Raw Food Weight Loss And Vitality by Andrew Perlot

Author:Andrew Perlot [Perlot, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2012-09-28T04:00:00+00:00

Grains are fairly low in nutrients compared to fruits, nuts, and vegetables, and the impact of the nutritional deprivation brought about by their sudden dominance was large.

After millions of years of uninterrupted brain growth, the average volume of the human male brain began to plummet from 1,500 cubic centimeters just before the agricultural revolution down to 1,350 cubic centimeters today, the equivalent of losing a tennis ball-sized chunk of our brains. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion, and the shrinkage has occurred in every area of the planet184. Of course, no one knows for sure why this is happening or exactly what implications it may have for us, but the scale and timeframe of the loss is startling, and seemingly too much of a coincidence to be unconnected to the rise of agriculture and civilization.

At the same time that our brains began to shrink, our bodies went into serious decline as well.

If you’ve ever had to duck under a low door frame in a medieval castle or 18th century fort, you know that man used to be smaller than he is today, a story of improvement that’s usually chalked up to the wonders of modern agricultural diversity and abundant calories.

Yet it was agriculture that undoubtedly made us short in the first place.

Paleopathologists studying skeletons in Greece and Turkey have found that the average height of hunter-gatherers in that region toward the end of the Ice Age was a respectable 5’10 inches for men and 5’6 inches for women. When those hunter gatherers adopted agriculture their height crashed to a low of 5’3 for men and 5’1 for women by 4,000 B.C. During the golden age of Greece heights started to recover slightly, but modern Greeks and Turks are still shorter than their hunter-gatherer ancestors185.

When Europeans arrived in the United States they were impressed by the physical vitality and size of the Native Americans. Generations of nutrient-poor, grain-based diets had shrunken European stature so that they were much shorter than the muscular Indians.

In the 1600s, English colonist William Woods describes the Indians as mostly, “being between five or six foot high, straight bodied, strongly composed, smooth-skinned, merry countenanced, of complexion something more swarthy than Spaniards, black haired, high foreheaded, black eyed, out-nosed, broad shouldered, brawny armed, long and slender handed, out breasted, small waisted, lank bellied, well thighed, flat kneed, handsome grown legs, and small feet. In a word, take them when the blood brisks in their veins, when the flesh is on their backs and marrow in their bones, when they frolic in their antic deportments and Indian postures, and they are more amiable to behold (though only in Adam’s livery) than many a compounded fantastic in the newest fashion.186”

Many of the Europeans were surprised that the Indians could be so vital without the processed foods of grain, meat, and spirits so beloved by the colonists, but Wood realized what they had going for them and that European foods almost immediately sickened the Indians. He concludes:

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