It’s generally accepted by archeologists that before agriculture, humans had near-zero incidence of tooth decay.
However, recent research has revealed a pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer society with high starch consumption had plenty of rotten teeth.
This does two things - it makes the “tooth argument” for low- or zero-carb diets even more compelling, and it more clearly delineates what agriculture did* that caused such a huge increase in dental caries. Agriculture provides lots of carbs that stick well to your teeth.
*I really want to use the idiom “brought to the table” here.
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We have been hearing for a hundred years ‘now that nutrition science has identified the secrets of (macronutrients/vitamins/cholesterol/protein-mimicking carbs and fats/latest amazing discovery du jour), we at last hold in our hands the one true key to perfect food and health’. And yet it keeps getting worse and worse even while dieting and ‘fitness’ become more popular (and lucrative) year after year.
Michael Pollan calls this ‘the American paradox’, as a riff on ‘the French paradox’ of people of varied ethnicities (usually France, but also others) eating traditional ‘unhealthy’ food with more regard to pleasure and culture than health and ending up more more healthy anyway.
He suggests the term ‘nutritionism’ for the current situation in which we feel we need the guidance of experts (scientists, doctors, the press, the surgeon general) to know what to eat, and are familiar ourselves with all sorts of highly technical concepts and terms like calories, cholesterol and triglycerides.
And yet we’re no better off with this approach than our great-grandmothers, who had no doubt at all about what to eat based on nothing else than Culture (a fancy term for what their own mothers taught them) and the kind of rudimentary folk knowledge we’d call old wive’s tales now. We’re worse off now than then, in some cases much worse. There’s a good paradox.
I’d say more but it starts getting into personal opinion instead of paraphrasing more interesting thoughts than mine, and there might be no point to it so I’ll leave it at that. But to me that little bit up there was relevant and perhaps though-provoking enough to share.
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Again it’s a matter of degree. I eat around 40 to 50 grams of carbs a day, works for me. If you have to eat more and it works for you then go for it.
Personally I have fructose malabsorption so I do no fruit and also no sucrose as it’s half fructose. I just don’t do sweet anymore, although one meal a week I eat anything I want (usually pancakes), I find that I can tolerate that. Real maple syrup instead of colored high fructose corn syrup.
Well, the problem is that you now only have to buy these fitness gear, health club subscriptions and dient books, but you actually have to use it.
That’s why you have more Christians than people who actually love their enemy.
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Indeed. I’m ostensibly obese by BMI reckoning (I probably weigh a little more than I should, but I’m in my forties for fuck’s sake. And I like beer and pies),but I’m not overweight by any means.
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