- De Vany, Arthur.
The New Evolution Diet.
New York: Rodale Books, 2011.
ISBN 978-1-60529-183-3.
-
The author is an economist best known for his research into
the economics of Hollywood films, and his demonstration that
the
Pareto distribution
applies to the profitability of Hollywood productions, empirically
falsifying many entertainment business nostrums about a correlation
between production cost and “star power” of the cast
and actual performance at the box office. When his son, and later his
wife, developed diabetes and the medical consensus treatment seemed
to send both into a downward spiral, his economist's sense for the
behaviour of complex nonlinear systems with feedback and delays caused
him to suspect that the regimen prescribed for diabetics was based
on a simplistic view of the system aimed at treating the symptoms
rather than the cause. This led him to an in depth investigation of
human metabolism and nutrition, grounded in the evolutionary heritage
of our species (this is fully documented here—indeed, almost
half of the book is end notes and source references, which should not
be neglected: there is much of interest there).
His conclusion was that our genes, which have scarcely changed in
the last 40,000 years, were adapted to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle
that our hominid ancestors lived for millions of years before
the advent of agriculture. Our present day diet and way of life
could not be more at variance with our genetic programming, so it
shouldn't be a surprise that we see a variety of syndromes, including
obesity, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and late-onset
diseases such as many forms of cancer which are extremely rare among
populations whose diet and lifestyle remain closer to those of
ancestral humans. Strong evidence for this hypothesis comes from
nomadic aboriginal populations which, settled into
villages and transitioned to the agricultural diet, promptly
manifested diseases, categorised as
“metabolic syndrome”,
which were previously unknown among them.
This is very much the same conclusion as that of
The Paleo Diet (December 2010),
and I recommend you read both of these books as they
complement one another. The present volume goes deeper into
the biochemistry underlying its dietary recommendations, and
explores what the hunter-gatherer lifestyle has to say about
the exercise to which we are adapted. Our ancestors' lives
were highly chaotic: they ate when they made a kill or found
food to gather and fasted until the next bounty. They
engaged in intense physical exertion during a hunt or battle,
and then passively rested until the next time. Modern
times have made us slaves to the clock: we do the same things
at the same times on a regular schedule. Even those who
incorporate strenuous exercise into their routine tend to
do the same things at the same time on the same days. The
author argues that this is not remotely what our heritage
has evolved us for.
Once Pareto gets into your head, it's hard to get him out.
Most approaches to diet, nutrition, and exercise (including
my own) view the human body as a
system near equilibrium. The author argues that one shouldn't
look at the mean but rather the
kurtosis
of the distribution, as it's the extremes that matter—don't
tediously “do cardio” like all of the treadmill
trudgers at the gym, but rather push your car up a hill every
now and then, or randomly raise your
heart rate
into the red zone.
This all makes perfect sense to me. I happened to finish this
book almost precisely six months after adopting my own version
of the paleo diet, not from a desire to lose weight (I'm
entirely happy with my weight, which hasn't varied much in
the last twenty years, thanks to the feedback mechanism of
The Hacker's Diet) but
due to the argument that it averts late-onset diseases and
extends healthy lifespan. Well, it's too early to form any
conclusions on either of these, and in any case you can draw
any curve you like through a sample size of one, but after
half a year on paleo I can report that my weight is stable,
my blood pressure is right in the middle of the green zone
(as opposed to low-yellow before), I have more energy, sleep
better, and have seen essentially all of the aches and pains
and other symptoms of low-level inflammation disappear. Will
you have cravings for things you've forgone when you transition
to paleo? Absolutely—in my experience it takes about
three months for them to go away. When I stopped salting my
food, everything tasted like reprocessed blaah for the first
couple of weeks, but now I appreciate the flavours below the
salt.
For the time being, I'm going to continue this paleo thing, not
primarily due to the biochemical and epidemiological arguments here,
but because I've been doing it for six months and I feel
better than I have for years. I am a creature of habit, and
I find it very difficult to introduce kurtosis into my lifestyle:
when exogenous events do so, I deem it an “entropic storm”.
When it's 15:00, I go for my one hour walk. When it's 18:00,
I eat, etc. Maybe I should find some way to introduce
randomness
into my life….
An excellent Kindle edition is available, with the
table of contents, notes, and index all properly linked to the text.
June 2011 