Mother Knows Best

The Aborigines are the native people of Australia. One young aboriginal man raised on their reservation decided to abandon his tribe’s traditional ways, leave home, go to college, become an accountant, move to a big city and live a modern lifestyle.

After he graduated from college he landed a good accounting job in the offices of a major Australian manufacturing firm in Canberra, the capital city of Australia. But after two decades of life in the big city, he received a terrible shock when his physician diagnosed him with type II diabetes.

When he told his mother of the diagnosis she insisted that he return to the reservation and go back to eating a traditional Aboriginal diet. He followed her wise advice. In two years his diabetes had completely vanished and his health was fully restored.

The diseases of civilization that are so common in the U.S. and Europe are extremely rare among the aborigines – but that advantage only applies to the individuals who reside on the reservation and live a traditional lifestyle. Unfortunately, those aborigines who leave to live in the big cities suffer from these modern diseases at roughly the same rate as Americans.

The New Delhi Blues

Studies done in India have cast more light on this effect. There researchers have found that the diseases of civilization are much more common among the people who live in the larger more modern Indian cities where they consume what most people would call a modern western type diet.

While in contrast their cousins who live in the rural areas where they continue to consume a traditional more natural diet tend to remain healthy and are largely escaping these modern epidemics.

When researchers examined the health histories of Indians who left India to live in the U.S., they found that within a few short years of arrival their disease risk quickly rose to the much higher American level.

On the other side of the coin, those rare Americans who take up residence in the rural areas of India see their disease risk quickly tumble to the much lower rural Indian rate.

And then there’s the Japanese example. Many of these diseases of civilization are relatively rare among the citizens of Japan. But when the Japanese immigrate to Hawaii, where they begin consuming processed foods, their disease risk quickly rises 50% or more.

Among those Japanese who go on to move to the mainland U.S., the risk rises even further within a few short years.

Burger Hell

Back in the 1970s the people of a small backward island in the Philippines were eager to live a more modern life. They filed a formal request with their government asking for assistance in obtaining a fast food style restaurant. It took their government several years but eventually the people got what they desired – a modern hamburger outlet.

When the restaurant opened everyone was delighted. No longer did the locals have to spend long hours at sea fishing or break their backs tilling the soil in order to obtain their daily food.

Now they could just line up three times a day and have their food handed to them on a bright red plastic tray. But after a few years the health of the islanders, a group who had always been extremely healthy, went into steady decline.

High blood pressure which had been all but unknown on the island suddenly appeared. After five years fully a third of the islanders were on various kinds of high blood pressure medications.

A few years after that, the first few cases of type II diabetes were diagnosed. It wasn’t long before the number of diabetics on the island exploded. And after several decades of modern food, the first cases of Alzheimer’s disease were diagnosed. Eat like an American and you die like an American.