Mental Health Blogging

Dr. Sanity’s round-up of the a href=”http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2006/03/touch-and-go.html”psychosphere is up/a. a href=”http://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2006/03/when-christian-and-nutritional-myths.html”Assistant Village Idiot /ahas a post on when Christian and nutritional myths collide that I found quite interesting:br /br /blockquoteThings like this just make me crazy. A quote from The Maker’s Diet, by Jordan S. Rubin.br /br /”History reveals that the healthiest people in the world were generally the most primitive people as well! Our ancestors rarely died from the diet-and lifestyle-related illnesses that kill most modern people before their time, mainly because they ate more healthfully and had more active lifestyles. (p. 32)”br /br /I don’t know anything about the value of Rubin’s subsequent advise on diet. And I’m not going to find out either, because this is so amazingly stupid that I won’t trust a single thing I read from this point forward.br /br /They died young. Their “lifestyle” consisted of brutal labor and frequent malnutrition. Before 1700, life expectancies were in the 30’s worldwide. As recently as 1900, the life expectancy in America was 46 — and that was the highest in the world. Certainly the many deaths in childhood, and the many deaths in childbirth cut down the average, but do the math. A life expectancy of 35 means way less than half are living to age 70. /blockquotebr /br /Yes, it must be nice to rewrite history in a way that makes the primitive lifestyle seem full of life and health. Sorry, but I would rather be alive today eating a Big Mac and frequenting a cardiac surgeon than to have been subjected to the brutal labor and spartan diet plan of my ancestors.