Nutrition and Physical Degeneration summary

In the Western world many of us are living in an era of abundance. With easy access to a wide range of cheap and tasty processed foods, like chocolate and white bread, it's no wonder that a diet of convenience has become the norm.

But is it healthy?

Because many of us lead a sedentary lifestyle, we require fewer calories than those who lead active lives. However, we also need to ensure we get enough vitamins and minerals.

Yet while much of the processed food that we eat provides us with the energy necessary for daily living – that is, enough calories – it has lost much of its nutritional value during the production process.

Take a look at your last supermarket receipt. How many of the items you bought are locally sourced? With a little research, you'll notice that many of the items were imported from distant places, and packaged to have the longest shelf life possible to increase its chances of being sold.

This is far from the perfect way to eat, especially when compared with the diets of indigenous people that are based on the food available in their local environment.

You probably know at least a few vegans, who refuse to eat or make use of any animal products. You may even be a vegan yourself. It's true that there are many benefits to a vegan diet, but is it – as many believe – the best way to live?

Certainly some plants and vegetables are rich in nutrients and can fulfill essential dietary requirements.

As the global population swells, necessary advances in food production technologies and processes increasingly disconnect us from the sources of our food. This leads us to simply not care about the environments from which our food is derived.

This lack of care is risky, because it can result in a situation where we borrow nutrients from the soil but don't replenish them. Agriculture, for instance, results in soil depletion, diminishing its mineral content and productivity for an extended time. In fact, much of the mineral content of farmland, like the calcium and phosphorus in wheat or corn crops, is transported to cities where it’s deposited via sewers to the ocean, rather than returned to the soil.

There's certainly no shortage of advice given to newly pregnant mothers on the do’s and don’ts of their diet for the next nine months. But in fact, the child's health also derives from the fertility of both parents before conception – a fact that is reflected in the diets of indigenous people.

Eskimos, for example, feed salmon sperm to men and fish eggs to women to increase their fertility – a practice shared by the indigenous people on the Peruvian coast. Such diets are rich in vitamins that are important to the development of traits like healthy eyes and strong bones in their offspring.

The key message in this book:

Because imported, processed food is often stripped of nutrients, we should avoid eating it as much as possible. Instead, we should eat food that is whole, natural, unprocessed and sourced from the local environment. This will help you get the most vitamins and minerals with which to maintain a healthy body and strong teeth.