I predict that this simple and feasible project proposal which will alleviate a host of different modern ailments will be rejected by any mainstream health care system which relies heavily on Big Pharma’s budget and its status quo.

Summary

It is increasingly recognized that certain fundamental changes in diet and lifestyle that occurred after the Neolithic Revolution, and especially after the Industrial Revolution and the Modern Age, are too recent, on an evolutionary time scale, for the human genome to have completely adapted. This mismatch between our ancient physiology and the western diet and lifestyle underlies many so-called diseases of civilization, including coronary heart disease, obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, epithelial cell cancers, autoimmune disease, and osteoporosis, which are rare or virtually absent in hunter–gatherers and other non-westernized populations. It is therefore proposed that the adoption of diet and lifestyle that mimic the beneficial characteristics of the preagricultural environment is an effective strategy to reduce the risk of chronic degenerative diseases. Giving support to this notion, human intervention trials have demonstrated that a diet composed of meat, fish, shellfish, eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables, roots, tubers, nuts, and seeds may be superior to so-called healthy diets such as a low fat diet. The aim of this project proposal is to reproduce these results at the Primary Care level in a healthy population whose traditional diet included animal products and only until recently has adhered to industrialized low fat foods.

Background

On September 2011, the United Nations declared that, for the first time in human history, chronic non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes pose a greater health burden worldwide than do infectious diseases, contributing to 35 million deaths annually. [1] This is not just a problem of the developed world. Every country that has adopted the Western diet — one dominated by low-cost, highly processed food — has witnessed rising rates of obesity and related diseases.

According to the CDC, about one-third of U.S. adults (33.8%) are obese and approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2 – 19 years are obese. In 2010, no state had less than 20% obesity prevalence. Another statistic tells us that over two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or obese.

Available population data in Spain from the SEEDO’2000 study show a prevalence of obesity (BMI > or = 30 kg/m(2)) of 14,5% in adults aged 25-60 years, estimates based on individual measurement of body weight and height. [2]

Worldwide, with the spread of Western lifestyle (including diet), obesity has more than doubled since 1980. In 2008, 1.5 billion adults, 20 and older, were overweight and nearly 43 million children under the age of five were overweight in 2010.

Aside from quantitative over-consumption, various macronutrients have been postulated to contribute to the metabolic syndrome. Some suggest that specific dietary fats, such as saturated and trans-fats, are the culprit, while others suggest that a deficiency of monounsaturated lipids, such as olive oil (oleic acid) or linoleic acid, are implicated. However, our absolute consumption of dietary fat has not changed in these last 30 years, and high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets appear to be protective against the metabolic syndrome [3]. Read more…