Make and beliefs closely related to fertilization, spring and the arrival of migratory sea birds. Thus, Orongo became an essential part in the life of Rapa Nui people, representing a new era in the history and culture of this society and where a different religion and political system gradually prevailed over the former one, and marked what happened until the end of the 19th century.

What was the Tangata-Manu ritual about?

It was an annual ceremony in which the chiefs from different tribes or lineages, or their representatives (hopu) came to obtain the first egg of the sooty term or Manutara. This migratory bird nests on the islet Motu Nui, the biggest of the three islands, in front of the Orongo site. Actually, the bird has become protected as is Rapa Nui itself, for its number have been decimated by human exploitation, the elements and its fragile breeding ground and breeding habits.

In spring, different groups from all over the island travelled to Orongo and prepared for the bird-man activities. When competition started, competitors climbed down the cliff of Rano Kau and swam up to Motu Nui. There they stayed days or weeks waiting for the arrival of manutara, until one of them managed to find one egg, which he wrapped in a hand-woven basket attached to his head and then swam against the mighty current back to the foot of the Orongo cliff, which he climbed. The first man back (not the first to find the Manutara egg, but the first one to bring a Manutara egg back safely, was proclaimed the next bird-man was for the next year he became like a diety. When the competitor arrived back with a perfect egg and presented it (to whom?), the Tangata Manu title was conferred on him, or the chief to whom the competitor represented. The new bird-man or Tangata Manu was considered sacred or tapu and he remained in seclusion for one year. During that year, he would remain in one of the elliptical cliff dwellings, be fed by his family and villages, could not cut his hair or nails, and must be regarded and act like a holy man. The last ceremony was celebrated in 1867.

In this ceremonial village, not only archaeological vestiges related to the bird-man (Tangata Manu) cult are preserved, even more, a great number of Rapa Nui art and culture is presented here. Orongo is one of the main Polynesian rock art places. It is also one of the most stunning views in the Rapa Nui National Park.

[1] From here a general view of the village can be obtained, as well as the offshore rocky islets (motu) which are closely related to the Orongo ritual activities. The orientation of the houses face the motu. Motu Nui is the largest and it is where Manutara or the sooty tern nests.

[2] Two unrestored houses give an idea of how these dwellings used to be before they were rebuilt between 1974 and 1976.

[3] In this partially restored house of stone masonry, the way of building can be observed - a unique long and narrow room of elliptical shape, with thick double walls made of stone laja [sic] filled with earth. The roof was made of larger angular slabs which overlapped, and which finally consisted of a turf cover.

[4] Most social activities done in Orongo were done in front of these dwellings, in terraces clearly defined by a low stony wall. Groups from different tribes met here during many weeks dancing and singing songs related to the Tangata-Manu ritual. In spite of all the artifacts, little is known about the true origin and significance of this ancient ceremony.

[5] In one of these houses, there was a famous Moai Hoa Haka Nana La, statue of 2.5 meters high, made of basalt and adorned with petroglyphs related to the Tangata-Manu ritual. This moai was taken to England in 1968 and today is exhibited in the British Museum.

[6] The central area of the ceremonial culture has houses constructed that take advantage of the natural unevenness of the peak. Some dwellings had ornamental walls with paintings of the Orongo ritual such as sea birds, ceremonial oars called ao. Some painting have been removed and are on exhibit in various museums.

[7] This area, the Mata Ngarahu, is where the ceremonial activities were the focus of attention during the bird-man competition. Hundreds of petroglyphs of Tangata-Manu, Make-Make god and Komari were carved on the stones here in testimony of intense ritual activities related to the bird-man cult. According to the island tradition, priests in charge of the ceremony stayed in these houses waiting for the results of the competition. At present, for security reasons a maximum of five people at one time can stand on this cliff lip which has no guard rails or other barriers from the sea below. The rather preposterous film Rapa Nui, which tries to explain some of the unknown myths of the island as well as weave in a sappy romance, shows Kevin Costner as the bird-man jumping off of this cliff to the ocean fa-ar below. If someone jumped from such a height, they would almost certainly be injured or killed, but from this site, the jump would absolutely be suicidal as the cliff is not as sheer as it looks but flairs out slightly, making it possible for the returning competitors to scale the near-sheer but very craggy cliff. People on Rapa Nui enjoy showing the movie to visitors, who flock in to see it, but they deride most of the movie ... and use it as a come-on to the sites, explaining what was wrong in the movie.

[8] Keho, or basalt stone for building a house, is located on the eastern side of the Orongo area, and it is here that basalt slabs were quarried to build the village huts (hare) which also employed straw (totora) in the construction. The basalt created strong structures and were resistant to the strong winds always blowing here.

[9] Although this site is in ruins, a central platform with a ramp to a small ceremonial altar (ahu) are still distinguishable. Pieces of rock from the Rano Raraku volcano belonging to a moai once erected here still remain in pieces around it.

source

Throughout the Orongo site are Make-Make or rock carvings of the cult's god.

Doctoring the World with WHO

The following is a passage taken from Doctors of the World (1958) by Murray Morgan. The book was written as a graded reader for students to study English with, and 65 health and epidemic related words are put in bold in the book and glossed in the back. As a graded reader, or a "ladder" step reader of 5 steps, this book supposedly has a base vocabulary of 2,000 words and builds on the vocab learned in the previous level, I think the first level. Well, I might add that as a language teacher, I think the vocabulary selected is not your everyday common words and the sentence structure would be a real treat (yikes!) for someone struggling with English, especially Asian languages that use the radically different sentence structure of S-O-V while English uses S-V-O. Imagine the word order being complex anyway, without the many embedded clauses within clauses. Here's an example of the complexity, and notice that the first paragraph is constructed with only two sentences:

Twenty years ago the United Nations (UN) created the World Health Organization (WHO) to give to all peoples the highest possible standard of health. In a world with a population of something like 3,500,000,000 people, about two-thirds of whom are struggling with conditions that make sickness and lack of proper food the normal state of life, this is a huge task indeed - especially for an organization with fewer than three thousand full-time workers and with only $50,000,000 to spend in a year.

Of all the United Nations' activities those of the World Health Organization are probably the least known in the United States and Western Europe, but the best known in the young countries of Africa and Asia, as well as the republics of Latin America.

Sanitation

In its world-wide battle against disease, WHO works closely with other UN groups such as the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the International Labor Office (ILO), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

BREAKDOWN OF CHAPTERS AND CONTENT

Murray Morgan, the author, is not a doctor but as I understand it a reporter who travels from WHO sites to WHO site to document some of the "hot spots" where WHO is desperately trying to eradicate disease in various parts of the world. His reader has 11 chapters and I will ever so briefly outline what each is about:

Ch. 1 - The Race Against Resistance: Mexico Against Malaria
225,000,000 a year suffer attacks of malaria a year, and some 2,000,000 die from it. By the time of this writing, malaria had been eliminated in 13 countries which included the US, but in other places the mosquito, the carrier, is building up resistance and so WHO went on a hyped up mission to eradicate it by heavy usage of DDT on the walls of every one's houses in Mexico.

Ch. 2 - Kwashiorkor, the Hidden Killer of Children: Central America
Kwashiorkor with symptoms of emaciated arms and legs and distended bellies, hair that changes to have pink-yellow tones and skin to develop yellow-white spots is a child killer. The disease is one of malnutrition and is most common in children after they have been weaned from their mother's protein-rich milk and put on a diet for children, that of heavy starch. And in many countries like in Central America, sick children need special care, that is corn starch soup, not realizing that it is the excessive starch and lack of protein that is causing the imbalance.

Ch. 3 - The Bat Man: Costa Rica, Trinidad and Mexico
In an outbreak of rabies in Costa Rice, the best rabies-specialist Dr. Aurelio Malaga-Alba was sent. He made an eradication program for all wild dogs to be killed, all domestic dogs to be vaccinated, and as the rabies epidemic spread northward he caused rabies to be controlled in the wild spaces outside the cities. In short, he set up 41 poisoning stations and in an area of 1.5 million acres, 18,000 wolves were killed, drastically decimating the population but also decimating the carriers of the rabies virus.

Ch. 4 - Nurses Afoot and on Horseback: El Salvador
Adelia Eggstein, one of the nurses on foot who traveled to isolated places to vaccinate, treat, give powdered milk and feeding schedules to mothers, as well as care for patients in remote mountainous places in El Salvador was a phenomenal trooper. Though Adelia originally from Minnesota but having lived for many years in China until the cultural revolution was a well-educated nurse, there were many other female nurses who many of them had only as many as three years of education besides some nurse training for administering care in the mountains.

Ch. 5 - The Case of the Silent Monkeys: Colombia, Panama and Central America
The monkeys in the forest turned out to be dying of yellow fever, and the fever which had not been heard of for many years was wildly spreading again. Yellow fever is a killer and it spread northward with everyone holding their breath for "Would it stop at the Panama Canal like last time?" The answer was a clear no as it was transported further northward, as it was suspected, by migratory birds.

Ch. 6 - The Andean Mission: Peru and Bolivia
The creation of technical education programs to help the younger generation be more educated to meet the needs for improving agriculture and repairing machinery. The author picked up on the problem that in this early stage of educating the youth that sanitary education centers were lacking, case in point, when he asked about digging a latrine for the shabby elementary school next to the new tech school, the answer came back to not waste time or effort on the old but to place all effort on the new.

Ch. 7 - They Hunt the Smallest Game
Otis and Calista Causey were two researchers who would trek into the worst stretches of jungle to find and identify viruses, old and new alike. Of all the researchers who were employed by WHO to search out world viruses, Otis and Calista had by far found more than all the other research teams altogether. Otis insists that it's not skill from 18 years of acquiring research skill but rather that he and his wife have their success from the large amount of viruses present in the Amazon jungles of Brazil.

Ch. 8 - The Race with the Snails: Brazil
Snail fever (nowadays more commonly referred to a liver flukes) is a rampant disease of flukes which burrow into the liver and feed on the blood within the body. They do not reproduce in the human body, however, but the eggs are passed out through the feces which then contaminates water where snails are and the embryo eggs find a host in the snails until they can pass back into the water where they can be ingested or simply burrow through the skin of humans to develop until they can reproduce again. The flukes remain in the human forever causing loss of energy, weakness, liver hardening and after a long period of time, death. WHO was frantically trying massive poisoning methods at the time of this writing, but liver flukes are still a huge problem in the Amazon, so obviously the battle still rages.

Ch. 9 - Miracle in the Jungle: Nigeria against Yaws
Yaws is a disease for country people who live in a hot, wet climate. It is a disease caused by poor sanitation and affects the body with a skin sore or sores, much like leprosy. In past centuries, it was treated unsuccessfully with mercury, but other successful treatments have been to set up sanitation stations with good food, cleanliness, pure air and water, e.g. like bathing in sea water, and the yaws clear up after 6-12 months. The recent wonder drug Penicillin, however, clears up yaws within days, a month at the most. In Nigeria 1955, 40,000,000 people had been examined and 10,000,000 had been treated for yaws with penicillin.

Ch. 10 - Leprosy - One Million Victims: Nigeria and the Upper Volta
Out of a population of 18,000,000 in the northern states, 593,000 were suffering from leprosy and 125,000 lepers were receiving treatments at 462 clinics. Some clinics are permanent because people and their families by association are ostracized from healthy society; some clinics are weekly as in those areas the people are more open to lepers who own or work land and come on the weekly visit to the leper clinics for their weekly pills of Dapsone (DDS), a medicine related to sulfa.

Ch. 11 - The Big Picture: Geneva
Dr. J. H. Hale, a science professor at the University of Malaga in Singapore, noticed in 1957 that a large number of people were being treated for influenza. He took throat samples to learn which of the three types it could be - the three types of influenza A, B and C and each has many sub-categories. This particular strain of influenza was traced back to Hong Kong and was a new strain of influenza A, and therefore, a strain which no one was known to have any antibodies to. As this book was concluded, WHO was monitoring its spread to all continents of the world and making predictions about its behavior, the first time that WHO had had the technology to do either.