heartofthebear said:
OaktownBear said:
Anarchistbear said:
I wonder if all those native Americans wiped out by imported European pathogens had dietary problems.
Exactly
Actually they did have dietary problems.
Many peoples living tribally without benefit of agriculture and without availability of fresh produce in the winter had to rely on hunting. Meat acidifies the body to a great extent and introduces microbes that invite disease. The reason why there were not so many major pandemics back then is that migration and population was limited.
These days, we have the capability of controlling our diet, which is a great luxury compared to our long history. We should take advantage of it.
I have a great respect for the native Americans but diet is not one of them. And many today are suffering from diabetes.
It is under-reported that early Europeans in the America's prior to the pilgrims were pretty brutal, enslaving the natives to help them acquire gold. Columbus' motivation for coming to America was gold. He was in terrible debt and the queen sponsored his trip for the purposes of getting gold.
It's possible that the rape, torture and enslavement of the people's weakened them genetically and physically and made them more susceptible to disease.
In any case, there is no evidence that a peaceful co-existence between Europeans and Natives in America with both eating a plant based diet would have resulted in the Natives being wiped out by disease.
So I'm not sure what your point is exactly.
This is why I should not come on this site. It just kills any shred of faith I have in humanity. I have no idea where you have gotten any of the above. It is so completely wrong. I have a degree in Anthropology. Your view of Native Americans is plain ignorant and you cannot write that and then say you respect them.
1. Their diet today when the few that are left have been shoved onto reservations, their cultures have been destroyed and the land they have is the worst possible land bears no resemblance to what they had before. Native Americans on reservations are dirt poor, have terrible diets, and alcoholism is rampant. Their diabetes today has nothing to do with anything.
2. Native Americans were not monolithic. They were many cultures just as in Europe. But the vast majority were not hunter gatherers living "tribally" without agriculture. There were large scale cities all over North and South America. Not just the Mayans and the Aztecs and the Incans. All over. Major cities as in the same size as European cities. The image of them huddled in fields in tepees is bullshyte.
3. Native Americans were absolute masters of agriculture. Their ability to cross breed plants, fruits and vegetables into higher quality crops was light years ahead of anything in the old world. Their food quickly replaced much of the European diet because it was so much better. Have you ever seen the original corn plant? It basically looks like a blade of wheat. They created corn, tomatoes and many, many fruits and vegetables. These are not things they picked from the natural environment. They bred many, many species. They had plenty of crops and most had an overwhelmingly plant based diet. They had very few domesticated animals because the animals in North America were not suited for domestication. Outside of the bison, on the North American plains they did not rely very much on big game.
4. You have two continents worth of varied cultures with varied diets. Much of those continents have temperate weather year round that are suitable for growing food year round. And your premise here is that none of them got it right. They all had bad diets. That is what you are going with? Actually that is what you are going with world wide. That in the history of mankind, no one has ever put together your diet. Indians (from India) eat almost entirely plant based, but, oh, yes. They eat spices. Every disease that has traversed the world would have been wiped out if only we had better diets.
5. Why were Native Americans not subject to pandemics before contact with Europeans? See humans living with domesticated livestock is a petri dish for the development of diseases. Very few cultures outside of Europe were reliant on livestock prior to contact because most animals that were easily domesticated were in Europe and West Asia. Quite simply, Europeans got the diseases first. They had built up their immune systems. What happened to Native Americans also happened to Africans. They had no immunity to the large numbers of diseases Europeans had in their population so it ran roughshod through them.
6. It is well known that Native Americans were enslaved, especially by the Spanish and treated poorly. No, it is not possible that a tiny drop in the gene pool from a few Spaniards raping some people caused genetic weakness in two continents worth of millions and millions of people. That is ridiculous. And in any case, the impact of diseases was pretty much immediate from contact, even with Columbus.
7. Almost no hunter gatherer cultures had a largely meat, fish, and/or dairy based diet.
8. Meat doesn't acidify the body. Too much meat acidifies the body. Americans eat too much meat.
9. Evolution works to adapt the body to the diet it has available to it. You feed a dog all plants and it will get sick. Evolution is a slow process. It isn't that slow. For instance, adult humans by and large are not designed to eat dairy. But adult humans that come from dairy consuming cultures (Europeans) have adapted to consume dairy. Their bodies break down dairy in a way that other populations don't. That is over about 10K years. The human body is not adapted for the diet you are proposing. For literally 3 million years, humans and their ancestors have eaten a largely plant based diet supplemented with meat. Get naturally occurring fat and sugar wherever you can, and largely eat grains, nuts, roots and vegetables. Here is the thing. Our brains started growing. Brains require tons and tons of energy. They are a huge calorie suck. You cannot grow them without lots of calories. Gorilla's eat largely leaves. Chimps have a more varied diet and will occasionally grab a monkey. Our ancestors couldn't do that. They needed a source of easily digestible food to support their brains. So literally 4-6 million years ago they started scavenging meat, because basically they had to. Our brains got bigger and bigger. We needed more calories that were easy to digest. So well over a million years ago, homo erectus, with a much bigger brain than its predecessors, learned how to cook its food. Cooking food essentially prepares it for easy digestion. We could not have evolved as we did, specifically the brain that we did, without supplementing our food with meat and by cooking both meat and plants. You eat a diet of raw fruits and vegetables in nature you die and the human species with you. Our bodies are not evolved to eat the diet you are proposing. You have to go back 4-6 million years to find an ancestor that had a diet that was raw plant based. You have to go back infinity to find an ancestor that lived on raw fruit because I'm pretty sure we don't have any in our lineage. It makes no sense that the human body would run most efficiently on a diet that it has never had. The diet you are championing is counter to the diet humans evolved to process.
Quote:
In any case, there is no evidence that a peaceful co-existence between Europeans and Natives in America with both eating a plant based diet would have resulted in the Natives being wiped out by disease.
This is like saying (for Harry Potter fans) that I have no evidence that the resurrection stone doesn't exist unless I test every stone on earth to see if it brings back the dead. I have no evidence that feeding the Native Americans Froot Loops and Twinkies wouldn't have stopped the disease by your reasoning. Only I do. Never in the history of the world have communicable diseases been stopped by diet. Over and over they have been stopped by vaccines or herd immunity. We know how viruses spread. Diet is not a key vector in the spread. Your experts are not experts. They tell a good story. (and mostly make a lot of cash) Largely they take truth - eating healthy makes you healthier and boosts your immune system - add a bunch of stuff that sounds good to people who don't understand the mechanisms, and then make even bigger claims. You will not find a double blind study that supports their theories. You will not find a longitudinal study that supports their theories.
Do I think you actively don't care about your fellow man? No. That isn't enough. I'm sorry. You can be magnanimous that well we both believe what we believe and we both have experts. I won't be. Because we don't. There is no both siderism here. You don't have real experts. There is no scientific evidence to back up your claims. I'm happy to agree to disagree, but this is not an opinion thing. When it comes to vaccines I am right and you are wrong. And your wrong kills people whether you want to believe it or not. You cannot cure cancer with green juice. You cure it with cancer treatment. You cannot stop viruses with diet. They stop with herd immunity. That is brought on by vaccines or death. There is so much evidence for that fact that I should not have to have this discussion.
I respect your diet a lot. I think you are probably one of the healthiest people here. I think a lot of your reasoning is off, but for the most part it is infinitely better than most diets people in America eat. But there are limitation to what diet can do. Diet is not a replacement for vaccines.
