CATEGORY: diets/vegetarian
TECHNICAL: **
SUMMARY:
This document was one of the most profound documents I had
ever read at the time I found it. It is written by a truly great
scholar by the name of Ward Nicholson. Mr. Nicholson, initially,
practiced a type of diet known as the "hygienic" diet -- which is
a strict vegetarian/vegan diet in which everything is consumed raw
and unprocessed. I don't want to give away all of the goods, because
it really is an exceptional read, but I will say this: After reading
the document, it's fairly obvious that human beings could never have
evolved the way we did if we had been vegetarians/vegans or
frutarians.

This paper is only the first of the 4-part interview with
Mr. Nicholson. Since it's quite long, and most people will never
wade through it, I want to go ahead and pull out some of the more
interesting passages. In fact, these very passages were the ones
that pushed me more towards a "paleo" type diet -- even though
Nicholson's purpose was soley to disprove vegatarianism, and not to
argue for evolutionary diets.

The fist passage is my favorite. It was one of the first
times I had heard anyone argue that the shift from hunter-gatherer
diets to agarianism was a negative. There's even some pro low-carb
sentiment to be found in it..

"In most respects, the changes in diet from hunter-gatherer times
to agricultural times have been almost all detrimental, although
there is some evidence we'll discuss later indicating that at least
some genetic adaptation to the Neolithic has begun taking place in
the approximately 10,000 years since it began. With the much heavier
reliance on starchy foods that became the staples of the diet,
tooth decay, malnutrition, and rates of infectious disease increased
dramatically over Paleolithic times, further exacerbated by crowding
leading to even higher rates of communicable infections."

The next excerpt is one that I have told to countless
other people. Many argue that man, today, is much better off and
more healthy than in the past. I've even heard the average life
expectancy being used as an indicator. When you look at this passage,
ask yourself if we are more "physical" and more "healthy", and
more "robust" with todays technology -- or were we better off then:

"Skeletal remains show that height decreased by four inches from the
Late Paleolithic to the early Neolithic, brought about by poorer
nutrition, and perhaps also by increased infectious disease causing
growth stress, and possibly by some inbreeding in communities that
were isolated."

The next passage is one that I have quoted to people
before. Many have asked me why certain fruits (sweet fruits like
apples, grapes, etc..) aren't healthy. I always hear "but they're
natural?!?!?". Well, when you examine the fruits of the past, they
bear little resemblance to the man-made, altered, super-sweet,
and seedless fruits we have today:

"Fruit as defined by Walker in the article included tougher, less
sugary foods, such as acacia tree pods. (Which laypeople like
ourselves would be likely to classify as a "vegetable"-type food in
common parlance). And although it was not clarified in the article,
anyone familiar with or conscientious enough to look a little further
into evolutionary studies of diet would have been aware that
scientists generally use the terms "frugivore," "folivore,"
"carnivore," "herbivore," etc., as categories comparing broad dietary
trends, only very rarely as exclusivist terms, and among primates
exclusivity in food is definitely not the norm."

Perhaps the biggest nail in the coffin of the "humans are
vegetarians" issue comes from the fact that the apes that we are
most closest to are also not completely "plant eaters":

"A breakdown by feeding time for the chimps of Gombe showed their
intake of foods to be (very roughly) 60% of feeding time for fruit,
20% for leaves, with the other items in the diet varying greatly on a
seasonal basis depending on availability. Seasonal highs could range
as high as (approx.) 17% of feeding time for blossoms, 22--30% for
seeds, 10--17% for insects, 2--6% for meat, with other miscellaneous
items coming in at perhaps 4% through most months of the year.85
Miscellaneous items eaten by chimps include a few eggs,86 plus the
rare honey that chimps are known to rob from beehives (as well as
the embedded bees themselves), which is perhaps the most highly
prized single item in their diet,87 but which they are limited from
eating much of by circumstances. Soil is also occasionally
eaten--presumably for the mineral content according to researchers.88"

Nicholson points out that a great deal of the animal
foods in a chimp diet come from insects, which was something I had
never considered before this paper. Take note of the honey comment
too. I plan to form an argument over the next few months that
sugars (from grain, or processed foods) are indeed an addictive
drug, and that they are being put into our processed man-made foods
more and more because of their addicitive properties (by the food
industry).

After all, how many people do *you* know who continue to
eat foods they know are bad, *JUST* because they crave the taste
uncontrollably? (and the sugars are having that effect). I will
form the argument slowly over time though, just like I did with the
"cancer is curable with diet" arguement..

-------------------------------------------------------------

Interview with Ward Nicholson

Scholar and thinker Ward Nicholson lives and works in Wichita,
Kansas, where he used to publish and coordinate what I considered the
singularly BEST health publication available in the world at that time,
The Natural Hygiene Many-to-Many. Below, you'll find the complete text of
Mr. Nicholson's October 1996 interview in Health & Beyond, an interview
that blew the socks off the traditional "Humans are by nature fruitarian"
argument.

We'll discuss two things with Mr. Nicholson in H&B. One of these
consists of the ideas and conclusions Ward has reached about Hygienists'
actual experiences in the real world (based on interacting with many
Hygienists while coordinating the N.H. M2M)--experiences often at
variance with what the "official" Hygienic books tell us "should" happen.
And the other involves the meticulous research he has done tracking down
what our human ancestors ate in the evolutionary past as known by modern
science, in the interest of discovering directly what the "food of our
biological adaptation" actually was and is--again in the real world
rather than in theory. Given the recent death of T.C. Fry (September 6,
1996), I consider Ward's analysis of special importance to those who
continue to adhere strictly to the fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds
diet. We'll tackle this month the question of humanity's primitive diet.
In two subsequent issues, we'll wrap that topic up and delve into what
Ward has learned from coordinating the Natural Hygiene M2M about
Hygienists' experiences in real life.

You'll find that will be a recurring theme throughout our
discussions with Mr. Nicholson: what really goes on in real life when you
hear a full spectrum of stories from a range of Hygienists, as well as
what science says about areas of Hygiene that you will find have in some
cases been poorly researched or not at all by previous Hygienic writers.

Not everyone will agree with or appreciate what Mr. Nicholson has to
say. But, as I've written more than once, I publish material in H&B that
you won't find anywhere else, material and sound thinking that interests
me and calls into question my ideas and my assumptions about building
health naturally. In this series of three interviews, I guarantee Ward
will challenge many of our mind sets. Mr. Nicholson has a lot of ground
to cover, so without further ado, I happily present our controversial and
articulate guest for this issue of H&B.

Setting the Scientific Record Straight on Humanity's Evolutionary
Prehistoric Diet and Ape Diets

(Note: Ward has provided footnote numbers referencing the citations
from which the scientific aspects of the discussion here have been
sourced. Those of you who are interested may contact him and send $3 to
receive a copy of all endnotes and bibliography after the last
installment of these interviews has been completed and published.The
address for doing this is given at the end of this article)

Ward, why don't we start out with my traditional question: How was it
that you became involved with Natural Hygiene?

I got my introduction to Natural Hygiene through distance running,
which eventually got me interested in the role of diet in athletic
performance. During high school and college--throughout most of the
1970s--I was a competitive distance runner. Runners are very concerned
with anything that will improve their energy, endurance, and rate of
recovery, and are usually open to experimenting with different regimens
in the interest of getting ever-better results. Since I've always been a
bookworm, that's usually the first route I take for teaching myself about
subjects I get interested in. In 1974 or '75, I read the book Yoga and
the Athlete, by Ian Jackson, when it was published by Runner's World
magazine. In it, he talked about his forays into hatha yoga (the
stretching postures) as a way of rehabilitating himself from running
injuries he had sustained. He eventually got into yoga full-time, and
from there, began investigating diet's effect on the body, writing about
that too. At first I was more interested in Are Waerland (a European
Hygienist health advocate with a differing slant than Shelton), who was
mentioned in the book, so I wrote Jackson for more information. But
instead of giving me information about Waerland, he steered me in the
direction of American Natural Hygiene, saying in his experience it was
far superior.

I was also fascinated with Jackson's experiences with fasting. He
credited fasting with helping his distance running, and had a somewhat
mind-blowing "peak experience" while running on his first long fast. He
kept training at long distances during his fasts, so I decided that would
be the first aspect of the Hygienic program I would try myself. Then in
the meantime, I started frequenting health-food stores and ran across
Herbert Shelton's Fasting Can Save Your Life on the bookracks, which as
we all know, has been a very persuasive book for beginning Natural
Hygienists. So to ease into things gradually, I started out with a few
3-day "juice" fasts (I know some Hygienists will object to this language,
but bear with me), then later two 8-day juice-diet fasts while I kept on
running and working at my warehouse job (during college). These were
done--in fact, all the fasts I've experienced have been done--at home on
my own.

Needless to say, I found these "fasts" on juices difficult since I
was both working, and working out, at the same time. Had they been true
"water" fasts, I doubt I would have been able to do it. I had been
enticed by the promises of more robust health and greater eventual energy
from fasting, and kept wondering why I didn't feel as great while fasting
as the books said I would, with their stories of past supermen lifting
heavy weights or walking or running long distances as they fasted. Little
did I realize in my naiveté that this was normal for most fasters. At the
time I assumed, as Hygienists have probably been assuming since time
immemorial when they don't get the hoped-for results, that it was just
because I "wasn't cleaned-out enough." So in order to get more
cleaned-out, I kept doing longer fasts, working up to a 13-day true water
fast, and finally a 25-day water fast over Christmas break my senior year
in college. (I had smartened up just a little bit by this time and didn't
try running during these longer fasts on water alone.) I also tried the
Hygienic vegetarian diet around this time. But as the mostly raw-food
diet negatively affected my energy levels and consequently my distance
running performance, I lost enthusiasm for it, and my Hygienic interests
receded to the back burner. I was also weary of fasting at this point,
never having reached what I supposed was the Hygienic promised land of a
total clean-out, so that held no further allure for me at the time.

After college, I drifted away from running and got into doing hatha
yoga for a couple of years, taught a couple of local classes in it, then
started my own business as a typesetter and graphic designer. Things took
off and during the mid to late 1980s, I worked 60 to 80 hours a week,
often on just 5 to 6 hours of sleep a night, under extreme
round-the-clock deadline pressures setting type at the computer for
demanding advertising agency clients. I dropped all pretense of Hygienic
living, with the exception of maintaining a nominally "vegetarian"
regime. This did not preclude me, however, guzzling large amounts of
caffeine and sugar in the form of a half-gallon or more of soft drinks
per day to keep going.

Eventually all this took its toll and by 1990 my nervous system--and
I assume (in the absence of having gone to a doctor like most Hygienists
don't!) probably my adrenals--were essentially just about shot from all
the mainlining of sugar and caffeine, the lack of sleep, and the
24-hour-a-day deadlines and accompanying emotional pressures. I started
having severe panic or adrenaline attacks that would sometimes last
several hours during which time I literally thought I might die from a
heart attack or asphyxiation. The attacks were so debilitating it would
take at least a full day afterwards to recover every time I had one.

Finally, in late 1990/early 1991, after I had begun having one or
two of these attacks a week, I decided it was "change my ways or else"
and did a 42-day fast at home by myself (mostly on water with occasional
juices when I was feeling low), after which I went on a 95%--100%
raw-food Hygienic diet. The panic attacks finally subsided after the 5th
day of fasting, and have not returned since, although I did come close to
having a few the first year or two after the fast. Soon after I made the
recommitment to Hygienic living, when I had about completed my 42-day
fast, I called a couple of Hygienic doctors and had a few phone
consultations. But while the information I received was useful to a
degree with my immediate symptoms, it did not really answer my Hygienic
questions like I'd hoped, nor did it turn out to be of significant help
overcoming my health problems over the longer-term. So in 1992 I decided
to start the Natural Hygiene M2M to get directly in touch with Hygienists
who had had real experience with their own problems, not just book
knowledge, and not just the party line I could already get from
mainstream Hygiene. With this new source of information and experience to
draw on, among others, my health has continued to improve from the low it
had reached, but it has been a gradual, trial-and-error process, and not
without the occasional setback to learn from.

One of the motivating factors here was that although fasting had
been helpful (and continues to be), unfortunately during the time in
between fasts (I have done three subsequent fasts on water of 11 days, 20
days, and 14 days in the past five years), I just was not getting the
results we are led to expect with the Hygienic diet itself. In fact, at
best, I was stagnating, and at worst I was developing new symptoms that
while mild were in a disconcerting downhill direction. Over time, the
disparity between the Hygienic philosophy and the results I was (not)
getting started eating at me. I slowly began to consider through reading
the experiences of others in the M2M that it was not something I was
"doing wrong," or that I wasn't adhering to the details sufficiently, but
that there were others who were also not doing so well following the
Hygienic diet, try as they might. The "blame the victim for not following
all the itty-bitty details just right" mentality began to seem more and
more suspect to me.

This leads us up to the next phase of your Hygienic journey, where
you eventually decided to remodel your diet based on your exploration of
the evolutionary picture of early human diets as now known by science.
Coming from your Hygienic background, what was it that got you so
interested in evolution?

Well, I have always taken very seriously as one of my first
principles the axiom in Hygiene that we should be eating "food of our
biological adaptation." What is offered in Hygiene to tell us what that
is, is the "comparative anatomy" line of reasoning we are all familiar
with: You look at the anatomical and digestive structures of various
animals, classify them, and note the types of food that animals with
certain digestive structures eat. By that criterion of course, humans are
said to be either frugivores or vegetarians like the apes are said to be,
depending on how the language is used. Now at first (like any good
upstanding Hygienist!) I did not question this argument because as far as
it goes it is certainly logical. But nonetheless, it came to seem to me
that was an indirect route for finding the truth, because as similar as
we may be to the apes and especially the chimpanzee (our closest
relative), we are still a different species. We aren't looking directly
at ourselves via this route, we are looking at a different animal and
basically just assuming that our diet will be pretty much just like
theirs based on certain digestive similarities. And in that difference
between them and us could reside errors of fact.

So I figured that one day, probably from outside Hygiene itself,
someone would come along with a book on diet or natural foods that would
pull together the evidence directly from paleontology and evolutionary
science and nail it down once and for all. Of course, I felt confident at
that time it would basically vindicate the Hygienic argument from
comparative anatomy, so it remained merely an academic concern to me at
the time.

And then one day several years ago, there I was at the bookstore
when out popped the words The Paleolithic Prescription1 (by Boyd Eaton,
M.D. and anthropologists Marjorie Shostak and Melvin Konner) on the spine
of a book just within the range of my peripheral vision. Let me tell you
I tackled that book in nothing flat! But when I opened it up and began
reading, I was very dismayed to find there was much talk about the kind
of lean game animals our ancestors in Paleolithic times (40,000 years
ago) ate as an aspect of their otherwise high-plant-food diet, but
nowhere was there a word anywhere about pure vegetarianism in our past
except one measly paragraph to say it had never existed and simply wasn't
supported by the evidence.2 I have to tell you that while I bought the
book, red lights were flashing as I argued vociferously in my head with
the authors on almost every other page, exploiting every tiny little
loophole I could find to save my belief in humanity's original vegetarian
and perhaps even fruitarian ways. "Perhaps you haven't looked far enough
back in time," I told them inside myself. "You are just biased because of
the modern meat-eating culture that surrounds us," I silently screamed,
"so you can't see the vegetarianism that was really there because you
aren't even looking for it!"

So in order to prove them wrong, I decided I'd have to unearth all
the scientific sources at the local university library myself and look at
the published evidence directly. But I didn't do this at first--I stalled
for about a year, basically being an ostrich for that time, sort of
forgetting about the subject to bury the cognitive dissonance I was
feeling.

In the meantime, though, I happened to hear from a hatha yoga
teacher I was acquainted with who taught internationally and was
well-known in the yoga community both in the U.S. and abroad in the '70s
and early '80s, who, along with his significant other, had been
vegetarian for about 17 years. To my amazement, he told me in response to
my bragging about my raw-food diet that he and his partner had
re-introduced some flesh foods to their diet a few years previously after
some years of going downhill on their vegetarian diets, and it had
resulted in a significant upswing in their health. He also noted that a
number of their vegetarian friends in the yoga community had run the same
gamut of deteriorating health after 10--15 years as vegetarians since the
'70s era.

Once again, of course, I pooh-poohed all this to myself because they
obviously weren't "Hygienist" vegetarians and none of their friends
probably were either. You know the line of thinking: If it ain't Hygienic
vegetarianism, by golly, we'll just discount the results as completely
irrelevant! If there's even one iota of difference between their brand of
vegetarianism and ours, well then, out the window with all the results!

But it did get me thinking, because this was a man of considerable
intellect as well as a person of integrity whom I respected more than
perhaps anyone else I knew.

And then a few months after that, I began noticing I was having
almost continual semi-diarrhea on my raw-food diet and could not seem to
make well-formed stools. I was not sleeping well, my stamina was sub-par
both during daily tasks and exercise, which was of concern to me after
having gotten back into distance running again, and so real doubts began
creeping in. It was around this time I finally made that trip to the
university library.

And so what did you find?

Enough evidence for the existence of animal flesh consumption from
early in human prehistory (approx. 2--3 million years ago) that I knew I
could no longer ignore the obvious. For awhile I simply could not believe
that Hygienists had never looked into this. But while it was
disillusioning, that disillusionment gradually turned into something
exciting because I knew I was looking directly at what scientists knew
based on the evidence. It gave me a feeling of more power and control,
and awareness of further dietary factors I had previously ruled out that
I could experiment with to improve my health, because now I was dealing
with something much closer to "the actual" (based on scientific findings
and evidence) as opposed to dietary "idealism."

What kind of "evidence" are we talking about here?

At its most basic, an accumulation of archaeological excavations by
paleontologists, ranging all the way from the recent past of
10,000--20,000 years ago back to approximately 2 million years ago, where
ancient "hominid" (meaning human and/or proto-human) skeletal remains are
found in conjunction with stone tools and animal bones that have cut
marks on them. These cut marks indicate the flesh was scraped away from
the bone with human-made tools, and could not have been made in any other
way. You also find distinctively smashed bones occurring in conjunction
with hammerstones that clearly show they were used to get at the marrow
for its fatty material.3 Prior to the evidence from these earliest stone
tools, going back even further (2--3 million years) is chemical evidence
showing from strontium/calcium ratios in fossilized bone that some of the
diet from earlier hominids was also coming from animal flesh.4
(Strontium/calcium ratios in bone indicate relative amounts of plant vs.
animal foods in the diet.5) Scanning electron microscope studies of the
microwear of fossil teeth from various periods well back into human
prehistory show wear patterns indicating the use of flesh in the diet
too.6

The consistency of these findings across vast eons of time show that
these were not isolated incidents but characteristic behavior of hominids
in many times and many places.

The evidence--if it is even known to them--is controversial only to
Hygienists and other vegetarian groups--few to none of whom, so far as I
can discern, seem to have acquainted themselves sufficiently with the
evolutionary picture other than to make a few armchair remarks. To anyone
who really looks at the published evidence in the scientific books and
peer-reviewed journals and has a basic understanding of the mechanisms
for how evolution works, there is really not a whole lot to be
controversial about with regard to the very strong evidence indicating
flesh has been a part of the human diet for vast eons of evolutionary
time. The real controversy in paleontology right now is whether the
earliest forms of hominids were truly "hunters," or more opportunistic
"scavengers" making off with pieces of kills brought down by other
predators, not whether we ate flesh food itself as a portion of our diet
or not.7

Can you give us a timeline of dietary developments in the human line
of evolution to show readers the overall picture from a bird's-eye view
so we can set a context for further discussion here?

Sure. We need to start at the beginning of the primate line long
before apes and humans ever evolved, though, to make sure we cover all
the bases, including the objections often made by vegetarians (and
fruitarians for that matter) that those looking into prehistory simply
haven't looked far enough back to find our "original" diet. Keep in mind
some of these dates are approximate and subject to refinement as further
scientific progress is made.

65,000,000 to 50,000,000 B.C.: The first primates, resembling
today's mouse lemurs, bush-babies, and tarsiers, weighing in at 2 lbs. or
less, and eating a largely insectivorous diet.8

50,000,000 to 30,000,000 B.C.: A gradual shift in diet for these
primates to mostly frugivorous in the middle of this period to mostly
herbivorous towards the end of it, but with considerable variance between
specific primate species as to lesser items in the diet, such as insects,
meat, and other plant foods.9

30,000,000 to 10,000,000 B.C: Fairly stable persistence of above
dietary pattern.10

Approx. 10,000,000 to 7,000,000 B.C: Last common primate ancestor of
both humans and the modern ape family.11

Approx. 7,000,000 B.C. After the end of the previous period, a fork
occurs branching into separate primate lines, including humans.12 The
most recent DNA evidence shows that humans are closely related to both
gorillas and chimpanzees, but most closely to the chimp.13 Most
paleoanthropologists believe that after the split, flesh foods began to
assume a greater role in the human side of the primate family at this
time.14

Approx. 4,500,000 B.C.: First known hominid (proto-human) from
fossil remains, known as australopithecus ramidus--literally translating
as "root ape" for its position as the very first known hominid, which may
not yet have been fully bipedal (walking upright on two legs). Anatomy
and dentition (teeth) are very suggestive of a form similar to that of
modern chimpanzees.15

Approx. 3,700,000 B.C.: First fully upright bipedal hominid,
australopithecus afarensis (meaning "southern ape," for the initial
discovery in southern Africa), about 4 feet tall, first known popularly
from the famous "Lucy" skeleton.16

3,000,000 to 2,000,000 B.C.: Australopithecus line diverges into
sub-lines,17 one of which will eventually give rise to homo sapiens
(modern man). It appears that the environmental impetus for this
"adaptive radiation" into different species was a changing global climate
between 2.5 and 2 million years ago driven by glaciation in the polar
regions.18 The climatic repercussions in Africa resulted in a breakup of
the formerly extensively forested habitat into a "mosaic" of forest
interspersed with savanna (grassland). This put stress on many species to
adapt to differing conditions and availability of foodstuffs.19 The
different australopithecus lineages, thus, ate somewhat differing diets,
ranging from more herbivorous (meaning high in plant matter) to more
frugivorous (higher in soft and/or hard fruits than in other plant
parts). There is still some debate as to which australopithecus lineage
modern humans ultimately descended from, but recent evidence based on
strontium/calcium ratios in bone, plus teeth microwear studies, show that
whatever the lineage, some meat was eaten in addition to the plant foods
and fruits which were the staples.20

2,000,000 to 1,500,000 B.C.: Appearance of the first "true humans"
(signified by the genus homo), known as homo habilis ("handy man")--so
named because of the appearance of stone tools and cultures at this time.
These gatherer-hunters were between 4 and 5 feet in height, weighed
between 40 to 100 pounds, and still retained tree-climbing adaptations
(such as curved finger bones)21 while subsisting on wild plant foods and
scavenging and/or hunting meat. (The evidence for flesh consumption based
on cut-marks on animal bones, as well as use of hammerstones to smash
them for the marrow inside, dates to this period.22) It is thought that
they lived in small groups like modern hunter-gatherers but that the
social structure would have been more like that of chimpanzees.23

The main controversy about this time period by paleoanthropologists
is not whether homo habilis consumed flesh (which is well established)
but whether the flesh they consumed was primarily obtained by scavenging
kills made by other predators or by hunting.24 (The latter would indicate
a more developed culture, the former a more primitive one.) While meat
was becoming a more important part of the diet at this time, based on the
fact that the diet of modern hunter-gatherers--with their considerably
advanced tool set--have not been known to exceed 40% meat in tropical
habitats like habilis evolved in, we can safely assume that the meat in
habilis' diet would have been substantially less than that.25

1,500,000 to 230,000 B.C.: Evolution of homo habilis into the
"erectines," a range of human species often collectively referred to as
homo erectus, after the most well-known variant. Similar in height to
modern humans (5--6 feet) but stockier with a smaller brain, hunting
activity increased over habilis, so that meat in the diet assumed greater
importance. Teeth microwear studies of erectus specimens have indicated
harsh wear patterns typical of meat-eating animals like the hyena.26 No
text I have yet read ventures any sort of percentage figure from this
time period, but it is commonly acknowledged that plants still made up
the largest portion of the subsistence. More typically human social
structures made their appearance with the erectines as well.27

The erectines were the first human ancestor to control and use fire.
It is thought that perhaps because of this, but more importantly because
of other converging factors--such as increased hunting and technological
sophistication with tools--that about 900,000 years ago in response to
another peak of glacial activity and global cooling (which broke up the
tropical landscape further into an even patchier mosaic), the erectines
were forced to adapt to an increasingly varied savanna/forest environment
by being able to alternate opportunistically between vegetable and animal
foods to survive, and/or move around nomadically.28

For whatever reasons, it was also around this time (dated to approx.
700,000 years ago) that a significant increase in large land animals
occurred in Europe (elephants, hoofed animals, hippopotamuses, and
predators of the big-cat family) as these animals spread from their
African home. It is unlikely to have been an accident that the spread of
the erectines to the European and Asian continent during and after this
timeframe coincides with this increase in game as well, as they probably
followed them.29

Because of the considerably harsher conditions and seasonal
variation in food supply, hunting became more important to bridge the
seasonal gaps, as well as the ability to store nonperishable items such
as nuts, bulbs, and tubers for the winter when the edible plants withered
in the autumn. All of these factors, along with clothing (and also
perhaps fire), helped enable colonization of the less hospitable
environment. There were also physical changes in response to the colder
and darker areas that were inhabited, such as the development of lighter
skin color that allowed the sun to penetrate the skin and produce vitamin
D, as well as the adaptation of the fat layer and sweat glands to the new
climate.30

Erectus finds from northern China 400,000 years ago have indicated
an omnivorous diet of meats, wild fruit and berries (including
hackberries), plus shoots and tubers, and various other animal foods such
as birds and their eggs, insects, reptiles, rats, and large mammals.31

500,000 to 200,000 B.C.: Archaic homo sapiens (our immediate
predecessor) appears. These human species, of which there were a number
of variants, did not last as long in evolutionary time as previous ones,
apparently due simply to the increasingly rapid rate of evolution
occurring in the human line at this time. Thus they represent a
transitional time after the erectines leading up to modern man, and the
later forms are sometimes not treated separately from the earliest modern
forms of true homo sapiens.32

150,000 to 120,000 B.C.: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis--or the
Neanderthals--begin appearing in Europe, reaching a height between 90,000
and 35,000 years ago before becoming extinct. It is now well accepted
that the Neanderthals were an evolutionary offshoot that met an eventual
dead-end (in other words, they were not our ancestors), and that more
than likely, both modern homo sapiens and Neanderthals were sister
species descended from a prior common archaic sapiens ancestor.33

140,000 to 110,000 B.C.: First appearance of anatomically modern
humans (homo sapiens).34 The last Ice Age also dates from this
period--stretching from 115,000 to 10,000 years ago. Thus it was in this
context, which included harsh and rapid climatic changes, that our most
recent ancestors had to flexibly adapt their eating and subsistence.35
(Climatic shifts necessitating adaptations were also experienced in
tropical regions, though to a lesser degree.36) It may therefore be
significant that fire, though discovered earlier, came into widespread
use around this same time37 corresponding with the advent of modern human
beings. Its use may in fact be a defining characteristic of modern
humans38 and their mode of subsistence. (I'll discuss the timescale of
fire and cooking at more length later.)

130,000 to 120,000 B.C.: Some of the earliest evidence for seafoods
(molluscs, primarily) in the diet by coastal dwellers appears at this
time,39 although in one isolated location discovered so far, there is
evidence going back 300,000 years ago.40 Common use of seafoods by
coastal aborigines becomes evident about 35,000 years ago,41 but
widespread global use in the fossil record is not seen until around
20,000 years ago and since.42 For the most part, seafoods should probably
not be considered a major departure, however, as the composition of fish,
shellfish, and poultry more closely resembles the wild land-game animals
many of these same ancestors ate than any other source today except for
commercial game farms that attempt to mimic ancient meat.43

40,000 to 35,000 B.C.: The first "behaviorally modern" human
beings--as seen in the sudden explosion of new forms of stone and bone
tools, cave paintings and other artwork, plus elaborate burials and many
other quintessentially modern human behaviors. The impetus or origin for
this watershed event is still a mystery.44 40,000 B.C. to 10--8,000 B.C.:
Last period prior to the advent of agriculture in which human beings
universally subsisted by hunting and gathering (also known as the "Late
Paleolithic"--or "Stone Age"--period). Paleolithic peoples did process
some of their foods, but these were simple methods that would have been
confined to pounding, grinding, scraping, roasting, and baking.45 35,000
B.C. to 15--10,000 B.C.: The Cro-Magnons (fully modern pre-Europeans)
thrive in the cold climate of Europe via big-game hunting, with meat
consumption rising to as much as 50% of the diet.46

25,000 to 15,000 B.C.: Coldest period of the last Ice Age, during
which global temperatures averaged 14°F cooler than they do today47 (with
local variations as much as 59°F lower48), with an increasingly arid
environment and much more difficult conditions of survival to which
plants, animals, and humans all had to adapt.49 The Eurasian steppes just
before and during this time had a maximum annual summer temperature of
only 59°F.50

Humans in Europe and northern Asia, and later in North America,
adapted by increasing their hunting of the large mammals such as
mammoths, horses, bison and caribou which flourished on the open
grasslands, tundra, and steppes which spread during this period.51
Storage of vegetable foods that could be consumed during the harsh
winters was also exploited. Clothing methods were improved (including
needles with eyes) and sturdier shelters developed--the most common being
animal hides wrapped around wooden posts, some of which had sunken floors
and hearths.52 In the tropics, large areas became arid. (In South Africa,
for instance, the vegetation consisted mostly of shrubs and grass with
few fruits.53)

20,000 B.C. to 9,000 B.C.: Transitional period known as the
"Mesolithic," during which the bow-and-arrow appeared,54 and gazelle,
antelope, and deer were being intensively hunted,55 while at the same
time precursor forms of wild plant and game management began to be more
intensively practiced. At this time, wild grains, including wheat and
barley by 17,000 B.C.--before their domestication--were being gathered
and ground into flour as evidenced by the use of mortars-and-pestles in
what is now modern-day Israel. By 13,000 B.C. the descendants of these
peoples were harvesting wild grains intensely and it was only a small
step from there to the development of agriculture.56 Game management
through the burning-off of land to encourage grasslands and the increase
of herds became widely practiced during this time as well. In North
America, for instance, the western high plains are the only area of the
current United States that did not see intensive changes to the land
through extensive use of fire.57

Also during this time, and probably also for some millennia prior to
the Mesolithic (perhaps as early as 45,000 B.C.), ritual and
magico-religious sanctions protecting certain wild plants developed,
initiating a new symbiotic relationship between people and their food
sources that became encoded culturally and constituted the first phase of
domestication well prior to actual cultivation. Protections were accorded
to certain wild food species (yams being a well-known example) to prevent
disruption of their life cycle at periods critical to their growth, so
that they could be profitably harvested later.58 Digging sticks for yams
have also been found dating to at least 40,000 B.C.,59 so these tubers
considerably antedated the use of grains in the diet.

Foods known to be gathered during the Mesolithic period in the
Middle East were root vegetables, wild pulses (peas, beans, etc.), nuts
such as almonds, pistachios, and hazelnuts, as well as fruits such as
apples. Seafoods such as fish, crabs, molluscs, and snails also became
common during this time.60

Approx. 10,000 B.C.: The beginning of the "Neolithic" period, or
"Agricultural Revolution," i.e., farming and animal husbandry. The
transition to agriculture was made necessary by gradually increasing
population pressures due to the success of homo sapiens' prior hunting
and gathering way of life. (Hunting and gathering can support perhaps one
person per square 10 miles; Neolithic agriculture 100 times or more that
many.61) Also, at about the time population pressures were increasing,
the last Ice Age ended, and many species of large game became instinct
(probably due to a combination of both intensive hunting and
disappearance of their habitats when the Ice Age ended).62 Wild grasses
and cereals began flourishing, making them prime candidates for the
staple foods to be domesticated, given our previous familiarity with
them.63 By 9,000 B.C. sheep and goats were being domesticated in the Near
East, and cattle and pigs shortly after, while wheat, barley, and legumes
were being cultivated somewhat before 7,000 B.C., as were fruits and
nuts, while meat consumption fell enormously.64 By 5,000 B.C. agriculture
had spread to all inhabited continents except Australia.65 During the
time since the beginning of the Neolithic, the ratio of plant-to-animal
foods in the diet has sharply increased from an average of probably
65%/35% during Paleolithic times66 to as high as 90%/10% since the advent
of agriculture.67

In most respects, the changes in diet from hunter-gatherer times to
agricultural times have been almost all detrimental, although there is
some evidence we'll discuss later indicating that at least some genetic
adaptation to the Neolithic has begun taking place in the approximately
10,000 years since it began. With the much heavier reliance on starchy
foods that became the staples of the diet, tooth decay, malnutrition, and
rates of infectious disease increased dramatically over Paleolithic times,
further exacerbated by crowding leading to even higher rates of
communicable infections.

Skeletal remains show that height decreased by four inches from the
Late Paleolithic to the early Neolithic, brought about by poorer
nutrition, and perhaps also by increased infectious disease causing growth
stress, and possibly by some inbreeding in communities that were isolated.
Signs of osteoporosis and anemia, which was almost non-existent in
pre-Neolithic times, have been frequently noted in skeletal pathologies
observed in the Neolithic peoples of the Middle East. It is known that
certain kinds of osteoporosis which have been found in these skeletal
remains are caused by anemia, and although the causes have not yet been
determined exactly, the primary suspect is reduced levels of iron thought
to have been caused by the stress of infectious disease rather than
dietary deficiency, although the latter remains a possibility.68

So have Hygienists really overlooked all the evidence you've compiled
in the above timeline? Are you serious?

It was a puzzle to me when I first stumbled onto it myself. Why
hadn't I been told about all this? I had thought in my readings in the
Hygienic literature that when the writers referred to our "original diet"
or our "natural diet," that must mean what I assumed they meant: that not
only was it based on comparative anatomy, but also on what we actually ate
during the time the species evolved. And further, that they were at least
familiar with the scientific evidence even if they chose to keep things
simple and not talk about it themselves. But when I did run across and
chase down a scientific reference or two that prominent Hygienists had at
long last bothered to mention, I found to my dismay they had distorted the
actual evidence or left out crucial pieces.

Could you name a name or two here and give an example so people will
know the kind of thing you are talking about?

Sure, as long as we do it with the understanding I am not attempting
to vilify anybody, and we all make mistakes. The most recent one I'm
familiar with is Victoria Bidwell's citation (in her Health Seeker's
Yearbook69) of a 1979 science report from the New York Times,70 where she
summarizes anthropologist Alan Walker's microwear studies of fossil teeth
in an attempt to show that humans were originally exclusively, only,
fruit-eaters.

Bidwell paraphrases the report she cited as saying that "humans were
once exclusively fruit eaters, eaters of nothing but fruit." And also that,
"Dr. Walker and other researchers are absolutely certain that our
ancestors, up to a point in relatively recent history, were
fruitarians/vegetarians."71 But a perusal of the actual article being
cited reveals that: The diet was said to be "chiefly" fruit, which was the
"staple," and the teeth studied were those of "fruit-eater[s]," but the
article is not absolutistic like Bidwell painted it.

Fruit as defined by Walker in the article included tougher, less
sugary foods, such as acacia tree pods. (Which laypeople like
ourselves would be likely to classify as a "vegetable"-type food in
common parlance). And although it was not clarified in the article,
anyone familiar with or conscientious enough to look a little further
into evolutionary studies of diet would have been aware that
scientists generally use the terms "frugivore," "folivore,"
"carnivore," "herbivore," etc., as categories comparing broad dietary
trends, only very rarely as exclusivist terms, and among primates
exclusivity in food is definitely not the norm.

The primate/hominids in the study were australopithecus and homo
habilis--among the earliest in the human line--hardly "relatively recent
history" in this context.

The studies were preliminary, and Walker was cautious, saying he
didn't "want to make too much of this yet"--and his caution proved to be
well-warranted. I believe there was enough research material available by
the late 1980s (Health Seeker's Yearbook was published in 1990) that had
checking been done, it would have been found that while he was largely
right about australopithecine species being primarily frugivores (using a
very broad definition of "fruit"), later research like what we outlined in
our timeline above has shown australopithecus also included small amounts
of flesh, seeds, and vegetable foods, and that all subsequent species
beginning with homo habilis have included significant amounts of meat in
their diet, even if the diet of habilis probably was still mostly fruit
plus veggies. There is more that I could nitpick, but that's probably
enough. I imagine Victoria was simply very excited to see scientific
mention of frugivorism in the past, and just got carried away in her
enthusiasm. There's at least one or two similar distortions by others in
the vegetarian community that one could cite (Viktoras Kulvinskas' 1975
book Survival into the 21st Century,72 for instance, contains inaccuracies
about ape diet and "fruitarianism") so I don't want to pick on her too
much because I would imagine we've all done that at times. It may be
understandable when you are unfamiliar with the research, but it points
out the need to be careful.

Overall, then, what I have been left with--in the absence of any
serious research into the evolutionary past by Hygienists--is the
unavoidable conclusion that Hygienists simply assume it ought to be
intuitively obvious that the original diet of humans was totally
vegetarian and totally raw. (Hygienists often seem impatient with
scientists who can't "see" this, and may creatively embellish their
research to make a point. Research that is discovered by Hygienists
sometimes seems to be used in highly selective fashion only as a
convenient afterthought to justify conclusions that have already been
assumed beforehand.) I too for years thought it was obvious in the absence
of realizing science had already found otherwise.

The argument made is very similar to the "comparative anatomy"
argument: Look at the rest of the animals, and especially look at the ones
we are most similar to, the apes. They are vegetarians [this is now known
to be false for chimps and gorillas and almost all the other great
apes--which is something we'll get to shortly], and none of them cook
their food. Animals who eat meat have large canines, rough rasping
tongues, sharp claws, and short digestive tracts to eliminate the poisons
in the meat before it putrefies, etc.

In other words, it is a view based on a philosophy of "naturalism,"
but without really defining too closely what that naturalism is. The
Hygienic view of naturalism, then, simplistically looks to the rest of the
animal kingdom as its model for that naturalism by way of analogy. This is
good as a device to get us to look at ourselves more objectively from
"outside" ourselves, but when you take it too far, it completely ignores
that we are unique in some ways, and you cannot simply assume it or figure
it all out by way of analogy only. It can become reverse anthropomorphism.
(Anthropomorphism is the psychological tendency to unconsciously make
human behavior the standard for comparison, or to project human
characteristics and motivations onto the things we observe. Reverse
anthropomorphism in this case would be saying humans should take specific
behaviors of other animals as our own model where food is concerned.)

When you really get down to nuts and bolts about defining what you
subjectively think is "natural," however, you find people don't so easily
agree about all the particulars. The problem with the Hygienic definition
of naturalism--what we could call "the animal model for humans"--is that
it is mostly a subjective comparison. (And quite obviously so after you
have had a chance to digest the evolutionary picture, like what I
presented above. Those who maintain that the only "natural" food for us is
that which we can catch or process with our bare hands are by any
realistic evolutionary definition for what is natural grossly in error,
since stone tools for obtaining animals and cutting the flesh have been
with us almost 2 million years now.) Not that there isn't value in doing
this, and not that there may not be large grains of truth to it, but since
it is in large part subjectively behavioral, there is no real way to test
it fairly (which is required for a theory to be scientific), which means
you can never be sure elements of it may not be false. You either agree to
it, or you don't--you either agree to the "animal analogy" for raw-food
eating and vegetarianism, or you have reservations about it--but you are
not offering scientific evidence.

So my view became, why don't we just look into the evolutionary
picture as the best way to go straight to the source and find out what
humans "originally" ate? Why fool around philosophizing and theorizing
about it when thanks to paleoanthropologists we can now just go back and
look? If we really want to resolve the dispute of what is natural for
human beings, what better way than to actually go back and look at what we
actually did in prehistory before we supposedly became corrupted by reason
to go against our instincts? Why aren't we even looking? Are we afraid of
what we might see? These questions have driven much of my research into
all this.

If we are going to be true dietary naturalists--eat "food of our
biological adaptation" as the phrase goes--then it is paramount that we
have a functional or testable way of defining what we are biologically
adapted to. This is something that evolutionary science easily and
straightforwardly defines: What is "natural" is simply what we are adapted
to by evolution, and a central axiom of evolution is that what we are
adapted to is the behavior our species engaged in over a long enough
period of evolutionary time for it to have become selected for in the
species' collective gene pool. This puts the question of natural behavior
on a more squarely concrete basis. I wanted a better way to determine what
natural behavior in terms of diet was for human beings that could be
backed by science. This eliminates the dilemma of trying to determine what
natural behavior is by resorting solely to subjective comparisons with
other animals as Hygienists often do.

You mentioned the "comparative anatomy" argument that Hygienists look
to for justification instead of evolution. Let's look at that a little
more. Are you saying it is fundamentally wrong?

No, not as a general line of reasoning in saying that we are similar
to apes so our diets should be similar. It's a good argument--as far as it
goes. But for the logic to be valid in making inferences about the human
diet based on ape diet, it must be based on accurate observations of the
actual food intake of apes. Idealists such as we Hygienists don't often
appreciate just how difficult it is to make these observations, and do it
thoroughly enough to be able to claim you have really seen everything the
apes are doing, or capable of doing. You have to go clear back to field
observations in the 1960's and earlier to support the contention that apes
are vegetarians. That doesn't wash nowadays with the far more detailed
field observations and studies of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Chimp and
gorilla behavior is diverse, and it is difficult to observe and draw
reliable conclusions without spending many months and/or years of
observation. And as the studies of Jane Goodall and others since have
repeatedly shown, the early studies were simply not extensive enough to be
reliable.73

Science is a process of repeated observation and progressively better
approximations of the "real world," whatever that is. It is critical then,
that we look at recent evidence, which has elaborated on, refined, and
extended earlier work. When you see anybody--such as apologists for
"comparative anatomy" vegetarian idealism (or in fact anybody doing this
on any topic)--harking back to outdated science that has since been
eclipsed in order to bolster their views, you should immediately suspect
something.

The main problem with the comparative anatomy argument, then--at
least when used to support vegetarianism--is that scientists now know that
apes are not vegetarians after all, as was once thought. The comparative
anatomy argument actually argues for at least modest amounts of animal
flesh in the diet, based on the now much-more-complete observations of
chimpanzees, our closest animal relatives with whom we share somewhere
around 98 to 98.6% of our genes.74 (We'll also look briefly at the diets
of other apes, but the chimpanzee data will be focused on here since it
has the most relevance for humans.)

Though the chimp research is rarely oriented to the specific types of
percentage numerical figures we Hygienists would want to see classified,
from what I have seen, it would probably be fair to estimate that most
populations of chimpanzees are getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 5%
of their diet on average in most cases (as a baseline) to perhaps 8--10%
as a high depending on the season, as animal food--which in their case
includes bird's eggs and insects in addition to flesh--particularly
insects, which are much more heavily consumed than is flesh.75

There is considerable variation across different chimp populations in
flesh consumption, which also fluctuates up and down considerably within
populations on a seasonal basis as well. (And behavior sometimes differs
as well: Chimps in the Tai population, in 26 of 28 mammal kills, were
observed to break open the bones with their teeth and use tools to extract
the marrow for consumption,76 reminiscent of early homo habilis.) One
population has been observed to eat as much as 4 oz. of flesh per day
during the peak hunting season, dwindling to virtually nothing much of the
rest of the time, but researchers note that when it is available, it is
highly anticipated and prized.77 It's hard to say exactly, but a
reasonable estimate might be that on average flesh may account for about
1--3% of the chimp diet.78

Now of course, meat consumption among chimps is what gets the
headlines these days,79 but the bulk of chimpanzees' animal food
consumption actually comes in the form of social insects80 (termites,
ants, and bees), which constitute a much higher payoff for the labor
invested to obtain them81 than catching the colobus monkeys that is often
the featured flesh item for chimps. However, insect consumption has often
been virtually ignored82 since it constitutes a severe blind spot for the
Western world due to our cultural aversions and biases about it. And by no
means is insect consumption an isolated occurrence among just some chimp
populations. With very few exceptions, termites and/or ants are eaten
about half the days out of a year on average, and during peak seasons are
an almost daily item, constituting a significant staple food in the diet
(in terms of regularity), the remains of which show up in a minimum of
approximately 25% of all chimpanzee stool samples.83

Again, while chimp researchers normally don't classify food intake by
the types of volume or caloric percentages that we Hygienists would prefer
to see it broken down for comparison purposes (the rigors of observing
these creatures in the wild make it difficult), what they do record is
illustrative. A chart for the chimps of Lopé in Gabon classified by
numbers of different species of food eaten (caveat: this does not equate
to volume), shows the fruit species eaten comprising approx. 68% of the
total range of species eaten in their diets, leaves 11%, seeds 7%, flowers
2%, bark 1%, pith 2%, insects 6%, and mammals 2%.84

A breakdown by feeding time for the chimps of Gombe showed their
intake of foods to be (very roughly) 60% of feeding time for fruit, 20%
for leaves, with the other items in the diet varying greatly on a seasonal
basis depending on availability. Seasonal highs could range as high as
(approx.) 17% of feeding time for blossoms, 22--30% for seeds, 10--17% for
insects, 2--6% for meat, with other miscellaneous items coming in at
perhaps 4% through most months of the year.85 Miscellaneous items eaten by
chimps include a few eggs,86 plus the rare honey that chimps are known to
rob from beehives (as well as the embedded bees themselves), which is
perhaps the most highly prized single item in their diet,87 but which they
are limited from eating much of by circumstances. Soil is also
occasionally eaten--presumably for the mineral content according to
researchers.88

For those who suppose that drinking is unnatural and that we should
be able to get all the fluid we need from "high-water-content" foods, I
have some more unfortunate news: chimps drink water too. Even the largely
frugivorous chimp may stop 2--3 times per day during the dry season to
stoop and drink water directly from a stream (but perhaps not at all on
some days during the wet season), or from hollows in trees, using a leaf
sponge if the water cannot be reached with their lips.89 (Or maybe that
should be good news: If you've been feeling guilty or substandard for
having to drink water in the summer months, you can now rest easy knowing
your chimp brothers and sisters are no different!)

An important observation that cannot be overlooked is the
wide-ranging omnivorousness and the predilection for tremendous variety in
chimpanzees' diet, which can include up to 184 species of foods, 40--60 of
which may comprise the diet in any given month, with 13 different foods
per day being one average calculated.90 Thus, even given the largely
frugivorous component of their diets, it would be erroneous to infer from
that (as many Hygienists may prefer to believe) that the 5% to possibly 8%
or so of their diet that is animal foods (not to mention other foods) is
insignificant, or could be thrown out or disregarded without
consequence--the extreme variety in their diet being one of its defining
features.

Over millions of years of evolution, the wheels grind exceedingly