http://chetday.com/ward1.html

Shaking Up Vegetarian and Vegan Assumptions

In the first of three interviews with me [Chet Day], Ward Nicholson in
about 9,000 words blew into smithereens the long-held assumption that
humans are naturally fruitarian.  Deeply researched and carefully analyzed,
Ward tells us in this interview why we shouldn't believe a lot of what
we've been taught to believe about human eating habits as practiced by our
ancestors. This is a must read for any vegetarian or vegan.

                                  [Image]

                        Interview with Ward Nicholson

                                   [Image]
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. (And if you
  haven't already done so, subscribe now to my free bi-weekly newsletter by
                         clicking right here.[Image]

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.:
.
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 eaterseaters 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 fine, and
everything comes out in the wash. Remember that health is dependent on
getting not just the right amounts of macro-elements such as carbohydrates,
fats, and proteins, but also critical amounts of trace minerals and vitamins
for instance. We require, and are evolutionarily adapted to, the behavior
that is natural to us. Where chimps are concerned, 5% or 8% animal
food--whatever it actually is--is a modest but significant amount, and not
something you can just say is incidental or could be thrown out without
materially changing the facts.

In order of how closely related the other great apes are to humans, the
gorilla is next after the chimpanzee, then the orangutan, and gibbon in
decreasing order.91 I'll just briefly summarize a few basic facts about the
other great apes here, concentrating primarily on the gorilla.

Interestingly, while the gorilla has often been cited as a model in the
modern mythology of "fruitarianism,"92 on average it is actually the least
frugivorous of the apes. Highland gorillas (where less fruit is available in
their higher-altitude mountainous habitat) have become primarily folivorous
(leaf/vegetative-eaters), while the lowland gorilla is more of a hybrid
folivore/frugivore.93 I might mention in this regard that there is some
suggestion chimps seem not to prefer extra-high roughage volumes, at least
compared to the gorilla. Certainly they do not seem to be able to
physiologically tolerate as much cellulose from vegetative matter in their
diet.94

Gorillas can, however, tolerate higher amounts of folivorous matter, due
apparently to their more varied and extensive intestinal flora and fauna.95
Chimps, however, are known to "wadge" some of their foods, which is a form
of juicing that has the effect of reducing their fiber intake.96 Wadging
means that they make a wad of leaves which is mixed in with the primary food
item (such as a fruit) as a mass, which is then used as a "press" against
their teeth and palate to literally "juice" the main food which they may
suck on for up to 10 minutes before discarding the wadge of fiber after all
the juice has been sucked out. Wadging may also serve as a way to avoid
biting into potentially toxic seeds of certain fruits, from which they can
then still extract the juices safely, or as a way to handle very soft items
such as pulpy or overripe fruits, as well as eggs and meat.97

Such behavior ought to debunk the prevalent Hygienic/raw-foods myth that it
is always the more natural thing to do to eat "whole" rather than fragmented
foods. This is not necessarily true, and again, such a view is based in
subjective definitions out of touch with the real world. Another example
here is that chimps (and gorillas as well) also eat a fair amount of "pith"
in their diet--meaning the insides of stems of various plants--which they
first have to process by peeling off the tough outer covering before the
pith inside is either eaten or wadged.98

All the great apes, with the exception of the gorilla, are primarily
frugivorous, but they do eat some animal products as well, though generally
less than the chimp--although lowland gorillas eat insects at a comparable
rate to chimps. In decreasing order of animal food consumption in the diet,
the orang comes first after the chimp, then the bonobo chimp, the gibbon,
the lowland gorilla, and the highland gorilla--the latter eating any animal
foods (as insects) incidentally in or on the plants eaten. Again, remember,
animal food consumption here does not equate solely with flesh consumption,
as that is less prominent than insects in ape diets. The chimp and bonobo
chimp are the only ones to eat flesh (other than a rare occurrence of an
orang who was observed doing so once). All the apes other than the highland
gorilla eat at least some social insects, with the chimp, bonobo chimp, and
orang also partaking of bird's eggs.99

This concludes Part 1. In Part 2, we'll look into such things as fire and
cooking in human evolution, rates of genetic adaptation to change, modern
hunter/gatherers, diseases in the wild, and then turn to "the psychology of
idealistic diets."

To receive the footnotes and references cited in the above article, send a
check for $3 to:

Ward Nicholson
232 S. Belmont
Wichita, KS 67218-1304
email: [log in to unmask]

If you liked this interview with Ward, you'll love Parts II and III. For
full information about Part II, click here, and for full information about
Part III, click here.

                                   [Image]
 Please reprint and/or freely distribute this article. Only by taking charge
of our own health can we lessen the threat of the "health care" machine that
   would take our money, our peace of mind, and our chances for a healthy,
   happy, productive old age. For more information about Health & Beyond,
  contact Chet Day by email at [log in to unmask] or visit his web site at
http://chetday.com or write him via snailmail at: Chet Day, Health & Beyond,
               4258 Stafford Dr, Winter Haven, FL, 33880-1141.
                                   [Image]

                             [log in to unmask]