Our diet today bears little resemblance to that which our great grandparents ate. For the thousands of years of human evolution leading up to our great grandparent’s generation, the human diet changed only gradually, then in the Twentieth century it changed almost beyond recognition, and along with this came diet related diseases and sensitivities previously unknown. Those aspects of our diet that remain least changed may become nutritionally critical as food production becomes ever more industrialized.
"Other than foraged foods, ocean caught wild fish are the only truly natural organic food available in our changing world."
Chef Michel Nischan, author of Taste, pure and simple.
The primitive central nervous system and brain structure that gave rise to the animal kingdom took shape about 600 million years ago in a marine environment. Although changed today, this environment is still the principle source of many of the micronutrients that form the building blocks of brain cell structure, and in particular docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). Brains are fat rich organs, up to 60% of the structural material is lipid, DHA and EPA being particularly important, and the availability and conservation of these nutrients in diet play a critical role in evolution. Indeed as species evolved away from a marine environment, one finds the size of the brain relative to the body decreases by both time and size.
Skipping ahead on the fossil record to 60,000 years ago, when protohominids began a series of changes that were to lead to homo sapiens, two of these changes were the migration of these hunter/gatherers to coastal and lakeside areas, with an increase in seafood diet, and a rapid increase in brain size.
Essentially seafood was mankind's’ first meal, the critical nutrient input that lead rapidly to the evolution of a species quite unlike any the Earth had produced hitherto, one that could make tools, change its environment, ponder good and evil, and create the internet.
In so doing we have isolated ourselves from our origins. What we eat today is so absolutely changed from anything that thousands of years of methodical evolution suited us to, that it is a wonder we can eat it at all. Three hundred years ago, maize was part of the diet of only a small portion of the species. Today, totally, genetically altered, corn is in everything. Our once grass fed meat is fed corn almost exclusively. High fructose corn syrup, a food additive possible only in a highly industrialized system, is in almost every processed food you buy. As dairy products fill the supermarket shelves around the world, and the number of genetic strains of the Holstein cow diminishes to single figures, we show surprise that so many suffer from lactose intolerance. No matter that the normal human condition is that the gene that permits lactose tolerance turns ‘off’ after infancy in all but Northern Europeans. As they raped and pillaged, it seems that the Vikings spread a genetic defect that leaves this switch ‘on’. The ability to tolerate dairy in adulthood is actually a genetic defect!
As much of our protein supply has become dominated by maize inputs, the resultant balance of micronutrients has shifted. Whilst as recently as 1900 the average diet contained fatty acids Omega-3 and Omega-6 in equal amounts, today the ratio is 15:1 or more in favor of Omega-6. This change is principally attributed to reliance on inputs such as maize and soy.
Whilst both Omega-3 and Omega-6 are polyunsaturated fatty acids or ‘essential fatty acids’, mounting evidence indicates that we get more than enough Omega-6 for our needs, but fall short on Omega-3’s. Furthermore, it is the long chain Omega-3’s that we need the most, and lack. We are able to make do, by ‘assembling’ short chain 3’s together, although some studies refute this, or indicate it is hugely inefficient (<2%), and we can substitute Omega-6 for Omega-3, although there is growing evidence of diminished cell performance and compromised health.
Many of the foods touted today as being high in Omega-3 contain principally alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), which has 18 carbon atoms, unlike EPA with 20 and DHA with 22. This, together with the arrangement of bonds along the chain, make EPA and DHA distinct. Furthermore, they are only available in meaningful quantities from a marine based diet.
Walnuts, flax seeds and olive oil are good for you, but they do not contain the long chain Omega-3’s that are the ones indicated time and time again to be so particularly good for our health. Fish, such as farmed salmon, fed a diet heavy in maize and soy, are also poor sources of these nutrients. Oily wild fish are by far the preferred source, and locally caught salmon, herring and albacore tuna have been found to have some of the highest levels of all!
Many foundation traditions around the world speak of the gift of life and wisdom from the sea, often in the form of a fish/human such as Salmon Woman or the Mermaid. DHA and EPA, essential to the growth and function of our minds and bodies, do come from the sea. There is indeed more truth to these stories than we might have thought, we simply would not be what we are today without those nutrients.
As we sit down to out Thanksgiving dinners, celebrating abundant food, family and friends, we might make a place, as good Northwesterners, for some salmon on the table. Fish is the last wild food we have, a last link with what lead us to today. As with our last wild places that we sustain and celebrate, so might we best sustain and celebrate the food that links us to where we came from.
Jeremy Brown is a commercial fisher from Bellingham. A board member of the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association, he is a 2002 Food and Society Policy Fellow, a program of the Thomas Jefferson Agricultural Institute in partnership with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy and funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. He can be reached at fvoneandall@hotmail.com
Note, I am indebted to Prof Michael Crawford of the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition, and to Dr Joyce Nettleton <fatsoflife.com> for material for this article.
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