On Sat, 5 Sep 1998, C. Loon wrote:

> The typical Cree family lives on the following while in the bush: flour,
> lard, tea, sugar, milk, potatoes, and wild meat. Vegetable consumption
> while in the community is still very low because 1) produce is old and
> expensive, and 2) because it has entered the diet so recently, many people
> avoid buying them, because they don't know how to cook them properly. Yes,
> the aboriginal diet is western-based, but in different proportions. Do the
> disease stats ever take this into account?

In the case of Australian aborigines, they look at those living
in the cities and eating what might be called an "urban" Western
diet.  Even that varies, of course.  Poor people in urban
settings tend to consume large quantities of refined carbs in the
form of bread and pasta, because these foods are cheap.  I think
such a diet is comparable to what you describe above.

As you have noted, there is no single "civilized" diet, just as
there is no single HG diet.  I think that education has something
to do with it, but there are many other factors.  I recently met
a family with an autistic daughter.  They live in an upper
middle-class suburb; both parents are college educated.  The
staple food in that home children and adults was -- Pepperidge
Farm "goldfish," which they consumed in large quantities.  Both
parents are too busy to do much shopping or cooking, so they make
extensive use of burger restaurants.  Interestingly, everyone in
the family is quite slender.  Their diet appears to me to be even
worse than what has become "normal" in the U.S., though maybe not
much worse.  I know lots of "health conscious" educated people
who are eating pasta by the bushel (or whatever; does pasta come
in bushels?), with a few veggies thrown in as a garnish.

Veggies are time-intensive to get and prepare.  You have to buy
them several times a week to get fresh stuff.  Then typically you
must wash, chop, steam, or whatever.  Most people I know are in a
*big hurry* much of the time, and that's why they use pasta, as I
once did.  You buy it once a week.  You boil it and throw it on
the plate with some sauce from a jar, and you pat yourself on the
back for avoiding fats.

I know I'm digressing from your question, but I'm on a roll.
Three days ago I was talking to a colleague of mine in the hall.
I teach at a small college, so I hadn't seen her during the
summer.  She noticed that I had lost weight.  We started talking
about diet and she, taking things for granted, said, "I guess you
really cut down on the fat.  Tony and I are down to less than 10
grams a day."  Tony, her husband, had a serious heart attack 8
years ago, and lost a third of his heart muscle.

I told her that I have been eating a lot of fat, from meat and
nuts mostly.  I told her that when I tried a low-fat diet I
gained weight like crazy.  She said, "You know, it's funny but
Tony has been gaining weight too, even though he exercises a
lot."  I knew that Tony was a great jogging enthusiast.

What I didn't know was that during the summer Tony had had bypass
surgery because his arteries were closing down, even though he
had kept his cholesterol to below 180 on the low-fat diet.

So what do this couple -- both with Ph.D.s -- eat?  Pasta, pasta,
rice, pasta, bread, potataoes.  No butter, virtually no meat, a
little bit of fish.  They eat some veggies, but they have to hit
the starches hard to get calories.  Since Tony had already had a
heart attack, his cardiologist decided that his cholesterol
should be even lower, below 150.  So now, with the aid of a
medication and a near zero-fat diet, his cholesterol is 120 and
the cardiologist is happy.  But Tony is not happy, since he is
gaining weight and always hungry.

That, then, is the tale of an educated "health conscious" couple
and their dietary adventures.  Minus the lard and the wild meat,
I guess it's not that different from the subsistence diet of the
Cree.  In fact, the Cree diet is probably healthier.

Todd Moody
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