An Argument For Ancestral Eating and Traditional Foods

It seems, these days, as though our consciousnesses are swelled with the contradictory facts of what is "healthy." There is nutritional dogma encircling our social spheres. The news articles, wellness blogs and social media sources we pore over dispute each others facts under the guise of sameness in delivering a sort of food-health-enlightenment to the world who watches them. They seem to believe that they are informing us of how to be healthier human beings, how to develop better habits around food by dictating what to do or not to do, what diet we should be following or not, right down to the very foods---or even ingredients---we should or shouldn't be consuming. 

This is well-intentioned and all-and-well when there is a consensus. But consensus is rare, and there are far too many "diets" out there to follow or not, or foods to eat or not. My issue is with a current but underexplored facet of this post-industrial health wave, something that I believe quite a few people are beginning to realize on their own as well. This is that what we are told are "health foods" aren't rooted in tradition for a great many people who don't come from the same geographic locale. 

"Health foods," or the accepted conglomerated catalog of food products pulled from every part of the planet, is a pool of ancestral diets made to be accessible to just about anyone nowadays. Thanks---but not really---to global exportation and importation initiatives, colossal international supermarket chains, even the hyper-packaged, ultra-processed, unnaturally preserved and circulated "health foods" are the last thing from being truly "healthy" for us. 

But this specific argument is more so concerned with the wider geographical origin of these "health foods," rather than the specific ways of selling them (although I'll get into that later).

For instance, is a kale salad really that healthy---or perhaps I could say intrinsic---for the digestive system of someone who wasn't originally from the Eastern Mediterranean or Asia Minor regions of the world? What are avocadoes (which originate from Central Mexico and Guatemala) to the alimentary tract of a Swedish person? Or an American, or a Brit, whom some 200-300 years ago had a less intercontinental plant intake of root vegetables? What about our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors? 

According to a report discussing the evolution of the human diet, published by Stephanie Jew et al. in 2009 in the Journal of Medicinal Food, the first stage in the evolution of the human diet, otherwise said to be the Miocene-Early Pleistocene era, consisted mostly of "foliage, leafy vegetables, fruits, seeds, and nuts, thus supplying high amounts of fiber, plant sterols, and vegetable proteins." Similarly they also consumed moderate amounts of lean animal-based proteins; notably local small game, birdlife, eggs and seafruit.

Does their diet still define what ours should be, and have we strayed so far from localised, forge-your-own-path, fulfilling foraging ways that some of the meaning and importance of food has been somewhat lost to us? 

If everything these days is done for convenience there can be no higher quality to what we eat, as it has, in many cases, already been fully prepared for us. We have not had to work for our food, we have not had to earn and fight for it to find its way onto our tableware. It has merely passed from plant to plastic to plate and been microwaved on high for a minute. 

The hunter-gatherers were close-knit communities of forged families, moving from place to place until the Neolithic period (about 4000 to 2200 BCE) when the majority of them began to settle. Agriculture arose, and grains, livestock, and other subsistence farming techniques were first established and cultivated. Yet what had already long been cultivated among these early groups of humans was a very localised, intrinsic  culture where food had centre-seat, almost so it was their purpose, almost like an art. 

Culture has been inarguably critical to the human experience, and our traditions around food have evolved over the millenia. It still plays a critical role in our everyday lives, no matter what culture you're from, but how can we sustainably preserve our food cultures when so many who partake in them live in geographical areas whose land cannot support the growth of such cornerstone ingredients? My real question is how do we resolve this sustainably?

But I digress. I'm not really talking about that, am I? I wanted to discuss our personal consumption of foods from regions other than our own. My point was, if we are all so set on the endurance and preservation of our respective geographical cultures, why are we also set on conglomerating them and spreading them across the world in worse quality than ever? Appreciation for the food and livelihood of other cultures is one thing, but in order to "achieve longevity" in ones life you should not be eating an Asiatic diet unless you are from the Asiatic region. That's to say that if you are like me, lineally Anglo-Norman, my ancestors having lived in Northern Central Europe for most of history, you may better benefit from "health foods" of that origin than from those of other origins. 

Of course, it goes without saying that human beings are adaptive, endurant creatures, and our stomachs can theoretically adjust to these global changes in diet. But my issue is less with our ability to adapt and more with the speed in which we have to. Moreover, my main issue is with the globalisation of our food market, which enables any one of us to buy any one food from any location of our liking. We can even have it all delivered right to our doorstep. This, along with a ceaseless, intelligently marketed consumerist culture behind it, perpetuates our innate locust-like desire to delocalise where we get our food. 

Rather than from a small farm not five minutes from where you live, why don't you just drive halfway across the city to purchase imported sweet potatoes from Peru? You get to live your delusional mystique-laiden epicurean food fantasy, while the transportation required to get it to your cutting board contributed to the daily kilotonnes of greenhouse gas being meaninglessly pumped into our Earth's atmosphere, if you even care. I hope the sweet potatoes were worth it, you didn't work for them. (There's my bias slipping out, sorry.)

For example, in Canada we have T&T, and that makes sense for us because there are plenty of people from other countries who live here who want to continue cooking with their traditional ingredients to make their traditional meals. This seems to support my argument at first: they want to continue eating their traditional diets, and that makes sense. Plus, most of the products found at T&T would be nowhere to be found at your regular Loblaws or Metro. 

Still, increasingly these types of country-wide grocery stores have become far more accommodating and usually possess at least one aisle for the basic culinary necessities of non-European-originating people, or the convenient bemusement of those who are of European descent. As with anything international, there is a general mystique to the international food aisle. Instant miso soup packets, ramen and udon noodles, carton lassi and naan, and all kinds of teas. 

As you can evidently see, this opens up a tangent in the debate with lots of criterion to consider. You could go down a rabbit hole tackling whether it's ethical to import all of this for the sake of preserving ones own culture. Canada acts as something of a conglomeration of cultures, a strange social experiment. But staying true to the original argument would land you saying that people of other countries and cultures who want to continue eating the way they do where they are lineally from is valid and correct. But eating it in another geographical region of the planet? Is that really sustainable in the long run? 

My real and final argument, hidden beneath all of this blabbing, is that this current lifestyle is not just unhealthy for us humans physiologically, but it's also proven to be unhealthy for the planet at large, and it will continue to prove that if we don't relocalise our food sources and eat mostly what traditionally grows there. 

This means understanding and indulging native flora, a push towards self-sufficiency and supporting local farms, improved governmental environmental policies, and mostly better education (whether self-initiated or worked into school curricula) about subsistence gardening, foraging based on geographical region, ancestral diets, traditional methods of eating and handling food, and at the very best a societal push away from the vicious import-export cycle we're trapped in right now. But, as of yet I'm afraid that's wishful thinking. 

I feel as though this is a good place to end, seeing as it leads into one of the other arguments I had lined up for another time. But it goes to show that our food and the environment are impossibly intertwined, and the survival and health of the Earth has an impact on the quality of our food and the culture and feelings we hold around food. What we don't do now or soon, we'll live (or not) to regret. 

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I do have a personal reason for arguing this; I'm not just picking a fight, even if it's a worthwhile one. I have struggled a lot with digestive issues over the past several months---chronic constipation, to be more specific, and have really had a hard run with finding the right ways to get my gut to health again. 

I have tried what my doctor prescribed: holistic laxatives, Metamucil, Smooth Move Senna Tea. As a yogi I've practiced far more digestive-focused yoga, pelvic floor exercises, and practiced twice a day at least. I've tried Ayurvedic routines, found out the foods for my dosha so as to eat for my body type. I've sauteed kale, taken lemon shots, drunk cups upon cups of tea before breaking my fast, started the morning with anything from kimchi to miso soup to non-creamy coleslaw to sauerkraut. I read up on gut microbiome and the types of fiber, how to balance 

Eventually, I got the feeling that I was overcomplicating my life. Trying to stop the flow of blood but not putting pressure on the wound; all my attempts were surface-level and I had no real idea of what my body needed, I had no real idea of my body at all. I'm not saying this is the solution for everyone, I'm not even close to trying to influence people towards a new "diet" or anything like that. All I'm saying is that once I began eating more locally produced foods and phasing out overly processed, packaged and (im)ported goods, I saw a change in my stomach and in my regularity. I began to grow herbs, chives, green onion and baby tomatoes, rhubarb and spearmint in my small garden and felt psychologically more fulfilled eating produce I'd grown myself, as well as more confident in knowing just how my produce was treated, without sprays or fertilizers. 

Research is the most important ingredient in the recipe for sustainable human health. We are curious and intelligent creatures, and we do not have to succumb to the epidemic of convenience---especially when it comes to food, which is so incredibly vital to the wellbeing and ensured longevity of our bodies. Understanding your roots before you make any informed dietary decisions is crucial. Understanding your lineal geographical region can help you decide how to balance your everyday diet. I would add that, thanks to the work of anthropologists and historians, there is a wealth of knowledge about ancestral diets from all over the world. 

Of course, I can dish out all this as if I'm perfect, but I still exist in this society, so I'm not a perfect human being. I hope to someday work for this cause, to sway people towards self-subsistence and ancestral eating, and especially to work more towards it myself. 

I believe I addressed it before but so much of our problems is due to the exceptional growth in global population since the Industrial Revolution, and I believe we are still grappling with that. Yet, living in a consumerist society, hellbent on mindlessly guzzling away our Earth's natural ressources and giving nothing back without a second thought, gives me wind that we who are aware of the direness of Earth's situation have a lot of work on our hands, and a long way to go until progress is ultimately made.