Agriculture, Diet and Health

The transformation from traditional to contemporary food and agriculture has important implications for human health as well as general ecosystem health.  The way we prepare and consume food has changed in this country, with people eating more frequently in restaurants, and especially in the fast food mode , impacts agriculture. The concentrated buying power of large processors and fast food changes dominates the market and puts new pressures on farmers.  The way food is grown, the condition of the soil and water and the composition and nutritive value of foods has all been changed by these trends.

Traditional agriculture

Around half of the world's population still lives in villages which produce a significant part of their food through traditional agricultural techniques.  This lifeway and form of food productions implies a very different relationship to ecosystems and results in food that is often of greater nutritional quality.  On the other hand, social marginality and poverty place traditional farming communities at great risk and they are often in conditions of nutritional stress.

 

Introduction to traditional agriculture

Prof. H. David Thurston, Emeritus, Cornell University page on traditional agriculture

Why study traditional agriculture?

1990 article by Miguel Altieri

One of the first university programs in Agroecology, including study of traditional farming systems:

Agroecology Home

Agroecology resources for research, education and development of sustainable agroecosystems. We emphasize international training, research and application of agroecological science to solving real world problems.Stephen Gleissman, U of C at Santa Cruz

Agroecology Links

University and College Agroecology Programs

Traditional diet

A classic study of nutrition that sets the parameters for a healthy "natural" diet was conducted in the 1930s by Weston A. Price.  The results are still available in a recently reprinted edition of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (on order for Science Library).  Here you can read a summary of Price's results:

Traditional Diets—Ancient Dietary Wisdom for Tomorrow's Children

Describes the seminal nutritional research of traditional diets by Dr. Weston Price and the effects of raw and cooked food by Dr. Francis Pottenger, and the implications of this for modern diets.

 

From Price's and others research we can begin to identify the principle parameters of diet change and draw some initial conclusions about health implications.

One result that Price found on analyzing traditional foods in the laboratory is that they were much higher in vitamins and minerals than the American diet of his time 1930s.  Although diets varied tremendously from one place to another, reflecting local availability of resources, in certain aspects there were consistent contrasts with our contemporary food based on industrial agriculture.  The key issues are the sources of fats and carbohydates. There has been much research and considerable disagreement about these issues so we will only have time to look at a small part of the total picture.

 

Human-microbial symbiosis

But microbial symbioses are important to our bodies as well as our soils and our animals.  Bacteria make up a tenth of our body weight. Totaling some 90 trillion cells, they outnumber our own body cells by a factor of nine to one.  Most of these are concentrated in the gut, but they also live on our skin, in our blood and even on the trasparent surface of our eyes.

 

Commensal host-bacteria relationships in the gut [pdf]

Science 2003

A Genomic View of the...Symbiosis [pdf]

More on human gut bacteria

Fermentation

pulque image

 

Pulque and other regional Mexican drinks.

A Mexican beverage made by fermenting the fresh sap of certain Maguey plants.

 

Wild Fermentation: Fermentation and Food Internet Resources

Resources for fermenting the vast range of nutritious and delicious live-culture foods and drinks

A wonderful reference on the subect of fermented foods is the book: Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods

 

The process of fermenting foods--to preserve the and to make them more digestible and more nutritious--is as old as humanity...Unfortunately, fermented foods have largely disappeared from the Western diets.

Fermentation not only preserves nutrients, it breaks them down into more easily digestible forms.  Soybeans are a good example. This extraordinarily protein-rich food is laregely indigestible without fermentation.  Fermentation breaks down the soybean's complex proteins...givnig us trational Asian foods such as miso, tempeh, and tamari (sou sauce) which have become staples in contemporary Western vegetarian cuisine.

Eating fermented foods live is an incredibly healthy practice, directly supplying you digestive tract with living cutures essential to breaking down food and assimilating nutrients...By promoting digestive health, live fermented foods can help control digestive disease processes such as diarrhea and dysentery. Live-culture foods can even improve infant survival rates...Lactobacillus inhibits the grwoth of diarrea-related bacteria such as Shigella, Salmonella and E. coli.

Our culture is terrified of gernms and obsessed with hygiene...Nothing illustates this more vividly than the sudden appearance everwhere in the United States of anti-bacterial soap...another exploitative and potentially dangerous product being sold by preying on people's fears. The antibacterial compounds in the soaps...kill the more susceptible bacteria but not the heartier ones.  These resistant microbes may include bacteria that were unable to gain foothold previously and are now able to thrive thanks to the destruction of competing microbes says Der Stuart Levy...

Microoganisms not only protect us by competing with potentially dangerous organisms, they teach the immune system how to function...A grwoing number of researchers are finding evidence to support what is known as "the hygiene hypothesis" which attributes the dramatic rise in prevalence of asthma and other allergies to lack of exposure to diverse microorganisms found in soil and untreated water.

Bread and beer are both born of grain fermentation and historians debate which came first...Is it not possible that beer provided a more compelling incentive than mere food for well-fed nomadic peoples to settle?

Fermented foods

Collection from Dr. Blackmer

In particular, take a look at:

 

Creative Fermentation Technology For the Future Internet Forum

Fermentation technology has developed indigenously all around the world by using natural products from the respective region to produce required food materials, from which the characteristic taste and aroma of each cultural society have been made... Fermentation technology has adapted itself to social demands. During the survival food age, fermentation was used mainly for food preservation and condiments production. In the convenience food age, it was used for flavor production and other ingredients for industrial mass production of food. The 21st century is called the era of tailor made goods satisfying personal demands, and together with the health benefit demands, fermentation technology finds new challenges in the market. Many of the traditional fermented foods are receiving new attention for their health promoting or disease preventing/curing effects.

 

And:

Industrial Food and Health

Not only are industrialized foods lower in vitamin, mineral and enzyme content, the also contain a series of food additives that are causing serious health problems for many people, especially children

Food additives and health

The Observer | Food monthly | Food: David Rowan explores the cutting edge of food technology

The principal health problem in America today is heart disease. Forty percent of deaths in America are attributed to this cause, yet in the early part of the 20th century heart disease was rare.  It continues to be rare in societies with traditional diets, but as developing countries urbanize and adopt industrial agriculture, heart disease also increases as a cause of death. 

The conventional medical explication for heart disease is that it is caused by foods high in cholesterol and saturated fats . This is the biomedical orthodoxy of today and yet there is very little evidence to support this view, known as the Lipid Hypothesis--it continues to be the dominant theory even though many scientists have raises serious objections to the basic assumptions and the evidence.  The fact is that neither high high blood levels of cholesterol nor high-cholesterol foods have ever been scientifically shown to be related to heart disease .  (Weston A. Price believed that the decline in consumption of good quality butter and its replacement with processed vegetable fats was a principle cause of increasing heart disease!) The principle clinical conclusion of the lipid hypothesis is that the key to preventing heart disease is to lower cholesteral, and for this purpose the medical establishment recommends a class of very dangerous drugs known as statins , that can have serious, even fatal side effects .  

Another serious problem, also related to heart disease, is the increasingly serious epidemic of overweight and obesity among Americans.  Obesity also seems to be behind a similar world epidemic of Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).  The worldwide importance of this issue can be seen by the fact that a google search on 'diabetes' turns up more that 13.5 million hits from all countries! Obesity and diabetes are related and have to due with a condition known as insulin resistance, which, along with abnormal blood lipid chemistry is known as syndorme X or the metabolic syndrome.   The fact is all of these problems--overweight and obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease are related and have a common cause, the changes in diet imposed in us by the industrial food system.  One central factor has been the increase in the consumption of refined carbohydrates, such as white flour and refined sugar. The recent boom in the use of high fructose corn syrup as the principle sweetener of  the food industry has been particularly important. 

24-consump_sugarhfcs [pdf]

Why do we continue to produce and consume HFCS if it has been shown to have  such clear negative health effects?  Here's are some clues:

Corn Refiners Association, Inc applauds WTO case "Mexico is an estimated two million metric ton market for U.S. exports of HFCS, making it the top export market prior to the tax."

So we are exporting our industrial food and its accompanying problems:

 

McDonald's: "I am Asian"

McDonald's - i'm lovin'it!

 

 

Four-year-old Russian boys enjoy another Big Mac Photograph: Shakh Aivazov/AP Photo

 

Four-year-old Russian boys enjoy another Big Mac Photograph: Shakh Aivazov/AP Photo

(source: current issue of Resurgence Magazine)

 

WHO Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health

In April 1993, the United Nation's World Health Organization (WHO) published a report calling on governments and all actors in the food system to move towards new diety standards to confront the world obesity crisis. In particular, WHO recommend a significant reduction in sugar consumption.  Industry objected immediately and pressured the US government to threaten cutting funding to WHO as an "unscientific" organization.

BBC NEWS | Health | Health chiefs agree global diet

The World Health Organisation draws up a diet which frowns on junk food and extols exercise in a bid to tackle obesity.

 

The new agreement was reached only after the scientific arguments presented in the April report by WHO were removed from the documents in the process of reaching and agreement

 

Nonetheless, the evidence implicating excessive consumption of HFCS in the growing obesity/insulin-resistance/diabetes type syndrome is growing daily.

 

Obesity Expert Cites Fructose, Soft Drinks

This article refers to a study published here:

 

Fructose and obesity - AJCN [pdf]

In this article, we investigate the relation between the intake of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and the development of obesity.

 

Fructose Raises Triglyceride Levels 1/14/01

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, November 2000; 72: 1128-1134 and Journal of Nutrition, December 2000;130:3077-3084

 

The Scientist :: Fat clue to leptin resistance

High tryglcerides block letpin from entering the brain where it tell our body that we have had enough to eat, thus lowering our appetite. This contribute to overeating and obesity

High Triglycerides Risk for Heart Attack

The authors conclude that blood triglyceride level was a stronger risk factor than total cholesterol and that such a test of blood triglyceride level taken after a patient had fasted should be included in risk factor profiles.

 

Corn syrup linked to diabetes

Epidemic reflects rise in refined sugars.