The latest diet announcement in the national Health news arena reports the possible benefits of a Low Carbohydrate Diet. A study was conducted by researchers at the University of Tulane who tracked large groups of low-carb, versus low-fat dieters for a year, and then compared their overall weight loss and health. Per their study, the low-carb diet seemed to be a much healthier way to eat. The ‘carbs’ that were lowered in the study were those found in white bread, white rice, and potato products – essentially refined starches and sugars.
I believe this is a perfect place to get Steppen’s perspective, and also see if it is consistent with the overall viewpoint I’m trying to present.
Let’s start with Steppen’s relationship to carbohydrates. The amount of carbohydrates available to Steppen, for the better part of the six months of from October through March of every year, since he lives in northern Europe just after the last ice-age, were ZERO. They were just not available – there were no berries, there were no carrots, no beans, nothing that contained sugar or starch (refined or otherwise) – because it was winter. Steppen, and the tribe, ate whatever animals were killed (meat is protein, not carbs), and whatever nuts were gathered (nuts are fats). When spring and summer came, there were choices of vegetables – when they could be found, but the tribe could eat a patch of anything tasty in fairly quick time. Wheat, and the ability to make bread, didn’t make it to northern Europe until after the Romans settled part of those lands, only a few thousand years ago. Rice and potatoes are even later to the north European dietary dance.
Steppen was as healthy through the winter months as he was through the summer ones, because the animals he ate not only contained protein and fat, but their organs contained those other essential vitamins and minerals his body required. The animals that he hunted and ate were certainly not unhealthy just because it was winter.
The first point being, that Steppen, and most of the inhabitants of northern Europe, went at least half of each year without carbohydrates. The second is that this is probably also part of your own ancestral-dietary history. And lastly, most of the changes to the dietary regimen of your ancestors have happened fairly recently – maybe six to eight thousand years ago if your DNA is from the Mediterranean Sea area, and only the last few thousand years if your heritage is north of there. So where does that lead us regarding the Human need for carbohydrates in the diet? And what are they?
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Here are some interesting conclusions and facts regarding carbohydrates from the National Agricultural Library on the USDA website:
In 2007, the governments of Canada and the United States jointly commissioned an unprecedented study. They both saw the need for a definitive guide to Nutrition Standards for food produced, and eaten, in North America. The resulting collection research projects are called the “Dietary Reference Intake Reports”, and the individual studies try to set ‘minimum daily requirements’ for all the nutrients, vitamins, and amino- acids that we consume. Their first report (2009) was on Vitamin D and Calcium, and they have been producing them, in some form, ever since.
This is a small bit of the report on DIETARY CARBOHYDRATES. The chapter on Sugars and Starches begins on page 265 where their summary is stated in the first paragraph. The first two sentences are:
“The primary role of carbohydrates (sugars and starches) is to provide energy to cells in the body, particularly the brain, which is the only carbohydrate-dependent organ in the body (my italics). The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for carbohydrate is set at 130 g/d for adults and children based on the average minimum amount of glucose utilized by the brain.”
Let’s stop right there and think about that for a minute. That would be over 30 packs of sugar per day (an average US sugar pack is about 4 grams, so 130/4=32.5)! So I think any rational person would be wary of at least that part of their advice right away. Steppen can’t conceive of that much sugar. Maybe if he ate an entire bee-hive himself, but every day? The tribe might find and share only one or two a year – maybe. But let’s go on…
Back to the report: Ten pages later, on Page 275 are the concluding remarks labeled – The Clinical Effects of Inadequate Intake (meaning, what happens if you don’t get enough carbohydrates?) – The very first sentence is:
“The lower limit of dietary carbohydrate compatible with life apparently is zero (my bold), provided that adequate amounts of protein and fat are consumed.”
!!! This is key. This is so important. Their sentence structure is convoluted, but the basic truth is there, just as it is in their research that follows. They looked at current tribes around the world that had remained relatively un-touched by modern civilization, and those that had seasonal, or almost no sugar resources. Then they, just like many others, found that there is no external sugar that is essential to human life. None. We can be healthy Humans, and even thrive without sugar ever touching our lips. Even though there are essential minerals, essential vitamins, and essential amino-acids, it bears repeating, there are NO essential sugars.
So, Steppen is already on the low-carb diet. Research shows that prior to the introduction of wheat, which is mostly starch/carbohydrates (remember, plants store their excess sugar as starch, animals and Humans store theirs as fat), many people lived long healthy productive lives of 60 years and more. They were also taller on average, and probably did not carry any fat. Think of the tales of the Romans battling the Northern tribes, look at the sculptures the Romans carved of their fierce “barbaric” foes – those are the bodies of a rational Human diet. Think of how low they held out against the legions upon legions of much better armed, but wheat fed, Romans.
Actually, rational or not, the low-carb diet is the one constant that dominated the development of north-European Humans for a tens of thousands of years. Wheat, and other grains changed all that, because they were the first sugars/carbs that could be kept all winter, and I will talk about them later.
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And now for those of you who want more Carbohydrate details:
Carbohydrates are such a basic part of life that we, as Humans, create our own. It is called glucose, and you can measure the amount of it in your blood anytime through a host of simple electronic monitoring devices. They are available almost everywhere, and they are cheap because we, as a culture, have so many people with blood-sugar problems.
Interestingly, the “normal morning” reading for one of those blood sugar meters is in the range of 70 – 120 ish. So, 70 or 120 what? It means 70 milligrams of glucose, per 1 deciliter of blood.
Now, the average human body (150 lbs. or so) holds about 5 liters (which is about the same as 5 quarts) of blood, and if you have a reading of 90 at mid-morning… what does that mean?
Through the magic of math, 90 mg/1dl is the same as 450mg/50dl, which, is still the same as 4.5 grams/per 5 liters.
> So, a 90 reading means you have 4.5 grams of sugar mixed into your 5 liters of blood. A 220 reading (early diabetic) would mean 110 grams of sugar in your blood. (For a quick estimate, just multiply the reading by 5, and adjust the decimal point to the rational position).
Now, in the U.S. the average table-top sugar-pack contains just about 4 grams of sugar. Leading to the conclusion that a “normal” person, like you and me, has the equivalent of just barely over ONE – let me say that again, ONE – pack of sugar in his blood at the start of the day. The early diabetic with the 220 reading has over 27 packs of sugar in his blood!
AND, the low numbers, the 70’s and the 90’s, are the numbers that our bodies are constantly trying to return to. Our body does this by having our little, itty-bitty, pancreas release enough insulin to regulate any excess sugar that makes our blood rise above that “base” level. The function of the pancreas is to release enough insulin into the blood so that hopefully, within about 2 hours, the blood-sugar level has returned to “normal”. If our bodies needed constant excess sugar, evolution would probably not have created an organ to regulate it so quickly. I just read an article that indicates bears are able to “turn off” their insulin production in the fall, so that they can gain fat for hibernation. The article also said that while they are hibernating, an insulin dose can kill them.
A normal, healthy shot of insulin has one purpose – get the excess sugar out of the blood as fast as possible. And to do this, it has three options, 1) try to find any muscles that need the sugar (even though, for most of us, none do – because there is already a more than adequate amount of sugar in the system, and few of us are doing anything physical enough to require more), 2) send as much sugar to the kidneys as possible where it can make its exit as colorful yellow urine (ever notice how much you have to pee after eating sweets?), or 3) store it as fat for possible later use.
When the pancreas can’t keep up the battle, or the body stops making its own sugar because, really, why would it need to nowadays? – Diabetes is the label for the resulting disease.
It doesn’t mean that I will stop putting sugar in my coffee, but it does make me wonder how hard I have been making my poor little pancreas work for all these years, versus Steppen and most of the rest of my ancestors (I wonder what their “base” level was?).
Paleo-opolis 