The Jungle Effect

The Jungle Effect: Healthiest Diets from Around the World is a wonderfully written book that echoes much of the same sentiment and thoughts that have pervaded the health circles for several years now. Michael Pollan, a journalist, wrote a similar book called In Defense of Food (previously reviewed here). Pollan did what journalists do best: he researched and interviewed and did more research to come to his conclusions. Then he threw in some of his own thoughts and theories for good measure.

But the author of The Jungle Effect, Dr. Daphne Miller, gathers her materials not only from research and interviews, but also from direct experience and working with her patients. Her approach is unique because she visited "cold spots" all over the world and observed their diets. Cold spots are pockets of people that are virtually free of the many debilitating diseases that plague America today: Diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, cancer, depression, etc.

The cold spots, incidentally, are fairly remote or at least far-removed from modern society. The upshot of this is that the reach of the McDonalds and Coca Cola empires have not quite reached them. Areas include an Amazonian village in Peru, Crete, Iceland, Cameroon, Okinawa, Iceland, and a Indian village in Mexico.

You can probably see this coming, since I harp on it constantly, but Dr Miller's conclusions are that those cultures that eat local, whole foods, and who avoid the incursion of American "junk" food, have little to no cases of the so-called Western Illnesses. I'll repeat that in case you missed it: they have little to no Western illnesses.

Makes you stop and think.

Gosh, could it be that those Twinkies and Colas and hormone-injected cows are what's making us all sick? Is it possible that all those chemicals in my Sugar-Frosted Coco Bombs cereal are not good for us? Is it conceivable that plants doused in pesticides and petroleum-based fertilizers are having a negative effect on our health?

The theories posited years ago certainly made sense, and now the evidence is mounting up. Americans need to wake up and smell the fake food for what it really is: poison. The human body cannot withstand a steady stream of unnatural food. It's, uh, unnatural. The cultures Dr. Miller visited all eat different foods, but they shared one thing in common: their diets were completely devoid of tons of sugar and salt, drugged up meat, processed food, and preservatives. All these things are hallmarks of the American diet, and all these things are absent in the cold spots' diets.

Dr. Miller writes almost apologetically as she recommends that people cook more food from scratch. I'm not as tactful as she, so I'll put it this way: People need to switch off their reality TV shows, get off their arses, amble into the kitchen and cook some real food!

Dr. Miller does readers an immense favor by providing numerous recipes from her travels in the back of the book. These recipes are simple and healthy; meaning they will likely taste awful to most Americans. But once you wean your palate off sugar and salt, things start to have some flavor and they actually taste good.

I found Dr. Miller's writing style quite easy to read and clear. For a doctor, she has a knack for explaining medical concepts in layman's terms. But most of all, I can really sense the care and attention she gives to her patients and this book. She's not out to make a quick buck touting the latest and greatest diet fad. She is genuinely trying to help cure this country and reverse 50+ years of damage done by the various non-caring food industries.

This book deserves a place on your bookshelf because it reads like three different books: It's a book about nutrition, a recipe book, and a travel book. Most would not dream of traveling to Iceland or Peru, but it fascinating to read about someone else doing it.

In Defense Of Food

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

These terse sentences open up Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. These simple words should be enough; no need for an entire book. They could have been written on a Chinese fortune cookie.

Pollan shares his theories as to what is wrong with the Western Diet and how it leads the world in cases of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. He delivers fascinating insights to how the Western diet is influenced by scientists, nutritionists, and government. And none of these entities really know what they are talking about. Eggs are bad for you, now they're good. Oat bran is good for you, now it's not. Eat butter, don't eat butter, eat it again. Avocados are horribly fatty, but that kind of fat is now ok. Sound familiar?

Scientists and nutritionists are barely on the cusp of understanding how the human body needs and utilizes food. Everything they say is very narrow-viewed and must be taken with a grain of salt (but not too much; remember your blood pressure). And Government guidelines regarding food can't be trusted at all since they are largely controlled by the powerful beef, dairy, and sugar lobbies.

Pollan goes on and on about how nutrionalism is way off base because it is trying to find that single magic bullet that will make us healthy, adding supplements here and anti-oxidants there. Nutritionists tend to reduce food down to single nutrients and chemicals and try to isolate what it is that makes it healthy (or unhealthy). Pollan's point is that you cannot dissect food into parts. It is whole food in its entirety that make it healthy, not any one compound contained therein.

An idea that Pollan drives hard is the notion that nutritionalism is not only bad science, it is dangerous science. He points out how nutritionists rose to power over the Western diet by saying that margarine was healthier than butter. Feeling smug, nutritionism continued to lay down the law of healthy eating, only to contradict and recant most of what they say months or years later. For example, the margarine advice turned out to be very bad advice indeed.

All in all, I think Pollan is a bit unfair to the nutritionists. Nutritionists are not doctors and they are not chemists; yet everything they publish is treated as gospel by millions of gullible people. It is these ignorant masses who have developed a "unhealthy obsession about eating healthy." The nutritionists are just feeding their obsession.

Another issue that Pollan kept harping on is that we should go back to the traditional diet of our culture and ancestors. Basically, he says we should go back to eating what our grandmothers and great grandmothers used to eat. But I have German, Irish, and Scottish roots. Do I start eating German potato salad crammed into a sheep's stomach?

Pollan lost me a little in this section of the book. I don't think we should trap our diets in time, forced to eat boiled rump roast and goose liver for an eternity. There is no reason why our palates cannot evolve. What I think he really wanted to say is to remove the modern processing that is going on with today's food, processing that did not happen in your grandmother's time.

Another point I believe he was trying to make is to eat a diet that has been time-tested by the various cultures throughout the world. Take the vegetarian Hindus, for example. Over the centuries, they have perfected a balanced diet of vegetables, fruits, and beans. And Orientals have found ways to eat soy (tofu and tempeh) that is both nutritious and removes the problems inherent with soybeans. So what Pollan is really asking is, why mess up a good thing? Which is exactly what the Western diet has done with its chemical tinkering.

To me the advice is simply this: Mother Nature already produces the best food possible. Processing food beyond basic preparation is not natural. Adding chemicals, anywhere in the food chain, is not natural. High fructose corn syrup is not natural. Wonder Bread is not natural. Cows forced to lactate via hormones is not natural. Genetically modified grains are not natural. Anything that is not natural is not good for you. I think this theory is pretty easy to digest (sorry about the pun).

In the end, here is what Pollan advises: eat more whole foods, cut back on quantity, stop snacking, savor your food, cook your own food, and grow more of your own food. Or to go back to the very beginning: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

All in all I found Defense a good read. Although nothing he said will change my diet much, because I am already following most of his ideas, he does provide an interesting history on how we got to where we are. I do have an issue with his tone at times, but as a journalist, I think he uses this style to force readers to think. If he were too subtle, we might miss his point, and missing the point could mean the difference between a healthy life and one riddled with obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

Standard American Diet = SAD

At the risk of sounding un-American, I must say the typical American diet is pretty sad. I know there are naysayers out there that poo-poo these concerns, but the facts remain that our population is getting more and more obese, and cancers of various forms are skyrocketing.

The naysayers don't offer any compelling reasons why this is happening to us. They might blame the communists, lack of faith, or it's just a glandular problem.

But, gosh, don't you think it might have something to do with what we eat? Our food supply has changed dramatically over the past 3 or 4 decades-- going from fresh, homemade food to prepackaged, processed cheap food. This evolution of the food supply just so happens to parallel the downfall of our health.

Coincidence?

You know the old saying, "You are what you eat." Put simply, what you put into your body has a tremendous effect on your health and well-being.

What makes the diet so bad?

Calorie intake is probably the most obvious, but it is likely the least of our worries. Most inert couch potatoes eat far more calories than they burn off. Therefore, the body stores those extra calories for "emergencies". In the context of human evolution, "emergency" here means having to go without food for several days while your clan migrates from one savanna to another, or having to run a couple miles while being chased by a saber tooth tiger. But in these modern times of readily available and affordable food, I think we can all stop binging and gorging ourselves every day.

Another problem with our diet is a heavy reliance on meat, particularly beef. Sure, humans are meat-eaters, but we're also plant eaters. Many people forget this. Countless studies show that eating too much meat is bad for you. Yet most people are addicted to it, and the cattle industry is right there shoving it into your mouths with their amazing marketing budgets and political clout.

Dairy products are also consumed in vast quantities. Milk, cheese, cream, butter. Humans are the only known animal that not only drinks the milk of another animal, but continues to do so well into their adult lives. Milk is designed by nature as a highly concentrated source of protein and fat to help young animals grow. Cow's milk, in particular, is designed to help young calves grow into big, fat cows. Get where I'm going with this?

And then there is what's not being eaten much of, namely vegetables and grains. To most Americans, eating a salad is what they call eating vegetables. Ignoring the fact that the salad is drenched in fat, gloppy dressing, lettuce is 95% water, by weight (reference). This is like drinking a glass of water with parsley flakes sprinkled on top. And most "grain" consumption is in the form of processed and bleached wheat "bread".

There are lots more that can be said about the SAD: There's the proliferation of processed, packaged food of low quality. There's the saturation of salt and sugar and HFCS in most everything we eat. There's the amount of chemicals in the form of hormones and preservatives in all our food. There's the distances our food travels to get from field (or factory) to fork. Need I go on?

To make things worse, there is an entire diet fad industry that feeds off the SAD. Grapefruit diets, protein diets, jelly bean diets, cigarette diets, etc. They're all bogus and dangerously unhealthy. The best diet is: eat less food, eat better food, and get off your butt and exercise.

There is a book out there which emphasizes the points I make above, whose cover image I show at the top. You can get this from Amazon: Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World. Pretty scary reading.

Despite the conspiracy advocates, I don't think that there is intent of malice on the part of the food industry. What would be the point of killing us all? You would think they would want us to live longer so we have to buy more food.

The food industry has simply given in to our demands for cheaper and more convenient food. That is what happens in a capitalist market. In order to make food cheaper, they had to cut quality. In order to make food convenient, they have to dump in tons of preservatives.

But not all is hopeless. We do have the power to turn this around. In the past few years, the demand for organics has increased. Other movements such as eating mostly locally grown or produced food is starting to take hold. Free range and grass-fed beef is in demand. High fructose corn syrup is under heavy assault; so bad that they have to air ridiculous ads stating that it is "natural".

In short, we must demand better quality food. You can do your share by not buying the crap food that pervades the supermarkets. If they can't sell it, they will stop making it. Do your body a favor. Do the environment a favor. Help steer the food industry back in the right direction.

Until that happens, prepare your own food using whole ingredients. That's where Evolving Palate, and scads of other recipe blog sites and books, can help. Stay tuned and live a better life.