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Why You Shouldn't Eat 5 Portions
Part 5 Is there a biological need for any vegetables or fruit?
Dr Weston Price noticed that deaths from heart disease and pneumonia were higher in the colder months than in warmer months. During the 1920s and early '30s, he collected data from sixteen widely different locations across the United States and Canada which measured levels of sunshine and vitamins in foods in those areas to see if there was a parallel with the areas' deaths rates.
A superficial examination of the data seemed to show, he writes, 'that since the vitamin levels are generally higher in the summer and lower in the winter in the temperate zones, the vitamin level is in direct proportion to the sunlight. A more careful examination of the data, however, discloses that this is not what we find, for in many communities the vitamin curves do not correspond to the sunshine curve.'
Dr Price then collated the data to plot sixteen graphs. Although there were small anomalies, in general the mortality and morbidity curves showed clearly that where there was the more sunshine there were fewer deaths. Vitamins seemed to play only a minor role if any at all.
'Everybody knows' that scurvy, the blight of ancient mariners, is caused by a lack of vitamin C, and that vitamin C is found in fruit and vegetables. British ships carried supplies of lemons and limes to ward off scurvy — and were called limeys.
The Icelandic-born anthropologist and explorer, Dr Vilhjalmur Stefansson, spent many years in the early twentieth century living with the Eskimos of Northern Canada and eating as they did. He also conducted much research on the North American Indians as well as European-born trappers and hunters. All of them ate a diet completely devoid of all fruits and vegetables — and none of them developed scurvy, or any other degenerative disease.[21] The same is true of many other cultures around the world: the traditional diet of the Maasai and Samburu tribes of Africa, for example, is composed entirely of milk, blood and meat from their cattle, and they too live entirely healthy lives untroubled by any of the degenerative diseases that plague us.
Case history
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Lord Strathcona — the Donald Smith of Mount Sir Donald and Smith's Landing and countless towns and natural features throughout Canada — was Canada's High Commissioner in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and one of the richest men in the British Empire. The famous explorer and anthropologist, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, gives the following account of Lord Strathcona's dietary habits, which illustrate well how a restricted diet can be eminently healthy: |
This story illustrates just how unimportant fruit and vegetables are if the underlying diet is correct. And Lord Strathcona must have been doing something right because he lived entirely healthily to the ripe old age of 93.
On the other hand, fruit and vegetables are essential as a source of vitamin C if cereals are eaten. Vitamin C is essential for the metabolism of carbohydrates — and cereals contain no vitamin C.
Conclusion
The truth is that fresh fat meat and/or fish is all that our bodies require to live long and completely healthy lives.
Although there is a small amount of evidence which suggests that a few vegetables may confer a degree of protection against heart disease and cancer in the context of our industrialised society with its generally unhealthy 'healthy' diet, there seems little or no evidence that fruit does.
On the other hand, the sugars contained in fruit in particular could be considered a significant hazard to health. Under the circumstances, you may be wiser to compromise and eat one or two portions of vegetables a day, but go easy on the fruit, or cut it out altogether.
I do know that if Dr Jan Kwasniewski, who has been successfully treating patients in Poland with a low-carb, high-fat diet for over thirty years, had his way, all fruit trees would be pulled down to make way for olives. He may well have a point.
Last updated 7 April 2010
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