Changing seasons, changing diets, changing weight
By Gary Raham
Nature Writer and Illustrator
This time of year, tomato plants hunch in the garden like withered old
men, holding tight to their last over-ripe fruits. Zucchini bushes sprawl
in tangled heaps after finally exhausting themselves.
No matter. I know King Soopers will supply all the veggies I'll need in
the coming months, not to mention meat, cheeses and, of course, ice cream.
Most likely I'll gain a few pounds before spring returns. I exercise in
winter, but not nearly as much as during the rest of the year, and the
holiday food selections beckon. Most creatures in northern climes, even
many people yet today, must live off stored food, change their diets or
hunker down and use less energy during winter months.
My wife and I hike with friends most of the year at either Lory State Park
or Coyote Ridge. In the fall and winter I've come to look for the green
sprigs of Ponderosa pine boughs in the middle of the trail that show that
the pointy-eared Abert's squirrels are staying closer to their nests, munching
on the tender twigs of their favorite home and food source. These squirrels
will also dig up and eat buried seeds and fungi, along with the terminal
buds and inner bark of the ponderosa--and its parasite, the mistletoe.
Mule deer keep browsing on mountain mahogany, other shrubs, forbs and grasses
until snows bury them. Then they move in among the Douglas fir. One study
in British Columbia, Canada, showed that conifers make up 50 to 75 percent
of a mule deer's winter diet when snow makes other forage unavailable.
And what did people do before King Soopers? My father and a majority of
other people who grew up on farms in the early 20th century were quite
used to growing most of the grains and vegetables they needed and raising
livestock for milk and meat. But even that behavior is atypical of what
humans have done for the last 500 generations or so: hunt meat-on-the-hoof
and gather wild fruits, nuts and vegetables, when they were in season.
Our metabolism has evolved to thrive and prosper on these kinds of foods.
Loren Cordain, a Colorado State University researcher, advocates that if
we made our diet consistent with what hunter-gatherers have been eating
for the last 40,000 years and more, we wouldn't have to worry so much about
overeating or eating the wrong things. His so-called "paleo diet" has gained
some attention over the last couple of years. He says our modern diet puts
the wrong fuel in our tanks.
"The staples of today's diet"--cereals, dairy products, refined sugars,
fatty meats and salted, processed foods--"are like diesel fuel (rather
than high-octane gas) to our body's metabolic machinery," he says.
After studying 200 hunter-gatherer societies, Cordain and his colleagues
have concluded that Paleolithic people ate no dairy food, rarely ate cereal
grains, didn't salt food and only got refined sugar in the form of honey,
when they could find it. Wild, lean animal protein dominated their diet
and nearly all carbohydrates came from nonstarchy wild fruits and vegetables.
They ate monounsaturated fats like those found in olive oil, nuts and avocados
and Omega 3 fats like those in fish oils, but hardly any of the saturated
fats in marbled meat and whole dairy products. He says a typical American
diet is 15.5 percent protein, 49 percent carbohydrate (with lots of processed
sugars in the mix), and 34 percent fat, much of it the saturated variety.
Hunter-gatherers, in contrast, eat 19 to 35 percent lean protein, 22 to
40 percent carbohydrate in the form of fruits and veggies, and 28 to 47
percent fat as nuts and unsaturated oils.
"Eat your fruits and vegetables" sounds like something mom would say. Of
course, she was right. She just didn't know why. Fruits and vegetables
contain lots of antioxidants, phytochemicals and fiber important in allowing
your body to fight the arterial plaque that leads to heart disease, the
energetic free-radical chemicals that contribute to cancerous growth, and
the bone degeneration called osteoporosis. How F & Vs fight osteoporosis
is a little uncertain, but recent studies have shown that in a group of
elderly men and women, the ones who ate the most fruits and vegetables
had the strongest bones.
Strong bones come from adequate exercise, too. Hunter-gatherer men among
the !Kung people of Africa average walking 9.3 miles per day. Women average
5.7 miles daily. If you walk the 10,000 paces a day recommended by many
health experts, you are walking about 5 miles.
So, where does that leave fine specimens of H. sapiens like us during those
long and frequent winter celebrations full of candy, eggnog and prime rib?
Tempted, of course, but always with choices, based on the knowledge of
what our great-great-great-grandmoms and granddads would have found to
be delicious.
Cordain offers a number of paleo recipes in his book, "The Paleo Diet"
(John Wiley and Sons, 2002) and on the related web site, www.thepaleodiet.com.
Fortunately, King Soopers carries many of the ingredients. Many of the
options look quite tasty, like this paleo-friendly poultry stuffing:
2 cups finely ground blanched almonds
1 cup chopped onion (or chopped dried onion for more flavor)
1/2 cup chopped celery (optional)
1 teaspoon ground sage
1 teaspoon ground thyme
Chopped parsley
1 tablespoon mild-flavored oil (more if it seems too dry)
Pepper to taste
Mix together all ingredients. Fill cavity of bird with mixture, then roast.
Only you and your conscience will know if the saturated-fat bowl of ice
cream is a temptation too great to bear. Perhaps, if the ice cream is low
fat, and you add a few walnuts for their cholesterol-lowering, polyunsaturated
oils...
|
