Uncivilized Nutrition
For hundreds of years, so-called Western Civilization has been exploring distant parts of the globe and trying to bring the “primitive natives” up to our standards of life. We teach them to wear our type of clothes, even if their weather does not require it. We teach them to live in our type of houses, even if their type can be built from free local materials. And we teach them to eat like us. I’m not sure we’re right about that either.
I am no anthropologist, but I’ve read my share of National Geographic magazines, and watched perhaps more than my share of sociological documentaries, and I’ve noticed something in common among hunter/gatherer societies: not everyone eats the same thing.
Often, the hunter whose successful throw brought down the beast gets a choice piece of lean protein, generally the heart. Then the rest of the hunters get their share, and again it tends to be taken from the lean muscle. The rest of the community then shares the fattier meat and the more mineral-rich organs, like the liver and kidneys. The tougher cuts of meat, if there is any left over, get dried or stewed for later use, along with the fruit, vegetables and seeds gathered by the women and children.
Oh, says Western Civilization, this is so unfair! Why should the women eat liver while the men eat steak! We must teach them equality.
I suspect this is wrongheaded of us. The tribe members do not all have the same physiology, and they do not all pursue the same activity; why then should we assume they all have the same nutritional needs? Same is not the same as equal.
In fact, Western Civilization knows this. Not from our sociologists, but from our nutritionists.
The hunters are young to middle-aged men, getting a large amount of physical exercise. People on an intensive exercise program benefit from extra protein.
The gatherers are mainly the women and children. They engage in less muscle-building activities, and so don’t need quite as much protein. They do need lots of iron though, which they can get from organ meat. (Too much iron can be poisonous to adult men.) Healthy women and children can safely carry a higher fat level than healthy men, so eating the fattier meat is not as much a hazard to their health if they are also living a fairly active lifestyle. They also need more vitamins than men need, so the fruit and nuts they snack on while gathering supplies for the tribe are a benefit to their health.
And what of the elderly and the frail? They also benefit from the extra minerals in the non-hunter diet, and from the mix of fresh fruit and greens brought in by the women and the tender, simmered, marrow-rich meat cooked down from the bones after the hunt.
It looks to me like the uncivilized diet is more balanced than the civilized one. It is balanced in a way which respects the different roles and needs of different people. Same is not the same as equal. And as any good teacher will tell you, when you are trying to teach people, you really should pay attention to what you can learn from them too.