Man's World Issue 1

So where does that leave us trying to
understand how best to eat today?
One problem with modernity’s
philosophical core is that we
understand ourselves as individuals
first, not bound fully with kin,
ancestors and those yet to be born.
Dieting today is mostly for one’s self,
sometimes with a thought to being
healthy for your loved ones.
The argument I’ve outlined for grains
also applies to pretty much every
source of carbohydrates, including
honey and tubers.
Honey in particular is highly prized by
modern foraging societies and young
men go to extreme lengths to scale
trees and withstand thousands of
stings to retrieve honey for their
people.
But the time spans of our deep past
are beyond comprehension. The
difference between 19,000 and
28,000 BP is fairly little to an
archaeologist, but 9,000 years is all
of recorded history.
So to truly grasp how our diets have
evolved over several million years
means ignoring the individual and
focusing on populations. It's one
thing to go on a keto or carnivore
diet today, but would you want your
pregnant or breastfeeding wife to
join you? Your toddlers? Your aging
parents? Those who are sick,
immobile or infirm?
To understand the role of
carbohydrates in the human diet we
should be thinking about all stages of
life, and not just how they affect
healthy young males. Again, to be
clear, I’m not saying you need to eat
bread to be healthy, but I’m saying
that breads and grains should not be
excluded from everyone’s diet in the
name of purity or aping our
ancestors.
A Hadza hunter with honeycomb
and bee larvae
During the rainy season the Mbuti
people of the Congo eat up to 80% of
their daily calories in honey, and it's
not unusual for groups such as the
Hadza to eat around 15% of their
daily calories in honey all year round.
MAN'S WORLD 112