In John Robbins' new book entitled Healthy at 100, Robbins takes on the daunting task of examining several communities throughout the world that have succeeded in increasing their life spans.
He looked specifically at four communities; the Abkhasia of Caucasus, the Vilcabamba of Peru, the Hunza of Pakistan, and the Okinawa of Japan. He points out not only the health benefits of eating a plant-centered diet as a way of improving health, but also the fact that those cultures where the elderly are admired and respected suffer far less depression and poor health. Such cultures value their elderly so much that many people dream of the day when they can become old and receive the same respect. The cultures that experience the greatest percentage of centenarians also, not surprisingly, are communities where people in general are treated with respect and cooperation. They are communities where compassion and mutual support are of greater value then property and material wealth. Robbins points out that more materialistic cultures, like that in the United States, see a dramatic rise in millionaires and centralized wealth, but also an increase in poverty and prisons. Those cultures that emphasize personal wealth at all cost are also seeing a rise in disease, depression, crime and poverty.
Robbins has succeeded in writing a near perfect book on health and longevity. It should be mandatory reading for all health care practitioners, and for anyone who genuinely cares about improving their health and the health of our planet.
My only criticism of Robbins book, and it is slight, is that he may slightly fudge the data on caloric intake. While it is true that a plant centered diet seems to be better for the majority of human beings, meat consumption is found in all the cultures he studies, and may attribute to approximately 10 percent of the weight of the diet and not 1 percent as argued by Robbins.
My interest in Robbin's research began several years ago, and lead to a letter correspondence with Robbins that he was kind enough to respond to more then once.
Before going to medical school I attended the University of Washington, where I received a degree in anthropology. I loved the subject so much that I briefly thought of forgoing my doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine in favor of a career as an anthropologist.
Several subjects regarding the topic interested me. Most notably, I was fascinated by a branch known as environmental anthropology, which seeks to discover how human beings coexist with their environments, how environment shapes us, and how we shape our environment. An example would be the domestication of certain species of plants and animals. While it is true that domestication can change a species, domestication of plants and animals changes us as well. We are physically changed by the experience, and we change our health because of it. We become comfortable in the environment we live in, and if we live in that place long enough, for centuries perhaps, it becomes home. Whether it is the harsh terrain of Eastern Africa, or the cold of Greenland, it will become home to us if we can survive and live there long enough. Over time we may thrive to such an extent that leaving such a place compromises our health.
Diet requirements may change based on culture and ancestry. A tribe like the Inuit of North America, for example, has learned to survive in a harsh region of the world on a mostly fish- based diet of seal and whale meat, while the people of early Mesopotamia developed animal and plant domestication and tended toward a more vegetable-based diet; this lead to adaptations in diet and lifestyle that were very different. Strong evidence indicates that individuals in these two populations would experience improved health if they avoided modern processed foods in favor of the foods their bodies have learned to adapt and thrive on for several thousands of years.
In my final two years of medical school, my clinic experience highlighted for me the lack of ready-available information regarding human evolution and diet in general. While it is true that humans are omnivores, and there is no record of any successful vegan culture, it is also true that, with the exception of extreme environments, like that experienced by the Inuit of North America, most human cultures maintained a diet that was mostly vegan with only a small percentage of their daily intake of food coming from animal consumption. Hunting practices intensified as our tool technology developed, but it still remained a difficult and painful way of acquiring food and only succeeded in being a small part of the daily caloric intake. Gathering of plants, usually done by the women and children of the tribe, most often made up the majority of the diet.
After graduating from medical school, I mused about the misinformation that was out there within the medical community regarding human evolution and diet and began to daydream about the perfect book on the subject. A book that would give a brief history of human evolution and cross-cultural comparisons of communities that experience health and longevity while maintaining their traditional diets. Diets that are mostly plant-based with very small amounts of animal protein. A book that touched on the merits of modern living while pointing out the benefits of traditional communities. The book would be a guide to helping people not only with their food choices, but also offer advice on day to day living based on compassion and mutual respect. Such a book might transform how we in the Western world treat one another, and would challenge our own cultural values. John Robbins has written that book.
