Hunting

Like 99.9% of the world's population, I am mostly dependent on agriculture for my food. It's fun to pretend sometimes though. I enjoy foraging for berries, mushrooms and nuts.

Last week, I went crabbing in the San Juan islands. We caught our limit of meaty dungeness crabs every day we put the pots out. If we had been working harder at it (and it was legal), we could easily have caught enough crabs to feed ourselves completely. We cooked them fresh and ate some the same day. We extracted the meat from the rest, and made an amazing crab bisque using a stock made from the shells, and lots of cream.

Here's a "hunting photo". No smiling allowed; I had to look tough...

21 Maret 2005 08:04:44

Khasiat teh hijau sebagai antikanker sudah dikenal luas. Namun pernyataan itu selama ini belum didukung oleh bukti ilmiah. Baru-baru ini ilmuwan Inggris dan Spanyol telah menemukan bagaimana teh hijau mampu menahan berkembangnya beberapa jenis kanker. Namun hati-hati bagi perempuan yang sedang merencanakan kehamilan. Mengonsumsi teh hijau yang berlebihan dapat mengakibatkan rusaknya syaraf janin. Oleh karena itu konsumsinya harus dimbangi dengan suplemen asam folat.

Peneliti dari Universitas Murcia di Spanyol dan John Innes Center di Norwich Inggris, telah menemukan suatu senyawa yang disebut dengan EGCG di teh hijau mampu menghambat pertumbuhan sel kanker dengan mengikatnya ke enzim spesifik.
“Kami telah menemukan untuk pertama kalinya bahwa EGCG di dalam teh hijau ada dalam konsentrasi yang relatif tinggi, mengandung enzim dihydrofolate reductase [DHFR], yang sudah dikenal, dan menjadi target bahan obat antikanker,” kata Professor Roger Thorneley, dari JIC kepada Reuters.“Ini pertama kali, menurut pengetahuan kami, bahan yang diketahui sebagai obat anti kanker telah diidentifikasi, yang diketahui sebagai EGCG.”

Teh hijau memiliki kandungan EGCG lima kali lebih banyak dibandingkan dengan teh biasa. Kandungan itu diketahui dapat menghambat beberapa jenis sel kanker.
Tetapi beberapa ilmuwan belum yakin senyawa apa saja yang terlibat atau bagaimana mereka bekerja. Mereka juga belum menentukan berapa banyak berapa banyak teh hijau yang bisa diminum setiap orang untuk mendapatkan efek yang menguntungkan.
Thorneley mengatakan EGCG kemungkinan hanya satu dari sejumlah mekanisme anti kanker di teh hijau.“Kami telah mengidentifikasi enzim ini di sel tumor yang menjadi target EGCG dan mengerti bagaimana hal itu menghentikan enzim dalam pembuatan DNA. Hal ini berarti kami mungkin juga dapat mengembangkan obat anti kanker yang baru berdasarkan struktur molekul EGCG.

Ilmuwan memutuskan untuk meneliti EGCG setelah mereka menyadari strukturnya sama dengan obat kanker yang disebut dengan methotrexate.“Kami menemukan bahwa EGCG dapat membunuh sel kanker seperti halnya methotrexate,” kata Jose Neptuno Rodriguez-Lopez, dari UMU, salah satu penulis riset yang diterbitkan di jurnal Cancer Research.

EGCG mengikat dengan kuat DHFR, yang esensial dalam sel kanker dan sel sehat. Tetapi dia tida mengikat sekeras methotrexate, sehingga efek sampingnya pada sel yang sehat tidak sekeras dibandingkan dengan obatnya.

Thorneley mengatakan EGCG dapat memimpin senyawa untuk obat antikanker yang baru.
Penemuan itu juga menjelaskan mengapa perempuan yang meminum teh hijau dalam jumlah besar pada waktu mereka konsepsi dan awal kehamilan kemungkinan akan mengalami peningkatan risiko memiliki anak dengan spina bifida atau neural tube disorders.
Perempuan dianjurkan untuk minum suplemen asam folat karena melindungi dari spina bifida. Tetapi mengonsumsi teh hijau dalam jumlah besar dapat menurunkan efektivitas asam folat.“Enzim ini [DHRF], adalah salah satu suplemen asam folat yang sudah ada. Kekurangan asam folat akan mengakibatkan kerusakan perkembangan neural tube,” tambah Thorneley.
Sumber : Bisnis Indonesia

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Composition of the Hunter-Gatherer Diet

I bumped into a fascinating paper today by Dr. Loren Cordain titled "Plant-Animal Subsistence Ratios and Macronutrient Estimations in Worldwide Hunter-Gatherer Diets." Published in 2000 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the paper estimates the food sources and macronutrient intakes of historical hunter-gatherers based on data from 229 different groups. Based on the available data, these groups did not suffer from the diseases of civilization. This is typical of hunter-gatherers.

Initial data came from the massive Ethnographic Atlas by Dr. George P. Murdock, and was analyzed further by Cordain and his collaborators. Cordain is a professor at Colorado State University, and a longtime proponent of paleolithic diets for health. He has written extensively about the detrimental effects of grains and other modern foods. Here's his website.

The researchers broke food down into three categories: hunted animal foods, fished animal foods and gathered foods. "Gathered foods" are primarily plants, but include some animal foods as well:

Although in the present analysis we assumed that gathering would only include plant foods, Murdock indicated that gathering activities could also include the collection of small land fauna (insects, invertebrates, small mammals, amphibians, and reptiles); therefore, the compiled data may overestimate the relative contribution of gathered plant foods in the average hunter-gatherer diet.

There are a number of striking things about the data once you sum them up. First of all, diet composition varied widely. Many groups were almost totally carnivorous, with 46 getting over 85% of their calories from hunted foods. However, not a single group out of 229 was vegetarian or vegan. No group got less than 15% of their calories from hunted foods, and only 2 of 229 groups ate 76-85% of their calories from gathered foods (don't forget, "gathered foods" also includes small animals). On average, the hunter-gatherer groups analyzed got about 70% of their calories from hunted foods. This makes the case that meat-heavy omnivory is our preferred ecological niche. However, it also shows that we can thrive on a plant-rich diet containing modest amounts of quality animal foods.

The paper also discusses the nature of the plant foods hunter-gatherers ate. Although they ate a wide variety of plants occasionally, more typically they relied on a small number of staple foods with a high energy density. There's a table in the paper that lists the most commonly eaten plant foods. "Vegetables" are notably underrepresented. The most commonly eaten plant foods are fruit, underground storage organs (tubers, roots, corms, bulbs), nuts and other seeds. Leaves and other low-calorie plant parts were used much less frequently.

The paper also gets into the macronutrient composition of hunter-gatherer diets.  He writes that

...the most plausible... percentages of total energy from the macronutrients would be 19-35% for protein, 22-40% for carbohydrate, and 28-58% for fat.

He derives these numbers from projections based on the average composition of plant foods, and the whole-body composition of representative animal foods (includes organs, marrow, blood etc., which they typically ate). 

However, some groups may have eaten more fat than this.  Natives on the North American Pacific coast rendered fat from fish, seals, bears and whales, using it liberally in their food. Here's an excerpt from The Northwest Coast by James Swan, who spent three years living among the natives of the Washington coast in the 1850s:

About a month after my return from the treaty, a whale was washed ashore on the beach between Toke's Point and Gray's Harbor and all the Indians about the Bay went to get their share... The Indians were camped near by out of the reach of the tide, and were all very busy on my arrival securing the blubber either to carry home to their lodges or boiling it out on the spot, provided they happened to have bladders or barrels to put the oil in. Those who were trying out [rendering] the blubber cut it into strips about two inches wide, one and a half inches thick, and a foot long. These strips were then thrown into a kettle of boiling water, and as the grease tried out it was skimmed off with clam shells and thrown into a tub to cool and settle. It was then carefully skimmed off again and put into the barrels or bladders for use. After the strips of blubber have been boiled, they are hung up in the smoke to dry and are then eaten. I have tried this sort of food but must confess that, like crow meat, "I didn't hanker arter it".

I was very impressed by the paper overall. I think it presents a good, simple model for eating well: eat whole foods that are similar to those that hunter-gatherers would have eaten, including at least 20% of calories from high-quality animal sources. Organs are mandatory, vegetables may not be. Sorry, Grandma.

Batasi Es Teh, Hindari Batu Ginjal

Minuman teh dicampur dengan es sebagai pelepas dahaga di siang hari yang terik tentunya sangat menyenangkan. Namun, bagi Anda yang cenderung mengalami pembentukan batu ginjal sebaiknya berhati-hati. Penelitian terbaru menyarankan, sebaiknya beralih dari es teh ke air putih campur lemon atau jus lemon.

Menurut para ahli, batu yang terbentuk dari kristal di dalam ginjal atau saluran air seni dari ginjal ke kandung kemih mempengaruhi sekitar 10% populasi Amerika Serikat. Pria tercatat memiliki risiko empat kali lebih besar dibandingkan wanita. Risiko pembentukan batu ginjal tesebut biasanya akan meningkat setelah usia 40 tahun.

Kandungan zat oxalate sebagai salah satu kunci pembentukan batu ginjal, terdapat didalam es teh dalam tingkat konsentrasi tinggi.

"Untuk banyak orang, es teh adalah salah satu minuman yang paling buruk. Terutama bagi orang yang memiliki risiko pembentukan batu ginjal, minuman itu sangat berisiko," ujar Instruktur department of urology di Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, John Milner.

Kegagalan untuk menjaga kecukupan cairan dalam tubuh adalah penyebab utama pembentukan gagal ginjal. Tingginya suhu udara dan tingkat kelembaban, sering menyebabkan keringat berlebih dan dehidrasi, didukung oleh tingginya konsumsi es teh, dapat meningkatkan risiko gagal ginjal saat ini.

Tea Association dari Amerika Serikat melaporkan, warganya mengonsumsi sekitar 1,91 miliar galon es teh per tahun. Hal tersebut dilatari dengan keyakinan bahwa minuman tersebut lebih sehat dibandingkan minuman lain seperti soda dan bir.

Milner mengatakan, minum air putih adalah cara terbaik untuk menjaga cairan dalam tubuh. Jika seseorang cenderung terkena batu ginjal, pilihan terbaik adalah minum air putih dengan lemon atau jus lemon.

"Lemon memiliki kandungan sitrat yang tinggi, sehingga dapat mencegah pembentukan batu ginjal. Jus lemon yang tidak dicampur dengan bahan-bahan perasa lainnya, dapat membantu pembentukan batu ginjal terutama bagi orang-orang yang berisiko tinggi," jelas Milner.

Makanan lainnya yang memiliki tingkat oxalate tinggi yang perlu dihindari oleh orang yang memiliki kecenderungan batu ginjal antara lain, bayam, coklat dan kacang.

Selain itu, perlu juga mengurngi konsumsi garam, dan minum air putih yang cukup setiap hari. Serta, makanan dengan kandungan kalsium tinggi yang dapat menetralkan penyerapan tubuh terhadap oxalate. (healtdaynews.com/rin)-http://republika.co.id/launcher/view/mid/19/news_id/1944

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The Inuit: Lessons from the Arctic

The Inuit (also called Eskimo) are a group of hunter-gatherer cultures who inhabit the arctic regions of Alaska, Canada and Greenland. They are a true testament to the toughness, adaptability and ingenuity of the human species. Their unique lifestyle has a lot of information to offer us about the boundaries of the human ecological niche. Weston Price was fascinated by their excellent teeth, good nature and overall robust health. Here's an excerpt from Nutrition and Physical Degeneration:

"In his primitive state he has provided an example of physical excellence and dental perfection such as has seldom been excelled by any race in the past or present...we are also deeply concerned to know the formula of his nutrition in order that we may learn from it the secrets that will not only aid in the unfortunate modern or so-called civilized races, but will also, if possible, provide means for assisting in their preservation."

The Inuit are cold-hardy hunters whose traditional diet consists of a variety of sea mammals, fish, land mammals and birds. They invented some very sophisticated tools, including the kayak, whose basic design has remained essentially unchanged to this day. Most groups ate virtually no plant food. Their calories came primarily from fat, up to 75%, with almost no calories coming from carbohydrate. Children were breast-fed for about three years, and had solid food in their diet almost from birth. As with most hunter-gatherer groups, they were free from chronic disease while living a traditional lifestyle, even in old age. Here's a quote from Observations on the Western Eskimo and the Country they Inhabit; from Notes taken During two Years [1852-54] at Point Barrow, by Dr. John Simpson:

These people [the Inuit] are robust, muscular and active, inclining rather to spareness [leanness] than corpulence [overweight], presenting a markedly healthy appearance. The expression of the countenance is one of habitual good humor. The physical constitution of both sexes is strong. Extreme longevity is probably not unknown among them; but as they take no heed to number the years as they pass they can form no guess of their own ages.

One of the common counterpoints I hear to the idea that high-fat hunter-gatherer diets are healthy, is that exercise protects them from the ravages of fat. The Inuit can help us get to the bottom of this debate. Here's a quote from Cancer, Disease of Civilization (1960, Vilhjalmur Stefansson):

"They are large eaters, some of them, especially the women, eating all the time..." ...during the winter the Barrow women stirred around very little, did little heavy work, and yet "inclined more to be sparse than corpulent" [quotes are the anthropologist Dr. John Murdoch, reproduced by Stefansson].

Another argument I sometimes hear is that the Inuit are genetically adapted to their high-fat diet, and the same food would kill a European. This appears not to be the case. The anthropologist and arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson spent several years living with the Inuit in the early 20th century. He and his fellow Europeans and Americans thrived on the Inuit diet. American doctors were so incredulous that they defied him and a fellow explorer to live on a diet of fatty meat only for one year, under the supervision of the American Medical Association. To the doctors' dismay, they remained healthy, showing no signs of scurvy or any other deficiency (JAMA 1929;93:20–2).

Yet another amazing thing about the Inuit was their social structure. Here's Dr. John Murdoch again (quoted from Cancer, Disease of Civilization):

The women appear to stand on a footing of perfect equality with the men, both in the family and the community. The wife is the constant and trusted companion of the man in everything except the hunt, and her opinion is sought in every bargain or other important undertaking... The affection of parents for their children is extreme, and the children seem to be thoroughly worthy of it. They show hardly a trace of fretfulness or petulance so common among civilized children, and though indulged to an extreme extent are remarkably obedient. Corporal punishment appears to be absolutely unknown, and children are rarely chided or punished in any way.

Unfortunately, those days are long gone. Since adopting a modern processed-food diet, the health and social structure of the Inuit has deteriorated dramatically. This had already happened to most groups by Weston Price's time, and is virtually complete today. Here's Price:

In the various groups in the lower Kuskokwim seventy-two individuals who were living exclusively on native foods had in their 2,138 teeth only two teeth or 0.09 per cent that had ever been attacked by tooth decay. In this district eighty-one individuals were studied who had been living in part or in considerable part on modern foods, and of their 2, 254 teeth 394 or 13 per cent had been attacked by dental caries. This represents an increase in dental caries of 144 fold.... When these adult Eskimos exchange their foods for our modern foods..., they often have very extensive tooth decay and suffer severely.... Their plight often becomes tragic since there are no dentists in these districts.

Modern Inuit also suffer from very high rates of diabetes and overweight. This has been linked to changes in diet, particularly the use of white flour, sugar and processed oils.

Overall, the unique lifestyle and diet of the Inuit have a lot to teach us. First, that some humans are capable of being healthy eating mostly animal foods. Second, that some humans are able to thrive on a high-fat diet. Third, that humans are capable of living well in extremely harsh and diverse environments. Fourth, that the shift from natural foods to processed foods, rather than changes in macronutrient composition, is the true cause of the diseases of civilization.