Summertime 2010 Book Review Series: ‘Deadly Harvest’ By Geoff Bond
Filed under: Books,Review — @ July 28, 2010
It’s undeniable if you look at the state of modern health around the world today that we have dug ourselves into a huge hole as a society. Obesity, diabetes, and preventable chronic diseases have spread like wildfire despite the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in finding pharmaceutical drugs to allegedly counter all of these health ailments. However, the one area most of the so-called health “experts” have conveniently neglected to invest any time and effort into examining more closely is also the most cost-effective when it comes to resolving this monstrosity that befalls us in modern times is our diet. What if we could reverse the negative impact of most chronic diseases simply by making some basic changes to our diet that could restore weight to normal levels and dramatically improve health without the use of any questionable drugs? What if all it took was going back to the diet of our ancestors which bears very little resemblance to what we refer to as “food” in the 21st century? Would it make a noticeable difference in the collective health woes we now find ourselves facing? That’s the bold thesis presented by UK-based nutritional anthropologist Geoff Brown in his historical look at the evolution of our diet detailed in the book Deadly Harvest: The Intimate Relationship Between Our Health and Our Food.
Bond has a personal connection to this subject since he lived in some remote African villages early on in his career where he saw firsthand how primitive tribes lived and ate for survival. This once-in-a-lifetime experience gave him ample evidence that he later used to compile much of the material contained in this book. He notes that our bodies are highly adaptable to the rigors we put them through, but they still require some elementary elements to function properly. One of the reasons Bond says we’ve gotten away from this basic nutritional concept in favor of what we have today is the onset of industrialized farming. Deadly Harvest provides all the dirty details about how and why grains (grass seeds) were introduced into our diet which began “a massive upheaval in human nutrition” that took us one step “away from our ancestral diet.” The consequences of this change are now rearing their ugly head in the weight and health of people today.
Click here to read the rest of my review of Geoff Bond’s Deadly Harvest including my one major beef with him regarding his stance on saturated fat.
