reaction and a severe allergic reaction, or even anaphylactic shock. People in the baking industry frequently develop a condition called baker’s asthma. There is also a peculiar condition called wheat-derived exercise-induced anaphylaxis (WDEIA), a severe and life-threatening allergy induced by exercising after eating wheat. Both conditions are caused by an allergy to gliadin proteins.17 Many other proteins have undergone changes over the last 40 years: lipid transfer proteins, omega-gliadins, gamma-gliadins, trypsin inhibitors, serpins and glutenins. All trigger allergic reactions.
Life Outside the Grain Mooovement
The start of grain consumption for humans coincides with the dawn of the domestication of livestock. We learned that some herbivorous species, such as aurochs and ibex, when confined and allowed to reproduce in captivity, could be put into the service of the human diet. While we were domesticating these creatures into cows and goats, they showed us that their diet of grasses was also something we could try to mimic. They also contributed to human diseases by giving us smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, and rhinoviruses that cause the common cold.
While much of the world followed the lead of grazing ruminants and adopted a diet increasingly reliant on the seeds of grasses, not all cultures took this 10,000-year dietary detour. A number of hunter-gatherer societies throughout the world never embraced grains, relying instead on traditional omnivorous menus. The diets followed by such societies therefore largely reflect the diets of pre-Neolithic humans, i.e., diets that pre-date the development of agriculture. The modern world has, over the past few hundred years, encroached on these primitive societies, particularly if their land or other resources were prized. (Think Native Americans and Canadians of the Pacific Northwest or Aboriginal populations of Australia.) Each instance provides a virtual laboratory to observe what happens to health when there is a shift from a traditional grain-free to a modern grain-filled diet.
We have cultural anthropologists and field-working doctors to thank for such insights. Scientists have studied, for instance, the San of southern Africa, Kitavan Islanders of Papua New Guinea and the Xingu peoples of the Brazilian rainforest, all of whom consume foods obtained from their unique habitats. None consume modern processed foods, of course, meaning no grains, no added sugars, no hydrogenated oils, no preservatives and no artificial food colouring. People following their ancestral diets consistently demonstrate low body weight and body mass index (BMI); freedom from obesity; normal blood pressure; normal blood sugar and insulin responses; lower leptin levels (the hormone of satiety); and better bone health.18 Body mass index, reflecting a ratio of weight to height, is typically 22 or less, compared with our growing ranks of people with BMIs of 30 or more, with 30 representing the widely accepted cutoff for obesity. The average blood pressure of a Xingu woman is 102/66 mmHg, compared with our typical blood pressures of 130/80 or higher. The Xingu experience less osteoporosis and fewer fractures.
The Hadza of northern Tanzania are a good example of a hunter-gatherer society that, despite contact with Westerners, has clung to traditional methods of procuring food.19 The women dig for roots and gather edible parts of plants, while the men hunt with bows and poison-tipped arrows and gather honey from bees. The average BMI of this population? Around 20, with vigour maintained into later life, as grandparents help rear grandchildren while mothers gather and prepare food. Despite a lifestyle that appears physically demanding on the surface, the total energy expenditure of the Hadza is no different to that of modern people – not greater or less than, say, an average accountant or schoolteacher.20 Activity is parcelled a bit differently, of course, with hunter-gatherers tending to experience bursts of intense activity, followed by prolonged rest, and modern cultures gradually playing out activity throughout the day, but detailed analyses of energy expenditure among primitive people show virtually no difference. This challenges the notion that modern excess weight gain can be blamed on increasingly sedentary lifestyles.21 (Note that this is not true for all hunter-gatherer cultures; the Luo and Kamba of rural Kenya, for instance, exhibit high levels of energy expenditure. The point is that differences in weight are not solely explained by differences in energy expenditure.)
Humans are adaptable creatures, as the wide variety of diets consumed worldwide attests. Some rely almost exclusively on the flesh, organs and fat of animals, such as the traditional Inuits of the northernmost Pacific Northwest of North America. Some diets are high in starches from roots (such as yams, sweet potatoes, taro and tapioca) and fruit, as with the Kitavans of Papua New Guinea or the Yanomami of the Brazilian rain-forest.
The incorporation of foods from the mammary glands of bovines has provoked expression of a lactase-persistence gene that allows some adults to consume milk, cheese and other products that contain the sugar lactase after the first few years of life – an advantage for survival. The seminomadic Maasai people of central Africa are a notable example. Largely herders of goats, sheep and cattle, they traditionally consume plentiful raw meat and the blood of cows mixed with milk, and they’ve done so for thousands of years. This lifestyle allows them to enjoy freedom from cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes and excess weight.22
This is the recurring theme throughout primitive societies: A traditional diet, varied in composition and high in nutrient content but containing no grains or added sugars, allows people to enjoy freedom from all the chronic ‘diseases of affluence’. Even cancer is rare.23 This is not to say that people following traditional lifestyles don’t succumb to disease; of course they do. But the range of ailments is entirely different. They suffer infections such as malaria, dengue fever and nematode infestations of the gastrointestinal tract, as well as traumatic injuries from falls, battles with humans and animals, and lacerations, reflecting the hazards of living without modern tools, conveniences, central governments or modern health care.
What happens when a culture that has avoided the adoption of agriculture and grain consumption is confronted with modern breads, biscuits and crisps? This invasion by modern foods has played out countless times on a worldwide stage, with the same results each and every time: weight gain and obesity to an astounding degree, tooth decay, gingivitis and periodontitis, tooth loss, arthritis, hypertension, diabetes, and depression and other psychiatric conditions – all the modern diseases of affluence. Like a broken record, this same refrain has played over and over again in varied populations, on every continent.
It has been observed in Pima Indians of the American Southwest, where 40 to 50 per cent of adults are obese and diabetic, many toothless.24 It has been observed in native tribes of Arizona, Oklahoma and the Dakotas, resulting in 54 to 67 per cent of the population being overweight or obese.25 Peoples inhabiting circumpolar regions of Canada and Greenland have all experienced dramatic increases in obesity and diabetes.26 In Pacific Islanders, such as the Micronesian Nauru, 40 per cent of adults are obese with diabetes.27 Modernized diets have put Australian Aboriginal populations in especially desperate health straits, with 22 times the risk of complications of diabetes, 8 times higher cardiovascular mortality, and 6 times greater mortality from stroke compared with non-Aboriginal Australians.28
Until recently, the Maasai of central Africa, Samburu of Kenya and Fulani of Nigeria showed virtually no overweight or obesity, no hypertension and low total cholesterol values (125 mg/dl). When relocated to urban settings, hypertension and obesity explode, with 55 per cent overweight or obese.29 Former hunter-gatherers develop iron deficiency anaemia and folate deficiency as they transition away from hunting game and gathering wild vegetation and rely on purchased foods, especially corn.30 Dr Roberto Baruzzi, a Brazilian doctor, studied hunter-gatherers of the Xingu region of Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s and found slender people with no discernible excess body fat, no diabetes, no cardiovascular disease, no ulcers and no appendicitis. A repeat survey in 2009, following 30 years of contact with modern food, found 46 per cent of the people overweight or obese, 25 per cent of the men hypertensive, and most with abnormalities of cholesterol panels (such as low HDL cholesterol or high triglycerides) and rampant dental decay.31 Another recent assessment of Aruák natives of the Xingu region documented 66.8 per cent of men and women as overweight
