Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
Mind Muscle with Simon de Veer
Historical Diets and Their Modern Counter Parts
As the tendrils of technology continue to entwine our daily lives, we engage with the wisdom of Hannah Arendt, pondering the risks of blurring fact with fiction and the consequences this holds for the integrity of our society. Reflecting on the decline of book reading amidst the rise of visual-spatial intelligence, this episode contemplates how these shifts in cognitive skills, aided by tech, might be altering our thoughts and interactions. I'll also share my personal insight on transforming my commute into a university on wheels, championing the educational prowess of audiobooks as a stepping stone to learning 50 books a year.
We cap off this intellectual feast by juxtaposing ancient dietary practices with their modern interpretations, like the Paleo diet, and explore the enduring wisdom of the Mediterranean diet. From Rome's strategic grain distribution to the nutritional trends swaying our plates today, we discuss the importance of not being seduced by fad diets or misinformation. Embracing whole, natural foods remains a consistent thread in our journey toward health, with a call to remain humble in our pursuit of nutritional science. So join us, as we embark on a rich exploration that promises to satiate your hunger for both knowledge and well-being.
Producer: Thor Benander
Editor: Luke Morey
Intro Theme: Ajax Benander
Intro: Timothy Durant
For more, visit Simon at The Antagonist
Welcome to the Mind Muscle Podcast. He is your host, simon Devere, and welcome back to Mind Muscle, the place we study the history, science and philosophy behind everything in health and fitness. Today I'm Simon Devere and there is nothing new except all that has been forgotten. All right, big, deep dive. Coming on nutrition today, I actually want to hit it from two different angles, though. Main topic probably already saw it on the show description, but we are, of course, going to look at historical diets and their modern counterparts. But then I also want to stretch the definition of diet and I actually want to open up before we get into that discussion. We are going to talk a little bit about information diets, how we can improve that, namely through reading more books. But anyway, big nutrition topic today we're going to talk the information and the real diets.
Speaker 1:I didn't even prep this, but just before I came in, I just hit a workout. I was at the gym and since I've been kind of railing on some bad behavior in gyms, I just wanted to share a story that this doesn't necessarily fit into bad behavior, but yeah, so I was. What exercise was I doing? Anyway, I was on a bench doing some dumbbell presses and the guy next to me accidentally dropped a dumbbell and it rolled, didn't touch me, but it got kind of close to my workout station and he was incredibly apologetic and it was actually funny to me because the words out of his mouth were oh my God, I swear that's never happened to me before and I don't know. I felt like I was like his wife or something like that. But no, the only reason I brought it up was that. So, in response to him, I just told him about how many times I've dropped weights, made sure he knew that, hey, not a big deal happens a lot, especially when I'm sweaty. So again, just a small interaction between two people. But I just thought it was valuable to normalize showing our mistakes.
Speaker 1:I feel like so often today we are curating our life experiences for audiences on certain online platforms and a lot of times we aren't actually telling the truth in that or even if it's true, we're selectively showing the best moments, the best angles, etc. So anyway, I could just tell this guy felt bad and embarrassed and, rather than piling on, I just felt like it was a good time for me to actually just kind of normalize the fact that I also make mistakes and I don't know, it was easy because the weight didn't hit me. Maybe if it hit me I would have been in a worse mood, but I know. Anyway, I just wanted to open up on the top what let's normalize, showing our mistakes and our actual authentic nature instead of what we have called authenticity. In the era of social media I've just found with communication, it often helps for me to show my weaknesses, my vulnerabilities, for people to accept anything I have to say, because if I don't show that first, then I just kind of look like some preachy, you know, quite frankly, fake person that isn't really easy to relate to. So, anyway, that's why I do spend time trying to show my mistakes, show my work, so to speak, how I arrived at this slightly less wrong version of myself. But, yeah, make no promises, I'm going to try to keep iterating and come out with a better version as time goes on anyway. But how we get there is by not covering our mistakes, being open, honest, also kind of recognizing that that's actually where we have a lot of common bond with other people. So, anyway, not a big moment, but I was just happy, one that the weight didn't hit me, but two that I could just take a moment to kind of level with this dude who was, you know, to my eyes, starting out in this fitness journey and you know he accidentally dropped the weight into a guy that probably looks like he's got some experience. So, anyway, I just wanted a guy to feel like, you know, you got just as much right to be here as I do and one day I might drop a weight, and you know it happens, my friend. So no worries. But yeah, with that, let's go ahead and get into.
Speaker 1:So I want to start with the nutrition, or no, lying to you guys, I don't want to start with nutrition today. I want to start with the information diet, and not anything important other than there was an article that I came across that was talking about the ways that people could increase the number of books they read. I liked that. That was a common goal that people are having, and this is a change that I made in my own life, as I was changing from, you know, my self-diagnosed news junkie self to the what am I now? I guess I'm sober when it comes to news. Whatever we can work out like a new term, but I personally went through an arc where I switched over from you know, scratching that itch via periodicals with more long form. So, just seeing that this was a common goal for people this year and this was a change that I had made in my own behavior. I just want to talk about the things that I think could be healthy if that is a goal. But you know, first I guess I will talk about why did I even do that at all?
Speaker 1:I have talked a bit about this and sometimes I feel like I'm actually dancing around some of the obvious things going on in our culture, because I don't want to alienate people. So whatever we're going to do, let's dance in today. Let's come right at it. One of the issues that I find prevalent in conversation it's not I don't even believe that I have an opinion that can't be countered by any stretch, but and I don't think I'm the only one having this have you guys noticed in conversations with people that sometimes it's harder to actually establish what a fact is that you don't even get to the part of the conversation of stating what beliefs and opinions are, because you actually go in a circular argument trying to establish what the accepted facts are. That is the thing that is actually troubling me, more so than the beliefs and the opinions of people is the inability to establish a basic fact, because, as it pertains to all of our beliefs and opinions, they're just that beliefs and opinions. But the only way that we can come into improving those beliefs and opinions is establishing basic facts.
Speaker 1:So again, I had just kind of found and using myself as the proxy when I was a news junkie, you kind of wind up, do living in like Michelle Foucault's conception of like a postmodern world where you can produce whatever fact or opinion you want to, based on whatever ideological position you would like to operate from. So even when you just kind of sample what's out there, I don't know if it is possible to read like a smattering of periodicals that were, and let's do it in the way that I think people would think would be intuitive. We'll maybe get a bunch of different sources with different ideological bents to it and then we will put together that information and then we'll somehow be able to synthesize an accurate prediction of reality. I at least used to believe that was possible and I spent many years trying to do that. I don't think it worked and one of the big shifts I made was again towards moving away from periodicals and, short term, I guess, just outlets or platforms, and shifting more into long form things that have stood the test of time versus things that were created because there was a deadline or a content requirement for the platform that produced it. And so, again, I'm not even going to weigh sources which are better than others. That's a separate discussion.
Speaker 1:But all of journalism, by nature, is a backwards looking medium, even the good journalism that's being done out there. There's no predictive power, there's no competitive edge, and what we are doing is looking at. Here's the problem that I see. That can happen to people that get too dialed into the news, like myself being in that group at one point. It can make things seem much more predictable, natural or self-evident than they were in reality, or in real time, shall we say. Had they been evident in real time, then those would have been the articles people would have written on those days.
Speaker 1:And, brief aside and I swear to God we're going to pull this back into health but look at the accepted historical narrative that a lot of us were taught on World War I, that it was this inevitable conflict that everybody saw coming, but that actually ignores a lot of the facts on the ground in real time, that the fact that everybody saw it coming. You would maybe perhaps have expected equity traders to be trading as if there was a war coming, if it was so inevitable and obvious. And yet we don't really have any evidence of that. And even to the event that actually triggered the war, that now seems incredibly inevitable from our position. The path that Ferdinand was driving that day he wasn't scheduled to be at the spot where he got shot at. That was the result of a bunch of detours, and just one of those I don't know I got to come up with a better word but that was like a happy accident of history. He literally wasn't supposed to be there. So if they could drive the route that was planned to drive, that event doesn't happen. And then that whole line of self-evident natural causes that brought us to that war actually don't happen. So again, the point of that is not to deconstruct our World War I history.
Speaker 1:Now let's just to point out that a lot of times in the future things seem self-evident that in real time they did not. This again, if we are big readers of the news, I think a lot of times things that are a little bit messier, more complex, more nuanced, will seem very easy to understand, self-evident and almost like how did people miss it? Except for everybody writing and reading those articles did miss it, and they should know that on some level, because they weren't talking about that when it would have had any predictive power or pragmatic application. So yeah, ironically just believe it or not I actually believe that reading books that have stood the test of time are actually going to give you better predictive power, better understanding of events that are happening in real time, than reading people who have taken yesterday's facts and arranged them into a story, which is what any good writing ultimately is going to wind up being. But that story and that narrative is going to make things seem much more predictable and easy to spot than they actually were. But now, if I can get just a little bit preachy about why does this actually concern me? Because the truth is, people have had incomplete knowledge the entire time we've been here and people have had wild opinions about everything the entire time we've been here. A lot of this isn't new at all, so I don't want to be one of those culture warriors bemoaning our fall from grace and our current decadence. I don't believe any of that the problem I see with it again gets back to that idea of just not being able to establish a basic fact and entering into a circular discussion anytime you attempt to do so.
Speaker 1:Hannah Arendt, in the origins of totalitarianism, wrote that actually one of the primary features of what actually pushes a society into totalitarianism. Listen to most people talking today and they're going to try to convince you that it is ideological. If they're on the right, they're going to convince you that of course totalitarianism comes from the left, and if they are on the left they're going to try to convince you that of course it comes from the right. Both of these groups conveniently ignoring all of the examples of totalitarian governments that don't fit their ideology or belief. And Arendt, who actually lived through a democracy falling and becoming a totalitarian state she lived in Germany in the 30s and so, yeah, she actually said the primary feature that drives the society to that is not ideology, but when the difference between truth and falsehood may cease to be objective and become a mere matter of power and cleverness, of pressure and infinite repetition.
Speaker 1:So again, it isn't the beliefs and opinions of my countrymen that I actually find concerning. Let's be honest, there are no beliefs or opinions being discussed today, just like I mentioned in this fitness show all the time. There's nothing anybody's saying today that people haven't been saying forever. There are no new ideas circulating out there. The feature that also is not new, that has happened periodically in the past is that our citizens are incapable of determining what is true in fact on scale or in any practical, pragmatic way. That is the aspect of this that I actually find concerning. It's not that I encounter people who disagree with my beliefs. I expect that, especially as somebody who lives in a market society that is pluralistic, that's like the sky is blue level observation to me. Similarly, a rent followed that with the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or communist People, for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist. So again, why I am kind of spending this time to bang on about shifting from long form to, or shifting rather from short form to long form? I do think the fact that we don't have any shared basis of reality is going to continue to manifest itself in ways that we're sadly getting used to right now. I don't think that we should become used to these issues as much as we have been. So anyway, obviously, everybody has their standard lines of who to blame Obviously one, and we've talked about it here but technology obviously plays part of it.
Speaker 1:Quite simply, and back to this goal that I know people do have of reading more books. Right now, the state of book reading in this country is not good. So, at the present moment, we have only 48.5% of adults who are typically reading one book or more for pleasure in a 12 month span. Normally, the country doesn't read one book per year for pleasure, and these types of critiques, I think, would normally come from well, someone like me, college educated, with college professor, parents. But, believe it or not, the cohort who's reading is falling off the fastest right now is actually among college graduates. So, no, this isn't like a pretentious oh, the commoners and the lay people need to pick themselves up. No, actually, the biggest drop off is in our so-called educated class, and I'm not going to go back to a golden era for any stats on this.
Speaker 1:In 2021, the average college grad is reading about six fewer books per year than they did between 2002 and 2016. You know that golden era way back when I wanted to cite that number because the internet existed, computers existed, a lot of the standard lines and excuses people are going to have for why people are reading less. It was all there. So I think we do have to come up with a different explanation for why. In 2016, I don't know, it feels like it was yesterday, but actually that was like seven years ago. So, in seven years, college grads reading on average six books less per year. What happened in the last seven years?
Speaker 1:Well, one pandemic, I guess, is probably going to be the biggest. But then this kind of winds up being counterintuitive, because you would again think that when people were forced to spend time at home, that they would have increased their book reading because they're like what else did you do? But again, what we see? Because we have, you know, we're all monitored and we log into these apps. No, most people actually sat down and watch a bunch of streaming doom scrolled, a bunch of social media apps, and then it's really stunning that, on the back end of this pandemic, we seem to not be able to agree on basic facts and, you know, our social graces don't seem to be working. That's stunning, no jokes aside, but yeah, that's the only explanation that I kind of can come up with, but it again. I actually kind of would have expected, in a vacuum, for the pandemic to increase the amount that people were reading, not to decrease it, but, oh sorry, I didn't even give the stat. So, yeah, yeah, since 2016,. You know, 12% of adults back in 2016 would say that reading was one of their favorite ways to spend an evening. That's down to 6%. So, again, I actually think this is changing the way in mass that individuals think and thus the products of our culture, and this isn't my idea, by the way, patricia Greenfield at UCLA, she's a psychology professor and she's pretty much interested in how culture influences human development and shapes the way people think. So, anyway, she says that every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others.
Speaker 1:Our growing use of the net and other screen based technologies has led to the widespread and sophisticated development of visual spatial skills. We can, for example, rotate objects in our minds better than we used to be able to, but our new strength in visual spatial intelligence goes hand in hand with a weakening of our capacities for the kind of deep processing that underpins mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination and reflection. So, again, I don't want to be cast into that Luddite bin. That technology is bad, but obviously there are pros and cons that come with it. Our emphasis in our modern culture on the visual, spatial is weakening other skills that we have.
Speaker 1:Just to use an example that I think is going to hit home for everybody but most listening. Well, actually, I don't know, maybe we got some young people that don't remember. But do you guys remember navigating before you had a GPS app and do you remember how you just kind of related to space, how you remember directions, et cetera? Ever since I started using GPS apps, I've actually found my real life abilities to navigate on my own tend to weaken, and that's actually not just me. I have seen studies that I am at least like a lot of other subjects that people have been able to find. But again, I just think with our over-reliance on this technology, it's not all bad. We just use it too much, that certain skills have been dulled in us, just like using a GPS has made me get lost in my own city more than I used to. I just think our constant engagement with the technology does change us, sometimes for the better, but not always. So again, I just think we need to be critical about how much we take on board.
Speaker 1:There was a time that I completely disagreed with this. In the early days of the internet, I was one of those utopianists who believed that if we just connected everybody, that the world would just become a much smarter and happier place. Admittedly, that take aged about as well as milk. I don't think anybody would regard that as a great prediction of mine today. I certainly don't. But anyway, I understand that in today's world, that that can come off as preachy and ideological in and of itself, but there actually was a health underpinning this entire time Because, believe it or not, reading actually does correlate with some positive health benefits and again, this is mostly gonna come from reading books.
Speaker 1:In long form You're not really gonna get this from reading your social media feeds. So anyway, a dedicated reading routine really is one of the best day-to-day habits to cultivate Mental health. In particular, it actually supercharges brain connectivity, boost empathy, particularly if you like to read fiction, which I don't, which is maybe why I'm not a very empathetic person but for those of you who do read, fiction arguably makes you a slightly better person. Give me some good fiction tips I need help, guys and actually can provide an escape from daily stressors. That, I think, is far superior to your social media feed, which is actually proven to make you feel more stressed out, not escape it. It actually adds stress to your life. When reading, you can actually lower your heart rate and blood pressure, so that can reduce stress, alter hormone levels, and so I know I was stretching here, but that can potentially increase lifespan. So reading books could actually save your life and I'm not stretching it too far here.
Speaker 1:Similarly, that you don't need to read dozens of books. You don't have to become like a good reads user and compete with everybody online to read the most books. No, I literally just any amount of reading. You can start to cash in on the benefits, but definitely read more than one a year. But anyway, I just wanna talk to you about, like let's say, that your reading routine has fallen off. I wanna give you guys some tips to kinda jumpstart and get back on track. This is one that helps me out a lot. So we're starting here Abandon any books you don't like.
Speaker 1:So for me this might be like War and Peace. War and Peace is like a really long book and smart people are supposed to have read it so for many years, I would pick up War and Peace every now and again and try to slog my way through it. Sorry for fans of Tolstoy, I just don't like it. And so it might be cool for me to like tell people that I read War and Peace and get those benefits, whatever they may be, but I've found reading for those purposes actually becomes a big impediment to reading. So not only like that, that intellectual flex, trying to read things that you were supposed to have read or smart people talk about. This also can happen, like with gifts someone buys you a book and now you feel obligated to read it. I just wanna remind everybody like. You're not in school anymore, so read what you like. And if, for any reason, a book isn't hitting it, doesn't matter how many great reviews you read or how many of your friends liked it. Ultimately this time is your life, so move on. If it's not connecting, this is actually going to up the total amount of books you read.
Speaker 1:And yeah, this I feel like was a mistake I made for a long time because I thought wrongly that people cared about the books I had read and that curating this library, you know, it was like a trophy hunter going out and hunting. It was like, oh, I've read these things and can quote them, and obviously some discussions that'll get you by, but you tend to find those are actually pretty superficial and not that deep anyway, so not really something worth striving for. In my opinion, everything counts. I wanted to throw this one in here too, because obviously I have the stuff that I really like, which I highly recommend reading, but I also have a kid, and so I read a lot of books that my daughter likes, and obviously I tend to read those out loud. The act of reading out loud really different than reading to myself, and I would argue that a lot of the same benefits that I'm seeking come from whether I'm reading aloud to my daughter or reading privately to myself for pleasure. Health benefits, the de-stressing, the lowering of heart rate, all of those things obviously doesn't matter if I'm reading to my daughter or reading to myself. Both happen, and so, yeah, just keep in mind that everything counts.
Speaker 1:It doesn't all have to be again like these impressive books that you're gonna go, you know, talk about in these non-existent intellectual conversations. Come on, we live in America. If anything like that did happen, it would be like a TED talk which would get, you know, turned into a commodity and then just the discourse ran down so low, so fast, yeah. So even if we started having a place where people could come together and discuss ideas, we would turn it into a shit show in a few days. So, yeah, everything counts. Don't feel like you have to be restricted to a certain set of books.
Speaker 1:Another one that I think we can kind of have it stack, to use some of the terms that we talk about here often but before bed with a real book, this is a great idea. Instead of doom scrolling on one of your screens, you know, like doing a blue light radiation binge, ultimately disrupting your sleep. Many, many people, you know, find reading a book kind of a comfortable way to drift off into sleep. So, anyway, I think that one's a good one too. One addition by subtraction, disconnect from the doom scrolling and improve your sleep, learn something, et cetera way better move than sitting on your phone or tablet before bed. Another one I like. This one's not like as cool or fun, but I do find having a plan, a course, a direction or purpose to your reading to be very helpful.
Speaker 1:I am most focused and productive when I am engaged in an active project. Going back to when I was a social media user, the simplest proxy if you had been judging me from afar and trying to figure out, hey, how productive was Simon this week really Like, ignore what he says on social media and how on it was he in reality? It really was pretty simple. You would just inverse how many social media posts I made that week. So in a week where Simon posted a lot, forget what Simon was saying. That was not a big week for me. And then that week when just Simon disappeared for no reason, that was actually a really busy week and I was actually fully engrossed and engaged in what I was doing. So my interests are not exactly popular, so fill in the blank for yours. I really like finance, philosophy and fitness. Those are things that I could read about pretty much anytime.
Speaker 1:And, for example, when GameStop give me a word, when GameStop just shot up and all that meme stock activity pumped, I was following the story and I was honest enough with myself to understand that I didn't really understand all the options talk everybody was saying and then I had a desire to understand what was being discussed. So then I actually went and I learned options trading and that took me, I don't know. I literally took a few courses. It was maybe four to six months of no social media and no other reading, and I get it. For people that don't find options interesting, that sounds terrible.
Speaker 1:But imagine it's a subject that you like and rather than engaging the you know the Doom Scroll, every day, you actually, with that exact same energy and focus that you would spend going to Twitter, instagram, tiktok what's your fix? What do you like? Use that exact same energy to go at something that you say you actually value or want to learn. I guarantee you're going to get way more out of it and then actually you're going to enjoy your own time even more. So anyway, I get it. My interests are objectively boring. You don't need to pick up those books, but if you have a course of direction or purpose to your learning, that's going to keep you really, really focused, and then you won't even engage that feeling they call FOMO, because you won't even know what you are supposed to be FOMOing over. That's generally what I find when I actually have active projects that I am working on right in front of me. There's no time to miss out. Last one, and this is actually the biggest one for me.
Speaker 1:But your trips business travel, commuting, vacation, whatever it may be I think travel is probably one of the best places to get into a good book. My commuting every year. I've been doing this for a while now, but it winds up being about 50 books per year just on my commutes. Part of that is LA traffic. It really does suck, but even if your traffic isn't that bad, they're bad. There is a massive learning opportunity available if you convert your travel time into some reading time and then actually should mention this I do listen to Audible.
Speaker 1:I know some people are going to judge me right now and say that's not reading. I've talked to a bunch of you guys over the years and respectfully disagree. If you feel that way and you are like the average American, getting through less than one book a year, I don't know if I would wade into this discussion on the best way to read books. I do think in this regard, getting people's reps up and getting them more engaged is great. So I am not that pretentious that I try to knock down people who do audiobooks. I think the audiobooks, quite frankly and oh man, I'm going to mess up my own business here, but most audiobooks available are better than most podcasts too.
Speaker 1:Most of the information that you're getting in podcasts is not going to stand the test of time. What you know for these books that have survived is that their information actually has. Anyway, obviously not my muscle. Fuck it, I'll go there. Maybe this is the only fitness podcast that is going to hold the test of time. It sure ain't. Joe Rogan. I don't know if he's a fitness podcast or not. Anyway, I'm not trying to just carve out a space for you to listen to to mine, but again, even if you're just seeking out audio content in general, the vast majority of podcasts, particularly the most popular ones, are in a year. Nobody is going to ask anything about any of the content that was in there. It isn't going to matter. It came into your mind, there was no benefit, and it will leave one day and you'll get nothing for it. Anyway, not my muscle, but every other podcast, unfortunately, with that, guys, I am done preaching on your information diet.
Speaker 1:Actually, before I dive into it, I do want to mention, though I'm not in sole possession of the best information diet, just like I'm not in sole possession of the best nutrition program. I want to be clear that what I am advocating for here is people just actually stepping away from the algorithms and suggestion and the BF Skinner Behavioral Modification Experiment they are volunteering for on social media and directing their own learning. Your beliefs and opinions will still be your own. I don't actually care where you get on that. But yeah, just don't want to act like I am this torture genius over here who is the only person with an information diet that's working. Nope, I am a botched modern who has been working very hard at just becoming a little less ignorant with each iteration of myself. That's where I'm at, just so you guys know.
Speaker 1:But anyway, the main topic I want to talk about today was actually historical diets and their modern expressions. This time we are talking about real diets, talking about the food that goes into our bodies. I guess the motivation on this it's going to circle back to the tagline of the show because there's nothing new except all that has been forgotten. I just wanted to touch on this because there really are not many diets that we are talking about or advocating today that we don't have tons of human trials on already. So the objective in this again is actually to simplify eating, not make it seem more complex, but yeah. So in that regard, I just want to go touch on a couple ancient diets and their modern analogs, if you will. And anyway, by the time we present all of them, I think we are going to have some least common denominators that we can distill from all of these various eating practices throughout time, regions, different populations, et cetera. And it's actually way simpler than the way it's normally communicated to us in, again, the modern media paradigm, which we should probably be avoiding.
Speaker 1:All right, so number one this one was fun to me for a while, so let's go back, let's do the Paleo diet versus the Paleo diet, and what I mean. There is the diet that actual humans ate in the Paleo-ethic era and the diet people eat in the 21st century, called the Paleo diet. There are some similarities. Both emphasize the consumption of whole foods. It's a great idea. I guess we could say that they both focus on yeah, well, they do focus on whole foods, meats, fish, nuts, leafy greens, regional veggies and seeds. And then obviously, avoidance of processed foods is going to be in both, but it's kind of funny to throw in there for the Paleo, like the real Paleo diet, because there weren't processed foods available, so it actually wasn't avoidance so much as unavailability, but I guess that's similar-ish Differences, actually probably more than particularly the modern Paleo diet dieter would think. So the real Paleo diet varied significantly depending on geographic region, seasonality, ecology.
Speaker 1:So the idea of writing up a book back then, even though they didn't have printing presses and stuff, it's also not possible because people didn't have the same access to food. So the way people go about doing this in the modern era of writing up a book and a cookbook and then going and shopping for these specific foods, obviously none of that was going on in the Paleolithic era. People had to be a lot more opportunistic about their food sources. And well, actually so funny when here because-and this has been moving. So 10 years ago if you were strict Paleo you couldn't eat grain. They switched that, so now you can eat some grains, kind of like how the Catholic Church changes their dietary requirements. As culture shifts, you can't become useless to the population. So once they find out that dietary practices aren't popular, they tend to shift. So Paleo did the same thing.
Speaker 1:A lot of people were having a hard time sticking to the whole no grain thing because it limits your food sources and particularly in our culture there's just not a lot of food left. People get whittled down to three or four ingredients and they get bored. So, yeah, the Paleo people had to change that and allow for some grains. But that again, would be one of the biggest differences between modern Paleo dieters and people who actually lived in the Paleoethic era. You know nutritional dogmas like I'm not going to eat grain. They really don't survive very long in nature, certainly not long enough to pass your genes on to the next generation. So if there were any paleo dieters who really stayed off grain, their genes actually didn't make it to our modern genome because they all died of starvation somewhere in the woods. So anyway, obviously, nutritional preferences are a feature of abundance. That's not something that you can engage without abundant calories. That's obviously not something that really appears until the 20th century in specific parts of the planet. We just happen to live in one of those. So again, a lot of what we have to learn with that seems natural, self-evident and the way it is, but none of it is actually so. Anyway, I feel that is one of the biggest differences. The modern paleo diet it's like a book. It's a dogmatic thing that you go out and shop and buy. Opportunism would have been a much bigger feature of an actual paleo diet than a modern one.
Speaker 1:One other point, and actually this isn't really a similarity or difference, but I think this is probably, to me, one of the biggest misunderstandings that people who are in the paleo camp are still susceptible to, and their favorite argument is basically that we are not adapted to eat blank food, and in that blank you've heard lots of stuff, but there's actually contained in that statement a pretty serious misunderstanding of how evolution works. So now let's take one that we know for certain. There are some people alive right now who have adapted to drink milk, and then there are other people who have not. So this process started roughly 7,500 years ago and obviously we haven't gotten to 100% of humans that can tolerate lactose, but in Scandinavia it's pretty damn close to that. The further south you go, those numbers start to decrease. But again, the time scale we're operating on here is 7,500 years ago. So a lot of their argument for why you can't eat grain hinges on time periods that are actually significantly longer than that, like nearly 10 times longer. So it is just flat out wrong. That's not how evolution works. It's not that slow, it's not that stupid and this. All right, I'm going to slightly jump, but this is like simulation theory.
Speaker 1:Simulation theory, to me, is something that people who tend to be secular and want to use the language of science like to talk about, but they don't see that it's actually backing into a religious mindset so quickly. With the simulation theory, of course, you don't talk about the creator, you talk about a system architect who designed everything. And then, essentially too, even if you just say, ask the question do we live in a computer simulation? That sounds scientific only because of the words computer simulation and that's like a sciencey thing. But we're actually talking about a disprovable hypothesis here. This is essentially asking is there a God? No offense to Theos, but that's not a scientific question. There's nothing testable, there's nothing you can look at there.
Speaker 1:So, similarly, like if you wanted to ask an actual scientific question around the simulation idea, the question would be could you represent the world as a computer simulation? Now, obviously, answering that question looks a lot different than trying to answer is reality a computer simulation? The question I just introduced? You would actually have to start getting into the nuts and bolts and actually putting the rubber down to the road, so to speak, of where is that server? What does it look like for these beings that experience a subjective reality to access said simulation? Now you actually have to start talking about the structures that would need to exist for that thing to be true, instead of just kind of theorizing on something that you would have no testable anything to look at or measure.
Speaker 1:So again, similarly paleo. This is a very pseudoscientific approach that can appear scientific to some, but I think it is deeply misunderstanding some basic principles. The modern paleo diet, if you will, it's I don't know. I guess this is like if you were striving to eat like Jean-Jacques Rousseau's noble savage, with like a touch of consumer cultiness and then just a little hint of, like some foes sophisticated pseudoscience. The real paleo diet, again, much more varied, much more opportunistic, devoid of dogma and the products and the misunderstandings of modern science. Anyway, last I'll say on it, evolution is actually more like a tinkerer and an opportunist and it isn't going anywhere and it never gets there. So anyway, that's a fun tent to sit with, but that's a more accurate description than the way that I think it's popularly thrown at us constantly.
Speaker 1:Big one for me, and I actually think for a lot of Western cultures, obviously going to be the ancient Greek diet and then one of the most popularly advocated diets today would be the Mediterranean diet. So, anyway, I want to compare and contrast the two the ancient Greek diet versus what we would consider the modern Mediterranean diet. Actually, a lot of overlap on this one, not a lot of differences. The ancient Greeks consumed a diet that was rich in olives, wine, fish, whole grains, and yeah, that has evolved into the modern Mediterranean diet, which is noted for its health benefits, particularly heart health. But yeah, there aren't really a lot of foods in the ancient Greek diet that we wouldn't talk about in the modern Mediterranean diet. Again, high consumption of fruits, vegetables, grains. Then it would have been mostly barley and wheat. Actually, let's do it now. That would be one difference. Right there we have a much more, a wider variety of grains available. So there they wouldn't have had as many different crops, even though it was a large empire for a time, relative to the empires of today, or even the Roman Empire that came slightly after, or the Pax Americana. Both of those empires had a lot more land to source food from, so the diet was not quite as varied in ancient Greece as even in Rome and then obviously forward to today. We have much more variation, but the basic constituents were basically the same Olives, olive oil, wine, meat typically something that was consumed by the wealthy, so that's not something that you would have seen a lot of the common people eating. Fish would have been more accessible for some, but in general, meat was typically something that only wealthy people would have had regular access to. But, yeah, all of this, I would actually say, aligns really closely with today's Mediterranean diet. You obviously, the ancient and the modern, both noted for their health benefits.
Speaker 1:A lot of our beliefs about health and fitness still do descend from ancient Greece. I still actually don't like they did, but some had said of the subject of philosophy that all philosophy has footnotes to Plato. Although I don't like the statement, I actually have come to understand why. Just in that concept of there really isn't much new. I do think there have been significant contributions to philosophy outside of Greece, so that's why I don't much like the statement, but I understand the sentiment in which it was said. I think in that regard too, in some way maybe the Mediterranean diet is like the Greek philosophy, if you will, of nutrition. So many of our modern beliefs really do descend from this diet and on parts it's really not a bad plan. What it advocates for really is a balanced lifestyle. We need harmony between physical, exercise, diet, mental well-being. It really was a holistic approach to health and fitness that profoundly influenced all cultures after in their pursuits in health and fitness as well. And, yeah, in defense of these ancients, there actually isn't a lot that we have learned or refined or gotten a ton better at. We do have a lot better knowledge in one sense, like this for example, the Greeks.
Speaker 1:When they would talk about medicine, they would talk about the theory of the four humors. So for them, the body was basically composed of blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. So while technically true, we do contain all of those things, obviously we wouldn't cite those as the four irreducible parts that we need to focus on and study. This is again. The Greeks were not the only ones to do this. Chinese medicine did this. Ayurvedic medicine in India does this as well. And those are similar, slightly different. Again, the four humors. In Greek, I think they had three doshas in India.
Speaker 1:If we got any Ayurvedic experts, correct me, give me an angry comment, but I think it's Vata Pitakaapa. Yeah, anyway, if I'm wrong, shut me an angry comment, but no, so all I wanted to point out is that, yeah, we wouldn't describe today, we wouldn't talk about blood phlegm, yellow bile and black bile as being the end all be all as it pertains to health and nutrition. But on this we do actually need to have a dose of humility, because it's not conceivable that in the future, we're going to also use different terms to talk about food that are going to seem as natural and self evident as calories, carbs, fats and protein as a stuff that we use today. Again, just don't don't assume that we are at the end of history and that the terms that we're using now are the end, all be all, you know. Again, this reminds me of, in the early 20th century, treating celiac disease. They would have used banana and milk, talked about a lot of enzymes, how this interacted and why it worked. If you actually ate that and you were celiac, you obviously wouldn't have your negative symptoms, but not because the enzymes in banana and milk. It's because you stopped eating gluten. But even that, probably not the end, all be all. We're honing in on some sugars in short order, called FODMOPs, and this is still too early to you know. Call it, but again, in 20 years, the chance that we use all the same terms to describe our nutrition extremely low. So again, dose of humility, and we need to extract the principles, not the minutiae, from all of this. You know, obviously the Romans just pretty much copied, like all the good ideas from the Greeks, but I actually wanted to highlight this one because I think some of the changes the Romans made from the Greek diet are going to be very relevant as it pertains to the modern diet. So, namely, the biggest difference between the Romans and the Greeks kind of has to do with the scale of the empire and the use of whole grains. The Roman Empire's diet is going to look a lot closer to like the Pax Americana diet, if you will, and I think it's in guns, germs and steel.
Speaker 1:Jared Diamond discusses the advantage that having an agricultural grain could be for a nation state, and so Rome being, like you know, one of the preeminent empires in history, this was something that they obviously figured out that to have all these legionnaires and all these soldiers all over the world at any given time, it was helpful to have efficient management of grain resources that you could distribute throughout your entire empire. So they had a supply chain and some cultivation methods and things like that that are going to look a lot more like how we do this in the modern world with global supply chains. And I don't know, I could talk about supply chain. I could bore you guys. Well, that was my thing in the pandemic. I was geeking out on supply chain.
Speaker 1:But you know, take like a country like Egypt right now they actually have the capacity to grow enough wheat to feed their population, but in a global market, wheat is not as profitable as, say, cotton, particularly Egyptian cotton. It's probably your favorite sheets and pillowcases, but yeah, you can make a lot more money exporting cotton. So we wind up erecting this system where it makes more sense for Egypt to grow products to send to the rest of the world than to grow food for themselves. Take that money and then go buy the food, and this typically works when things are going well. I just want to mention this now because we are coming up on a period where global trade might not be as smooth as it's been for the last 50 years. As we are speaking right now that we have situations going on in the Suez Canal, we have two active wars.
Speaker 1:So yeah, if you've been alive for the last 50 years, you've probably gotten used to global shipping working a certain way and, like me, you didn't have to understand how those things got to your grocery store for most of your life. It wasn't until the year 2020 that I saw the shelves empty and actually had to go understand how that happened. So, anyway, I just wanted to point this out because this is it's obviously a benefit to have all that grain to feed a whole bunch of people, but the exchanges that you're going to make in terms of your supply chain can actually introduce what we call fragilities. So, anyway, works great when things are going well. If that system gets a sudden shock that nobody sees coming, systems like that can collapse quite quickly, and so obviously we did get to see that with the Roman Empire, as trade networks became unable for their empire to maintain, the empire fell apart.
Speaker 1:But anyway, in terms of just the nutrition because I totally took a sidebar in history there very, very similar to the ancient Greek diet. Roman medical texts, like those that were produced by Galen, are very, very similar, and Galen obviously was very, very familiar with what they were doing in ancient Greece. So they're the main change that we see from the Roman diet to or sorry, from the Greek diet to the Roman diet more uses of grain and obviously actually using the power of the empire to cultivate and deliver said grain. Looks very similar to the modern globalist diet, if you will. All right, last era. Now we're actually going to do two. I'm coming up on time so I got to go quick, though, all right.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about the Victorian era real quick. So the Victorian area. Guys, we are at like the end of the 19th century and we have some similarities here to the modern organic food movement. Both obviously emphasize the consumption of foods in their natural or whole forms, but slight difference here. In the Victorian era there was actually this moment when people were getting into adulterations of food that I don't think you would see being consistent with the modern organic movement, which is trying to remove additives, focus on sustainability, ecology, health and ethical considerations. Now, that was going on in the Victorian, and actually they would like take their milk and they would dilute it with water or put some chalk in there. Breads were bulked up with chalk to make it whiter and heavier. Beers and wines were frequently contaminated with substance to improve color flavor. Some were toxic, and then same actually with tea and coffee. Sometimes those were cut with cheaper leaves being stuff like that. But I do think in the Victorian era we start to see at least the seeds of the modern organic movement, with those slight differences on the adulterations.
Speaker 1:And so actually I'm going to say this one up front so if you eat organic that doesn't mean that you are a fascist. But that was a big goal of particularly the German fascists and this was kind of a carryover from the Victorian era with that focus on whole foods. With the rise of these nationalistic countries in the early 20th century, from the power class you have this concern of the health of the citizens and you've probably even heard these ideas of blood and soil that they had back then. But yeah, believe it or not, that was actually connected to this kind of romantic impulse to get back to focusing on the purity of food and of the blood and of the soil. So again, takeaway is not that eating organic is fascist.
Speaker 1:The takeaway is that it's possible to have too much of a good thing and particularly if you get into any purity-based diets, don't go too far. So I've kind of covered my ass on this in the past. That's why I always say 80% to 90% adherence, you don't need 100%. And yeah, historically that's never a good thing. When people start thinking that's a good thing to do, all right. Last one I got to talk about this one quick. But early 20th century that's when we start seeing some caloric restriction pop. Obviously today I think that is maybe the biggest driver of new diets is calorie counting or things aimed at reducing the number of calories that one is eating. Similarities both were obviously involving the regulating of calories to improve health or weight management.
Speaker 1:Differences Early 20th century I think it was considered more just a general concept. It was kind of lacking precision and certainly no understanding of the metabolism. I think back then fasting had a close association with ascetic and religious practices. That was probably exerting a strong influence. When you look at the claims people made with fasting then they're not too dissimilar from the claims people have made with fasting forever in every religion and those are certainly still around today. But I think those exert a much smaller influence. The more people today have probably heard about metabolic benefits or other things than the spiritual benefits and I know there's some out there doing it for that, but I think they're a relative minority these days. I think that would have been a much bigger driver in its first iteration Well, not first, but the time we're talking, in the 20th century, we had already been through this one a bunch.
Speaker 1:So that's a big mistake. Right there, nothing new, especially by that time. And then, yeah, so last I would say, modern calorie counting is definitely more precise. We're aided by deeper understanding of nutrition that I'm sure we're going to keep refining and improving. But also, we just have a lot of tools that we didn't have available back then. I've recommended one on here, my fitness pal. But yeah, between like UPC scanners, nutrition loggers, stuff like that, it's just way easier to actually control for that these days.
Speaker 1:All right, so anyway, guys, I'm running up on time, so let's circle back, summarize what was the point of all this today. Well, so, first off, again, I just wanted to hammer home there is nothing new, particularly in nutrition, like forest bathing and silent walking. There's going to be new words that are going to be connected to the same old ideas year after year after year. So anyway, why did we do this, why did we run through this? Because I'm of the belief that it's not what we don't know about nutrition that threatens our health. To me, it's the constant and wild misrepresentations of what we do know. But, like I've said many times, we are going to continue getting new information about food with increased study. That shouldn't like gaslight us into knowing nothing every time we get a new study.
Speaker 1:I think what we have to do is not only look at the body of scientific literature but the body of history, and let's first try to extract some least common denominators. One of the things that I think is going to become abundantly clear from looking at every diet we talked about today is that every single one of them emphasizes eating whole, natural, unprocessed foods. They do it with different language and for different reasons, but that kind of emerges as like the stable thing that people are actually doing. And again, there's going to be new studies coming out all the time telling you about this harmful, reductive property like this one that's fresh in my mind and I'm going to hit on this one because it's stupid Lectons. So lectons exist in fruits and vegetables and now we have some people not eating them because some studies have come out saying they're not good for us.
Speaker 1:Fruit is good for you, despite fruit toast. Didn't even mention that one, because people are scared of that too. Vegetables are good for you, despite the lectons that we just mentioned. Process meats are bad for you, sorry, but no worse than they were before. We accumulated enough evidence to publish the conclusions that people have seen. But yeah, that's not a big statement. Sorry if I pissed off some carnivores right there, but processed meats are bad for us. We're talking hot dogs, bacon, salami, shit like that. That's not good food and you didn't need a peer reviewed study to get there. Quite frankly, maybe some people did Most people's moms 50 years ago didn't, by the way. So I don't know how people got that confused to think that processed meat was healthy or vegetables are bad, etc. New information is going to come out all the time, but new information about old exposures doesn't change the risk of those exposures. It changes your understanding of them. So, again, I really don't think it's actually that hard to distill what the best eating practice is for humans are.
Speaker 1:Throughout the ages, people have been begging you to eat whole, natural, unprocessed foods. Again, the vernacular maybe changes around it, but the idea is the same. And then, similarly, every diet that we mentioned today, you could follow it and eat a great diet, and it would be predicated on. Did you source whole, natural, unprocessed foods In our modern grocery store? You could also source any one of those diets and source it completely from junk food, and what it would come down to is did you shop the perimeter of your grocery store or farmer's market or did you go to the center aisles? And if you were in the center aisles, it doesn't matter what health claims you read on the packages you're sourcing junk food. So again, the fundamental aspects of what makes food healthy, or the facts behind healthful eating they've actually been stable for a long time.
Speaker 1:The fads, the fashions all of that changes constantly, and even more so now in even tighter cycles, because we again have a media platform that most of us engage. Its function is to place ads in front of relevant target demographics. Its job is not to educate you. Its job is not to bring you closer to truth. Its job is to move the products you're currently seeing. So again, this is where I just believe nutrition has been made way more difficult for people than it really needs to be.
Speaker 1:I really want to push this idea of nutrition agnosticism. I know I kept saying I'm going to wrap it up, but right now my grandmother is in the hospital and prior to this stay, she was eating a vegan diet and she broke a hip, and now she is rehabbing and some meat has been brought in. I just want to applaud what my grandmother is doing because in what amounts to a survival situation, she's not sticking with any beliefs, dogmas or preferences. There's plenty of valid ways to get around eating a vegan diet, but with her doctors and with the plan that they're putting in together, she just needs the protein and that's going to be an efficacious way for them to get it into her. So again, life can sometimes force you to change diets, no matter how much you love it, in the name of health. You are going to have to make some sacrifices, maybe as it pertains to preferences, but again, I really, really don't care if somebody chooses to be vegan, vegetarian, lacto-ovarian or vegetarianism. I've experimented with all of it and I've programmed for people doing all of it. So I'm serious, I really don't care.
Speaker 1:But what I think people are consistently missing is the way you start building a diet is by first assessing the individual needs of the eater what are their goals, what are their experiences, etc. You don't need to go memorize some nutrition facts to learn how to source up a diet. You need to learn how to assess what are my individual needs. We've talked about that in the past episodes, I'm not going to hit it now. But again, new information is going to constantly come available with regards to nutrition. We are refining and creating a better picture over time.
Speaker 1:But again, as this new information comes available, use it to enhance your methods and your practices, not to gaslight yourself into paralysis by analysis, which, again, I think that's the most common position that happens with the benefit of all this lovely information. But yeah, as you guys can see, there really is nothing new, particularly in health and fitness. That's why I chose it as the tagline for our show. I really hope that today's information doesn't make this landscape seem more confusing. I hope this actually simplifies things and that you are able to enhance your own habits and practices through just seeing what are the common practices throughout, what has stood the test of time, not what is going to grab attention in a short media cycle. Anyway, guys, I ran long. I appreciate you staying with me. If you found anything helpful, make sure to share this one with anybody else that you feel like is running over this stuff. And yeah, with that. Remember, mind and muscle are inseparably intertwined. There are no gains without brains. Let's keep lifting and learning. See you next time.
