Deadly Harvest: The Intimate Relationship Between Our Heath and Our Food (58 page)

The Obesity and Physical Activity Connections:
Secondly, being
overweight
is strongly associated with the occurrence of cellulite. And when we say ‘overweight’ we mean a body-fat percentage more than 22% for women and 15% for men. That means that you have to be lean! Check out “Obesity” earlier in this chapter. Finally,
exercise
- and good muscle tone - are essential preventive factors. Check out Physical Activity, Chapter 5.

Cellulite is virtually unknown amongst forager peoples. Save your pocket book and instead live your life the way nature intended -- the way we say in this book. That gives you the best chance of losing that cellulite.

THE BOND EFFECT AND YOUR HEALTH

This book has been a quest to discover our human heritage, notably as it applies to our health, both physical and mental. We have used these discoveries to establish the right lifestyle pattern for human beings. On the way, we highlighted how the mismatch between today’s lifestyle and our savanna-bred ideal makes us sick in various ways. We’ve seen how the major health problems that trouble us today are, indeed, “diseases of civilization.”

However, there is no “magic bullet” to fix every disease. The human body is an extraordinary collection of incredibly intricate processes whose detail is impossible to comprehend. Fortunately, we do not need to micromanage these processes but rather focus on the big picture. Get that right, and the body, with its savanna programming, does the rest. That is the Bond Effect in action.

All this might sound too good to be true. To deflect any accusations of hubris, we acknowledge that not every condition can be cured by adopting a healthy lifestyle. Nevertheless, whether we are sick or healthy lies largely under our own control. All the evidence points to one simple conclusion: whether you are worried about cancer or heart disease or osteoporosis, the remedy is the same—adopt the Savanna Model.

Conclusion

In this book, I talk about confronting prejudices. I know what that means because I have had to confront my own. I was brought up as a vegetarian. My family conditioned me to believe that it was the “natural” state of affairs and they taught me it was “unnatural” (as well as unkind) to kill and eat animals. Nevertheless, I was sufficiently skeptical to want proof, not just assertions.

I wanted something that set out, in a rational way, just what and how we should be feeding the human organism. We thought we knew, back then in the late 1950s, that our closest cousins, the chimpanzees and other apes, were vegetarians. If nature designed their bodies for a vegetarian diet, then it seemed reasonable it so designed ours too. It would just require a little investigation to put the ideas on a scientific footing, fill in a few gaps, and identify the feeding pattern that was right for humans.

In our family, it was an article of faith that butter, honey, and whole-wheat bread were “good” (because they were “natural”); margarine, sugar and white bread were artificial and inferior. That does not sound uncontroversial, yet I had to abandon every one of these articles of faith, as well as many more.

We were still confused in 1960 about the location of the human birthplace. Although chimpanzees had been kept in zoos for over 100 years, nobody had studied them in the wild. However, for me, these were mere details, ones that were not of fundamental significance. How wrong I was! I imagined that many of the answers would lie in studying the traditional feeding patterns of indigenous, tribal peoples.

Where does one find tribal peoples? Africa seemed to be the most auspicious place to start looking, and so I spent my first post-graduate decade in the late 1960s living with a variety of indigenes: the Fulani cattle herders of Sokoto, the Hausa farmers of Kaduna, the fierce Touareg warriors of the Sahara Desert, the Berbers of Morocco and Algeria. They certainly practiced a wide variety of feeding patterns. Mostly they ate what was available and, of course, what was available was what they had traditionally grown or raised. There was no pattern to it at all. It was not as though they were particularly healthy either: they lived hard lives, often had toothless gums, and succumbed to nasty tropical diseases.

Perhaps my most disconcerting discovery was their universal yearning for meat. Animal flesh was scarce, highly prized, and much fought over. Yet, even though broccoli was scarce, no one fought over that! Moreover, I was taken aback by the sheer blood-thirsty nature of killing animals. They slit sheep’s throats and twisted off chicken’s heads with excitement and anticipation, not with distaste. The children took part and danced around in glee while the butchery took place. I was in denial that this might be a normal human activity. Influenced by Blank Slate theories, I assumed that these practices were culturally determined.

Science was moving on. Louis Leakey’s work seemed to locate the origins of the human race in east Africa. Mildly interesting, but apparently so long ago—at least a million years—as not to be significant for my purposes. But Leakey also encouraged Jane Goodall to live with the chimpanzee and Dian Fossey to live with the gorilla. Both women spent decades in the bush, carefully recording everything they could about their creature’s behavior.

Fossey confirmed that gorillas are indeed vegetarian and are shy, mostly gentle creatures. However, another species of great ape, the human ape, was not so gentle. Fossey fought against poachers who were decimating her gorilla families. Tragically, she lost her life, murdered in her Rwandan campsite, probably by the same poachers. Fortunately, she left behind a remarkable book,
Gorillas in the Mist,
and a crusading foundation dedicated to preserving the few gorillas left in the wild.

It was Jane Goodall’s work with chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, that produced an earthquake in received ideas. One day in October 1960, she saw chimps strip leaves off twigs to fashion tools for fishing termites from a nest. Scientists thought humans were the only species to make tools, but here was evidence to the contrary. Jane later observed chimps (always males) go on murderous hunting expeditions, where they caught small monkeys and bushpigs. The chimps did not simply catch the creatures—the victims were ripped limb from limb in sadistic ecstasy and consumed with gusto. The raw meat, dripping with blood, was more than a meal, it was a prize. The successful meat owner tore bits off and dropped them into the hands of his friends and allies. Encouraged by these signs, females offered themselves for mating. Here was inescapable evidence that chimpanzees were efficient hunters and enthusiastic meat-eaters. Our nearest cousin was not a gentle vegetarian as I had so fondly imagined.

Until that time, we still assumed that humans, while close to the great apes, belonged nevertheless to a separate family. Then, in 1984, Charles Sibley and Jon Ahlquist studied the DNA of apes and humans. The first shock was that humans are not a separate family, rather they fit squarely within the great ape family. Secondly, humans and chimps are on a descent of their own: they had a common ancestor only 5 million years ago. In other words, humans are on the killer-and-meat-eater branch of the ape family.

The final breakthrough came with the studies by geneticists. By the early 1990s, they made it clear that humans burst out of Africa not millions of years ago but just 60,000 years ago. In other words, our bodies were just the same as they were back then and designed by nature for life on the savannas of east Africa. The importance of this insight cannot be underestimated. The question was now very simple: what was life like for our ancestors back then and in that place? For it was there that nature forged our bodies and minds.

It dawned on me that I had been looking in the wrong place for the answers to human lifestyle and nutrition. We needed to go back to the savannas and to study peoples who still lived the way of our ancient ancestors. In 1956, Laurens van der Post aired a television series called “The Lost World of the Kalahari,” a documentary featuring the San Bushmen. It was probably the last time when African Pleistocene life could still be studied largely uncontaminated by contact with modern civilization. The San were clearly hunters as well as gatherers. As each piece of evidence thudded into place, it was obvious that “animal matter” had played an important role in our naturally adapted diet. I had to confront my last illusion and acknowledge that humans were not naturally peaceful or vegetarian.

That is the story of how I had to come to terms with a new reality. Anyone who wishes to fully understand what it means to be human in lifestyle terms will experience a similar process. This book has been a journey assembling the pieces of the puzzle—rediscovering the lost Owner’s Manual for the human species.

It is still possible to navigate your way through the challenges of modern life—to align the way you live with the way nature intended. However, the modern world is not structured in an ideal fashion. On the contrary, you are under pressure to contort yourself into a shape to fit the structure that is on offer. It is a situation well imagined by the ancient Greeks. One of their legends featured a robber called Procrustes. Procrustes
had an iron bed on which he compelled his victims to lie. If a victim did not exactly fit the bed, he stretched or amputated the body to fit. "Procrustean Bed," is proverbial for arbitrarily forcing someone to fit into an unnatural scheme.

The problem is that science, technology, commerce and economics are a runaway train rushing us headlong into a future which, if it conforms to human nature, does so only in parts and by accident. The original thinker Aldous Huxley wrote his famous and far-sighted satire, “Brave New World”
⁴⁹³
in 1931. Huxley could already see that technological change was railroading human society into a way of life that was at a ghastly discord with human nature. In his words, “…the scientist will prepare the bed on which mankind must lie; and if mankind does not fit – well, that will be just too bad for mankind. There will have to be some stretching and amputations…” In his imaginary world, set in the 26
^th
century, Huxley ironically set out the solution. If the “Procrustean Bed” could not be changed, then human nature must be engineered to fit.

Already (in 1931) Huxley observed, ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers were conniving to brainwash the population into accepting the current situation as normal. In the future, states would use greatly improved techniques of suggestion and conditioning to control a population “who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude”.

All this might sound apocalyptic yet, as we saw in chapter 5, since 1931 psycho-marketing techniques are all-pervasive. They manipulate us to behave in ways that serve the interests of the Procrustean Bed, rather than our own best interests as human beings. The plains of the Midwest produce huge quantities of grain; someone must consume it. Similar observations go for beef, sugar, potato, tobacco, soybean, milk, sunflower oil and many more. That is: what is on offer, people must be persuaded to want and buy it. And the best way to persuade them? Make them feel good about it – make them “love their servitude”. But it is an illusion: in reality it makes them sick, obese, neurotic and, in the longer term, dissatisfied and unhappy.

However, this is ultimately an optimistic book. The main message is this: you can take control of your life and lead it in ways that are in harmony with your savanna-bred nature. We have shown you the way and given you the roadmap. But you must do it for yourself, no one will do it for you. This book has been a quest to discover our humanity. Now go out—confident and proud—and just do it!

Resources

I passionately believe in the insights contained in this work. My driving motivation is to stimulate everyone, no matter what your origins and background, to improve your lives. I hope that this book has inspired and encouraged you to know more. I have created a reservoir of resources to help you put the Savanna Model principles into practice.

The Bond Effect Website

www.TheBondEffect.com

Your first port of call should be my Website:
www.TheBondEffect.com
. There you will find online support, speaking engagements, breaking news, updates, hints and tips, and much more. In addition, you can acquire access to many other support materials. Examples are:

The Bond Briefing

Everyone serious about adopting the Savanna Model will find the monthly Briefing an indispensable aid to keep focused on the essentials. Editors of food magazines cannot afford to upset their advertisers, so their editorial matter is at best bland, uncontroversial, and meaningless. The
Natural Eating
newsletter takes no advertising and so it is free to give an honest, straight-from-the-shoulder, Savanna Model viewpoint. It typically contains packed pages of hints, tips, health updates, food/disease connections, readers’ questions and answers, recipes, the Savanna Model view of breaking news, survival skills (marketing campaigns de-bunked); and much more. Subscribe at
www.TheBondEffect.com
.

The Companion Cookbook

This is my wife Nicole’s essential handmaiden to everyone living the Savanna Model way. It contains interesting, tasty, and practical recipes that fit in with the Savanna Model precepts. Available at
www.TheSavannaModel.com
.

An Introductory Guide

Originally produced for the 35,000 employees of American Standard Inc., the introductory guide is an easy overview of the Savanna Model. In 32 pages, it contains the distilled essence of the principles and practice. Produced in full color and illustrated with specially commissioned watercolors, it also makes a superb gift.