Nowadays it seems as though I cannot open the metaphorical pages of any online newspaper without seeing another article about the evils of sugar by a journalist who has given it up, at least for a month. Sugar is the new devil food. Not just obvious sugar like high fructose corn syrup, or Tate and Lyle's finest refined crystals, but hidden sugar, the added chemical sweetness that lurks in tomato ketchup and breakfast cereal, and the deadly natural sugar that pollutes fruit, and even the dastardly latent sugar waiting to be released as bread or porridge are digested. Sugar, you see, is not natural. Our hunter gatherer ancestors did not eat high fructose corn syrup, or refined sugar, or even wheat, and our bodies are not adapted to sugar. It will rot our brains, send us mad, and kill us via myriad diseases, not just diabetes and the obvious muscular-skeletal hazards of being the size of a house, but even dementia.
I rather suspect that our ancestors did eat fruit, when they could get it, but it is true they did not gorge themselves on refined sugar beet or maize, or even oat grains. It is probably a good idea not to overdo sugar. You don't need that many concentrated calories, unless you are a Norwegian cross country skier or a lumberjack, and the stories about the effects of high fructose corn syrup on the brain and endocrine system do sound pretty alarming. But insisting on recasting porridge as dangerous devil food because our distant ancestors did not eat grains is a step too far for me. After all, why stop there?
Our Paleolithic forbears did not have central heating. Their caves or animal skin tents or mud huts or whatever they lived in were undoubtedly much colder than our modern homes. It's a fair bet that living in artificially heated surroundings is disrupting our metabolisms in all sorts of as-yet-to-be-determined ways, and if we were to give up this dangerous modern practice and return to life at the natural, ambient temperature for the time of year I'm sure that would yield metabolic and cardiovascular benefits.
Hot water and soap, there's another dangerous modern invention. We did not evolve to scrub our skins regularly, removing their natural oils. The rise in allergies is almost certainly due to this unhealthy practice, and the sooner we all revert to the natural, unwashed state, the better. Social communication will become more honest and complete, as we are able to detect one another's true odours, unmasked by synthetic chemicals, and society will be more harmonious as a result.
We no longer enjoy the periodic adrenaline boost that comes from being ambushed by a charging bison or woolly mammoth. In the absence of these large and dangerous animals, a similar effect could be achieved if we were all to dash periodically across our dual carriageways at random intervals, thus achieving a similar mixture of uncertainty and extreme hazard, depending on traffic flow.
There again, we could conclude that life as our stone age ancestors was not all it's cracked up to be, and that the odd bowl of pasta or digestive biscuit is probably OK, in moderation.
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