Dear Health Conscious Reader,
When you lived in your native environment, your body was a high-performance machine. You thrived on muscle meat, organ meat, fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Your heart was sturdy. Your jaw was powerful. Your lungs were strong. Your brain was dynamic. And you were quick on your feet…
Unfortunately, we don’t live in our native environment any longer.
Corn and grains migrated into modern culture, and our health changed for the worse. As we replaced high-quality animal protein and fat with a low-fat, high-carb diet, we began the largest epidemic the world has ever known, which is still upon us, and getting worse every day.
Nowhere is this change more apparent than with the American Indians. They ate a diet that was stable for millenia. Then the European settlers introduced farming and processed grains. The switch from hunting to agriculture happened in just a few hundred years – a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.
This change allowed the American Indian population to compete and become more dense, but farming made the people sick.
Here’s why …
The skeletons of North American hunter-gatherer Indians rarely exhibit cavities, arthritis, or bone problems. They had large, broad jaws and strong, powerful bodies so they could easily catch food.1
Early European settlers described natives as tall and muscular with superior endurance and strength. They healed quickly and were hard to kill. One early explorer, Cabeza de Vaca, wrote, “transversed by an arrow… he does not die but recovers from his wound.”2
Also, sickness was practically non-existent among native tribes. Dr. Romig, a former missionary doctor, spent 36 years with primitive Indians in Alaska. He wrote in his reports that during the time he spent with these people, he never saw anyone come down with a deadly disease.3
But humans are not meant to eat grains or processed foods. Our bodies don’t recognize things like corn and bread as sources of food.
Consequently, the remains of farming American Indians don’t show strong and powerful bodies like the hunter-gatherers before them. They are shorter and show signs of tooth decay and bone problems. They even have smaller skulls!4
When the Indians sacrificed quality protein for quantity grain, they went from eating tough, hard foods to softer foods like bread and processed corn. Their jaws didn’t have to work as much to chew these softer foods. And over time, their skulls started to shrink.
This evolutionary change resulted in tooth crowding, tooth decay, fat gain, arthritis, heart disease, inflammation, shortened stature, and shorter life spans… and not just for American Indians.
You’re going through the same changes.
A native way of eating is essential for balance within your body. Below are some tips on how to eat more like the hunter-gatherer American Indians to increase your strength and energy.
Step 1: Focus all your meals around high-quality animal protein. You should eat a large variety, and plan your meals around which kind of protein you’ll be eating.
The American Indians ate whatever they could catch, and that means their animal meat was far more diverse than the beef and chicken that dominates our modern diet. They ate duck, buffalo, deer, beaver, squirrel, quail, pheasant, turkey, fish, shellfish, snake, turtle, frog, and rabbit. The variety and quality of the protein helped them stay sturdy and fit.
Step 2: Fruits and vegetables, not grains, should make up your carbohydrates. And the more variety you can get the better. Eating seasonally grown produce is a good idea, because it’ll be local and not frozen or imported from long distances.
Not all fruits and vegetables were available year-round to the American Indians. They ate whatever was naturally growing. You can find seasonal produce at local farmers markets and natural food stores like Whole Foods.
Step 3: Watch what you snack on. Make your snacks natural.
American Indians snacked on berries, nuts, and other treats like pumpkin seeds. These snacks are full of essential vitamins and minerals to help keep you energized throughout the day.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
- Price W. “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration,” Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation 1999. 73-102.
- Necomb WW, The Indians of Texas. The University of Texas 1961.
- Price W. “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration,” Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation 1999. 91.
- Douglass W. The Milk Book, Second Opinion Publishing 1994. 215.
- Grant WB et al, “The Association of Solar Ultraviolet B (UVB) with Reducing Risk of Cancer: Multifactorial Ecologic
Analysis of Geographic Variation in Age-adjusted Cancer Mortality Rates,” Anticancer Research, 2006; 26:2687-2700. - Lappe JM, Travers-Gustafson D, Davies KM, Recker RR, Heaney RP. “Vitamin D and Calcium Supplementation Reduces Cancer Risk: Results of a Randomized Trial.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. (2007) 85.6 1586-1591.