Eye View 

by David Charbonneau

Want to live the good life? Try hunter-gather lifestyle

 

September 30, 2010

 

 

 


That last time we had it this good was 11,000 years ago when we were hunter-gatherers.

Contrary to modern thinking, our Paleolithic ancestors didn't live short, brutish lives. In some respects, they had it better. For one, their work week was shorter. We work 40 to 50 hours a week to afford the luxury of sitting down to a good meal, artistic expression, and the company of friends. Hunter-gathers worked only 18 hours to achieve the same comfort. And they ate better says professor Spencer Wells, explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society.

Our lifestyle is the product of a profound shift that began about 10 thousand years ago in three places around the globe: Central America, Southern China, and the Fertile Crescent. That's where hunter gatherers settled down on the farm. It's not that long ago considering that a mere five hundred generations have passed.

In his book, Pandora's Seed, Wells contends that agriculturalists have strayed from the good life. Agriculture not only changed what we eat, it made our society more complicated and altered our psyche.

Our biology is that of a field animal; running through sunlit meadows in search of fresh, wild food. The shift to growing cereal grains as food is unnatural to our biology, says Wells. Grains are no more a natural part of our diet than they are for cattle. We can grow fat and multiply in numbers but that doesn't make it healthy.

Exploding populations create their own problems. "There was mental fallout," Wells told CBC radio. Our brains are adapted to live in tribal groups of about 150 where you know everyone. When people are basically living on top of each other, they can't maintain the same kind of relationships. People lose track of how they are connected to other members of society and who you can ask for favours. Society has outrun our ability to mentally adjust to it.

 

 Large cities create a bureaucracy in which specialization is required. Accountants keep track of food distribution and create wealth through hording. Soldiers protect the city from invasions and keep order. Craftsmen develop the tools of agriculture and weapons of war. Kings organize armies. Priests appease the gods in order to ensure the crops won't fail. Tax collectors fleece the citizens to maintain the king and priest in the opulent lifestyle they have become accustomed to. Citizens work long hours in unfavourable conditions to earn a living and pay off debt.

The introduction of domestic animals 5,000 years ago complicated things further. Living closely with animals, sometimes in the same room, generated all kinds of diseases.

The industrialization of food in the last century has exacerbated the problem more. We now eat combinations that would never be consumed by pre-industrial agricultural societies such as fatty-sweet-cereal foods like donuts. Seventy per cent of our calories come from foods that hunter gatherers would never have eaten: cereal grains (25 per cent), refined sugars (18), refined vegetable oils (17), and dairy products (10).

Our diet is causing disease of epidemic proportions. Three-quarters of North Americans have what is called metabolic syndrome; a deadly quartet of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes.

Our illusion of the good life is sustained by relatively recent developments of antibiotics and public health. Only two generations ago, when my grandfather was born in a stone house in Scotland in 1884, infectious disease was rampant and maternal death from childbirth was abysmal. Back then, life expectancy of men was greater than women; a trend that's been reversed by modern medicine, not healthy diet.

We paradoxically live in an economy that depends on the production of unhealthy food. The wheels of industry depend on excess consumption of unhealthy food. If we were to stop eating it, industries will collapse and jobs disappear. If we continue eating it, we will live unhealthy lives and die prematurely.

There are too many of us on the planet. We have exceeded the carrying capacity of our environment, especially North Americans who consume 20 times their share of natural resources.

We can't turn back the clock to our hunter gatherer past but we can live more in sync with our biological design. The advice that our hunter gatherer ancestors would give us is to live simpler lives: eat the food our bodies are designed for, get out and enjoy the sunshine, and accumulate less baggage.

 David Charbonneau is the owner of Trio Technical.
He can be reached at dcharbonneau13@shaw.ca
 





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