Eating like a caveman doesn’t mean you believe you came from one!

Throughout all my reading and research on diet over this past year runs a common theme – humans “evolved” to eat a certain way.  In a word: HOGWASH.  In order to accept the idea that humans evolved, one must discard the truth of Creation.  I choose not to do that.  Instead, I find it quite easy to believe that mankind was CREATED to eat a certain way… and here’s my documentation:

 

“The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Genesis 2:7

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” (And eat from it.) Genesis 2:15-16

“Everything that lives and moves will be food for you.  Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.”  Genesis 9:3

 

This sounds every bit like a “Paleolithic” diet to me… fruits, vegetables, and meat.  I don’t see grain anywhere here.  Though the Bible certainly talks about people eating grain in our early history, nowhere (that I know of) does God tell us that grain has been given to us for food.  Why then do we eat it?  We may as well ask, why do we eat candy?  Why do we drink coffee?  Why do we drive cars?  Why do we take drugs?  Why do we sing and dance?  Why do we… (fill in the blank)?  Most of what we do is done to fulfill a need or gratify the senses. 

So is grain a need or a gratification?  I suppose that depends on who you are and where you live.  For people in desperate countries struggling with starvation, grain (if and when they can get it) is a need.  For Americans? ...not so much.   As a matter of fact, eating grains can be downright hazardous according to many health experts.  In a recent article on leaky gut syndrome by Dr. Mercola, he quotes from Dr. Loren Cordain, a professor at Colorado State University and an expert on Paleolithic lifestyles: 

"There's no human requirement for grains. That's the problem with the USDA recommendations. They think we're hardwired as a species to eat grains. You can get by just fine and meet every single nutrient requirement that humans have without eating grains. And grains are absolutely poor sources of vitamins and minerals compared to fruits and vegetables and meat and fish."

"Grains are the seeds of a plant. They're its reproductive material, and plants don't make their reproductive material to give away for free to other animals. If they did they'd become extinct, and so the evolutionary strategy that many plants, particularly cereal grains, have taken to prevent predation is to evolve toxic compounds so that the predator of the seeds can't eat them, so that they can put their seeds in the soil where they're meant to be to grow a new plant and not in the gut of an animal to feed it."

[Side note… (See what I mean about the evolution hogwash?!)  If you were the All-Wise Creator, designing something to survive, would you not follow a strategy similar to what the evolution-philosophy suggests in the above quotation?  Substituting Creation philosophy makes more sense to me, but the resulting logic is the same – seeds (grains) are not on the menu.  (As a matter of fact, it makes so much sense that I would say the evolutionist philosophy has looked at God’s Creation and suggested that if there was no God, and we had to make up some explanation for life as we know it, this is probably what happened.)]

In short, in a Creation (or Paleolithic, if you must) Diet, grains are not on the menu.  And as with life in general, when we go outside of God’s best design for us, we’re bound to have problems.  Grains, and wheat in particular, will not kill us immediately; but like any vice, it will take its toll eventually. 

So back to the initial question:  Why do we eat it?  Because it tastes so darn good!  How can something that tastes so good be bad for us?  (Ask a drug addict.)  In his book Wheat Belly, Dr. William Davis makes the case that wheat is actually addictive.  When subjected to the acid and enzymes in the stomach, gluten (the main protein of wheat) breaks down into polypeptides (chains of amino acids) which are capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier that separates the bloodstream from the brain.  “Once having gained entry into the brain, wheat polypeptides bind to the brain’s morphine receptor, the very same receptor to which opiate drugs bind.”  Some experts might argue that this addictive element is some kind of evolutionary ploy by wheat to overcome extinction from seed-eating by teaming up with the creature at the top of the food chain (humans) to guarantee perpetual cultivation, i.e. farming.  This was Michael Pollan’s hypothesis in The Omnivore’s Dilemma with regard to the cultivation of corn.  However, being a God-believing creationist, I’m blaming it on the curse:

“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.  It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.” Genesis3:17-18

I know – there’s nothing in there about wheat addiction, but God doesn’t tell us everything.  And a curse, though perhaps not very scientific, would certainly explain the problem. 

Regardless of what you believe about the origin of life, it’s hard to argue that there are any redeemable virtues in grain—other than taste.  But don’t take MY word for it – and DON’T buy into the government hype that there is any such thing as a “healthy grain.”  There is a growing abundance of research on this topic, beginning with the articles highlighted in this post.  (How Does a Paleo Diet Benefit Your Health?)

Call it a “Paleolithic Diet” or a “Creation Diet”… either way, this diet of meats, vegetables, and fruit is guaranteed to bless you with the best possible health.  The only question left is, can we do it?