Akimel O'odham (River Pima) native Americans. A study by Gary Nabhan, Desert Botanical Garden, Tucson.
When the Pima were fed their traditional diet of wild beans, cactus pads, (traditional wild) corn, and wild nuts, blood sugar levels rose gradually and insulin response remained correspondingly low.
Blood sugar was then tested following a meal of modern sweet corn, white bread, and other western foods. Blood sugar levels rose rapidly and a high insulin response occurred. High levels of insulin secretion by the pancreas may be damaging to the pancreas and contribute to diabetes (the inability to produce sufficient insulin).
Why the blood sugar rate of increase differential?
Similar blood sugar results were found in a study of aborigines in Australia by Anne Thorburn.
What are the underlying causes that lead to high rates of non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM)? Is NIDDM known to be heritable.
A genetic mutation in the Pima was found to create an altered protein which led to lowered basal metabolic rate (~83 calories lower per day).
Lowered metabolic rates mean you use less food calories per day and makes it easier for you to become fat. Why would some societies have this mutation and not other societies? The theory: lowered basal metabolic means you use less food to stay alive. Fat is stored food. During a famine fat people with low metabolic rates are thought to be more likely to survive: e.g. after a typhoon or during a long canoe voyage across the Pacific.
In Africa: Botemi and Masai eat meat, and drink milk and cattle blood as their food staples. Called the "worlds worst diet," the Batemi and Masai consume up to ten times the recommended daily intake of cholesterol. Yet they have normal cholesterol levels until they move to Nairobi (the capital city) and switch to western diets. Then they get high cholesterol and heart disease.
Why? Meat is traditionally cooked in milk with the bark of Acacia goetzei and Albizia anthelmintice. Barks have no particular flavor, but are added due to "tradition." It turns out that the barks lower cholesterol levels. Now the Masai did not know this, they only know that the barks helpd make their people healthier.
Traditionally, active individuals ran a calorie deficit during working days (fishing, farming)1 which was offset by calorie surplus days on feast/festival days. The result was a level of fitness.
1. Meals were either irregular and light or involved lots of work to create (except sashimi).
Modern office dwelling Samoans now eat according to a Western 3 meal a day schedule, plus weekend feasting. Result: obesity.
1805 A.J. von Krusentern visited Nukuhiva in the Marquesas
"From ten to fifteen paces from their houses are several holes, paved with stones, covered with leaves. In these are their provisions: baked fish, sour taro root and breadfruit dough. One pit was 25 feet deep filled with 'ma', the name of the 'pudding'"
First harvest of breadfruit went to the chief: food reinforced chiefly authority, respect.
Food preparation may involve important rituals that serve to reinforce one's cultural identity and ties to community.
(Famine foods and Metroxylon sago palm starch)
In times of famine societies often turn to older turn to older foods, wild foods, foods that may date back to their hunter gatherer times. These foods may also be consumed in present time by children and, in some cases adults.
Food as cultural comforter: the special foods of home and hearth.
The modern age: A world of McDonalds, a word without a comfort foods of home and hearth....
Food: part of the ties of family that bind.
Food stories and legends.
Traditional lunch in Indonesian village. 54 plants present (food; seasonings)
McDonalds: 8 to 10.