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Deadly Harvest: The Intimate Relationship Between Our Health and Our Food
With an increasing number of people suffering from obesity, heart disease, and other diet-related disorders, many of us turn to fad diets in an effort to drop excess pounds or recover our health. But what if our foods were doing more harm than good, and fad diets made matters worse? Deadly Harvest examines how the foods we eat today have little in common with those of our ancestors, and why this fact is important to our health. It also offers a proven program to enhance health and improve longevity.
Using the latest scientific research and studies of primitive lifestyles, the author first explains the diet that our ancestors followed—one in harmony with the human species. He then describes how our present diets affect our health, leading to disorders such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and more. Most important, he details measures we can take to improve our diet, our health, and our quality of life.
Using the latest scientific research and studies of primitive lifestyles, the author first explains the diet that our ancestors followed—one in harmony with the human species. He then describes how our present diets affect our health, leading to disorders such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and more. Most important, he details measures we can take to improve our diet, our health, and our quality of life.
336 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 26, 2010
I was particularly interested in this book because of my education in anthropology, specifically human evolutionary studies and primatology. I even studied under one of the author’s often-referenced resources, Katy Milton. The author hypothesizes that our health is best served by a diet similar to the one we had when our species evolved, which he calls the “savanna model.” Smartly, he then correlates this with information from nutrition science. He provides some good information and lots of references, and while I agree with much of what says, there are problems. His savanna model is based on environmental conditions that existed at the dawn of Homo sapiens, but the real distinctions in our morphology evolved at the transition from our Australopithecus progenitors to the Homo genus, when our brains became larger and our dentition smaller. Paleo-ecology studies now inform us that the African landscape changed dramatically during the past 2 million years, fluctuating back and forth from dry savanna to a much wetter climate with large inland lakes different from the savanna we know today. He identifies African bushmen and Aborigines as a proxy for a savanna-model human, pointing out how these groups eat mostly plants, have limited hunting success, and are routinely hungry. But these groups are remnant forager populations living on the margins, in reservations left to them by dominant populations who have sequestered the best lands and richest resources. I see the savanna model as a narrow and static depiction of paleo-human circumstances. Native Americans prior to European contact may provide a fuller picture of the early African situation over time and distance. This included a variety of ecological niches, diverse human populations and varying cultural adaptations in response to specific micro-conditions, all of which would have resulted in somewhat different diets. Granted, there would have been no processed foods, grains, tofu, dairy, and other post-agricultural foodstuffs. But food-group proportions (meat, vegetable, fruit, etc.) would have fluctuated by geography, season, generation, etc. Similarly, it is a mistake to use non-human primates for insights to the proper human diet. Nonhuman primates spend most of their day—more than eight hours—chewing. This is largely because they consume their food raw and they lack the proper dentition for chewing meat. Chimps like to eat meat, but, for them, it is like chewing bubble gum. We would have trouble eating much of the food that apes eat, which includes browse-type items and wild plants much different from our domesticated varieties. It is a well established principle that the evolution of all species and physical changes to the body are hugely influenced by the way food is acquired and consumed. In Catching Fire, Wrangham makes a compelling case that most, if not all, members of the genus Homo used fire to process food. This enabled us to more efficiently consume our food, spend less time eating and get more nutrition, which was necessary to feed our expanding brains.
There are other points that I would object to or find potentially misleading. On several occasions he noted that a certain food increases the risk of a certain disease by a certain percent. For example, men who consume more than 2.5 servings of dairy products per day have a 34% higher risk of developing prostate cancer. This initially sounds alarming. But since only one out of every 750 men get prostate cancer to begin with, eating dairy will only increase your chances of getting prostate cancer by about five one-hundredths of a percent. It’s the same way that buying two California lottery tickets may double your chances of winning, but actually only improves your odds from 1 in 18 million to 2 in 18 million.
He also notes that females in western societies enter puberty at a later age than in forager societies and suggests that “this is not how nature intended.” The fact of the matter is that nature doesn’t have “intentions.” If there is any intention in nature, it would be the other way: nature would actually favor younger puberty to the extent that it may increase the number of offspring the female could produce over her reproductive life. In its simplest definition, natural selection is differential reproduction. The success of a species is not how long its members live, but how effectively it genetically displaces competitors. Also, since reproduction requires greater reserves of energy, nature tends to shut down the reproductive system when an individual is undernourished.
In Chapter 8, the author goes off on a tangent about the savanna model lifestyle, where he steers away from diet and offers broad speculations about ideas as far off (and far out) as why men don’t cry and how men are best at physical warfare while women are best at psychological warfare. This was a fun and interesting digression, but overly ambitious in scope. He would have been better off saving that for another book where he could have given the discussion more thorough treatment.
There were other issues I could raise, but all these complaints don’t necessarily invalidate the basic premise and value of the savanna model diet or some close derivation of it. When I look at a typical diet, even my own to some extent, and certainly that of my child who lives on pasta, pizza, and milk, I can see great value in a re-alignment that minimizes consumption of post-agricultural products.
There are other points that I would object to or find potentially misleading. On several occasions he noted that a certain food increases the risk of a certain disease by a certain percent. For example, men who consume more than 2.5 servings of dairy products per day have a 34% higher risk of developing prostate cancer. This initially sounds alarming. But since only one out of every 750 men get prostate cancer to begin with, eating dairy will only increase your chances of getting prostate cancer by about five one-hundredths of a percent. It’s the same way that buying two California lottery tickets may double your chances of winning, but actually only improves your odds from 1 in 18 million to 2 in 18 million.
He also notes that females in western societies enter puberty at a later age than in forager societies and suggests that “this is not how nature intended.” The fact of the matter is that nature doesn’t have “intentions.” If there is any intention in nature, it would be the other way: nature would actually favor younger puberty to the extent that it may increase the number of offspring the female could produce over her reproductive life. In its simplest definition, natural selection is differential reproduction. The success of a species is not how long its members live, but how effectively it genetically displaces competitors. Also, since reproduction requires greater reserves of energy, nature tends to shut down the reproductive system when an individual is undernourished.
In Chapter 8, the author goes off on a tangent about the savanna model lifestyle, where he steers away from diet and offers broad speculations about ideas as far off (and far out) as why men don’t cry and how men are best at physical warfare while women are best at psychological warfare. This was a fun and interesting digression, but overly ambitious in scope. He would have been better off saving that for another book where he could have given the discussion more thorough treatment.
There were other issues I could raise, but all these complaints don’t necessarily invalidate the basic premise and value of the savanna model diet or some close derivation of it. When I look at a typical diet, even my own to some extent, and certainly that of my child who lives on pasta, pizza, and milk, I can see great value in a re-alignment that minimizes consumption of post-agricultural products.
February 24, 2010
An interesting introduction to the savanna model, one implementation of the paleolithic diet. Proposes reasons to eat and live close to savanna model, the ills conceived from straying from it, how to apply it to one's life, and in what stages one can introduce it into one's diet. Bond can be a little insane, but a competent, critical reader can pretty easily separate the quality stuff from the crazy.
April 18, 2020
Geoff Bond is a nutritional anthropologist, a relatively new science field in which its practitioners investigate “what it means to be human—in nutritional terms.” Another way to put it, as Bond does in his book Deadly Harvest (Square One), is to ask, “What feeding environment are human bodies designed for?” According to one of the many information boxes throughout Bond’s book, we learn that modern humans began life with the East African Homo erectus more than one million years ago; and these early people did not leave Africa for other parts of the world until only about 60,000 years ago. An interesting map shows what I call the “diaspora of modern human beings,” from the time when the environment of Africa formed the bodies that we still possess and were not yet damaged by modern-day illnesses. He calls this period the “African Pleistocene,” and that is where his research takes him: to the Savanna Model way of life.
In his book, Bond explores the background of the people living then and focuses on the San Bushmen (the !Kung people) as our role model for exploring how these people worked and fed themselves. They were hunter/gatherers, with men doing the hunting and women and children—perhaps even the elderly—doing the gathering. This Paleolithic (Paleo) diet was derived eighty percent (80%) from plants (greens, nuts, seeds, etc.), and twenty percent (20%) from animals that were hunted; and not always successfully. Plant food was more accessible. The only “sweet” was honey, which was scarce; and the search for honey took effort, smarts, and time, so it was a real treat of perhaps the equivalent of a candy bar four times a year, according to Bond.
Based on this information in the beginning of the book, Bond then moves on to how agriculture was introduced. He calls this chapter “The Farming Revolution and Its Consequences,” which meant that humans stayed in one place and did not wander to new places to hunt or to gather. We moved away from the original diet and began eating food that Bond demonstrates is not really in keeping with the basic tenets of the Savanna Model. This is a most interesting chapter that seems to challenge farming and farm foods (grains, beans, etc.) as being not really suitable for our bodies.
Perhaps the most practical chapters of this book are: “The Owner’s Manual,” and “Eating the Savanna Model Way,” with basic instructions on how to eat a Paleolithic (Paleo) diet—changing our eating patterns slowly over time, to acclimate our bodies to more fresh plant matter and less animal matter, reflecting how the San Bushmen lived and thrived.
For me, reading this book was like taking a crash course in early (positive) eating habits and their comparison with today’s (negative) eating habits. The book would serve well as a text for a class in nutrition, and might very well explain why we suffer from so many “modern” ailments—while our ancestors did not. Additionally, the Resources (including his online newsletter, www.TheBondEffect.com) and the References section (see pages 283–315) are a clear indication that Bond has done his homework.
I am still “digesting” this information, and recommend that anyone really concerned about staying in good health or repairing his or her body to a state of well-being would do well to read this book cover-to-cover, slowly. It contains so much information that the general reader will not be able to absorb it all if read too quickly. There’s no “padding” in this book; it’s all well-resourced information, gathered into a meaningful message about how are health is still linked to our very early ancestors.
In his book, Bond explores the background of the people living then and focuses on the San Bushmen (the !Kung people) as our role model for exploring how these people worked and fed themselves. They were hunter/gatherers, with men doing the hunting and women and children—perhaps even the elderly—doing the gathering. This Paleolithic (Paleo) diet was derived eighty percent (80%) from plants (greens, nuts, seeds, etc.), and twenty percent (20%) from animals that were hunted; and not always successfully. Plant food was more accessible. The only “sweet” was honey, which was scarce; and the search for honey took effort, smarts, and time, so it was a real treat of perhaps the equivalent of a candy bar four times a year, according to Bond.
Based on this information in the beginning of the book, Bond then moves on to how agriculture was introduced. He calls this chapter “The Farming Revolution and Its Consequences,” which meant that humans stayed in one place and did not wander to new places to hunt or to gather. We moved away from the original diet and began eating food that Bond demonstrates is not really in keeping with the basic tenets of the Savanna Model. This is a most interesting chapter that seems to challenge farming and farm foods (grains, beans, etc.) as being not really suitable for our bodies.
Perhaps the most practical chapters of this book are: “The Owner’s Manual,” and “Eating the Savanna Model Way,” with basic instructions on how to eat a Paleolithic (Paleo) diet—changing our eating patterns slowly over time, to acclimate our bodies to more fresh plant matter and less animal matter, reflecting how the San Bushmen lived and thrived.
For me, reading this book was like taking a crash course in early (positive) eating habits and their comparison with today’s (negative) eating habits. The book would serve well as a text for a class in nutrition, and might very well explain why we suffer from so many “modern” ailments—while our ancestors did not. Additionally, the Resources (including his online newsletter, www.TheBondEffect.com) and the References section (see pages 283–315) are a clear indication that Bond has done his homework.
I am still “digesting” this information, and recommend that anyone really concerned about staying in good health or repairing his or her body to a state of well-being would do well to read this book cover-to-cover, slowly. It contains so much information that the general reader will not be able to absorb it all if read too quickly. There’s no “padding” in this book; it’s all well-resourced information, gathered into a meaningful message about how are health is still linked to our very early ancestors.
February 15, 2013
This book on health was an eye opener. The veil has been lifted, I'm seriously doubting the three decades in where I was taught what was supposedly healthy food while in fact, it isn't! It shows indirectly how we're told what to think ... and worse, we adhere to it. All this unhealthy foods that are waiting to be distributed and sold like grains, potatoes, rice, dairy products, you name it ... need to be eaten by the peoples, what else should countries do with their resources, waste it's value that tallies up to the GDP? No, they hired P&R people to let to public know what you're missing out on if you don't purchase it. Politics are in on the game too, because they obfuscated in USDA's Food Groups the fact that fat and sugar were removed from food groups altogether, the USDA is placating the sugar, snack-food, soft drink and confectionary lobbies, and it is also an attempt to feed consumers' weakness for pleasurable and comfort foods.
Now that I've read it, I must find a way to consolidate my new thinking about changing my diet in a way that is comfortable to me. Henceforth knowing what long term damage can occur, that must be not too hard.
Now that I've read it, I must find a way to consolidate my new thinking about changing my diet in a way that is comfortable to me. Henceforth knowing what long term damage can occur, that must be not too hard.
June 13, 2012
I thought it was very interesting book. It really gives you a lot to think about concerning nutrition. After reading this book and a couple other similar ones, I have made a change. Staying away from sugar and wheat has changed my life for the better. I am so glad this book was recommended to me. Thanks Geoff Bond and Steve Gibson. On to Why We Get Fat, TheArt and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living, and The Rosedale Diet.
September 27, 2010
Very similar to Life Without Bread. Has "diet models" to go by. Specific veggies in starchy group categories and connects disease's to eating habits. I bought this book before I realized I would be going on a library frenzy.
July 17, 2012
Awesome book, I'm now motivated to implement the Savanna Model into my diet.
October 23, 2012
Amazing insights into why our society is so sick and how we got here. Intersection of anthropology and nutrition.
May 19, 2018
Very interesting book on paleo/low-carb. Talks about human evolution, feeding patterns and lifestyle, and what contemporary humans are doing wrong.
July 5, 2020
With an increasing number of people suffering from obesity, heart disease, and other diet-related disorders, many of us turn to fad diets in an effort to drop excess pounds or recover our health. But what if our foods were doing more harm than good, and fad diets made matters worse? Deadly Harvest examines how the foods we eat today have little in common with those of our ancestors, and why this fact is important to our health. It also offers a proven program to enhance health and improve longevity.
Using the latest scientific research and studies of primitive lifestyles, the author first explains the diet that our ancestors followed—one in harmony with the human species. He then describes how our present diets affect our health, leading to disorders such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and more. Most important, he details measures we can take to improve our diet, our health, and our quality of life.
September 5, 2012
Interesting premiss on this how-our-food-affects-our-health book, which is that we should eat how we did 60,000 years ago in Africa. The story goes that our bodies evolved from 1 million years ago to 60,000 years ago to digest and thrive on only certain plants and wild game, found in the Savannah. Everything else basically is poison to us. I don't quite get why we would have stopped evolving, though, and not learned to thrive on new world foods like legumes, grains, tomatoes, potatoes, peanuts, peppers, corn, and dairy, once we started to migrate around the rest of the planet. Lots of arm waving, but packed with references at the end, it is definitely worth the read if you believe that what we eat impacts our overall health. Trouble is, there are dozens, if not hundreds of other books also claiming to have the inside scoop on this, and make very different claims about what we should be eating. Time to go find an antelope for dinner...
February 13, 2013
The first "paleo" themed book that I read, and a real eye-opener. Not too far to say that it stimulated a paradigm change in my outlook on food.
Do I agree with all the points he raises about specific foods? No. But the overall outline is on the money. And don't let's get started on the Savannah hypothesis-er-dogma.
My favorite idea in this book is the part where he associates eating tofu with dementia. Being married to a Japanese woman, can you imagine how much trouble I get into by mentioning this factoid at the dinner table? Or daring to question the magic of soy, in all its manifestations?
So, the single star is due to all the punishments I visited on me over tofu.
[BTW, last time I looked, this book was available in html format on the author's website.]
Do I agree with all the points he raises about specific foods? No. But the overall outline is on the money. And don't let's get started on the Savannah hypothesis-er-dogma.
My favorite idea in this book is the part where he associates eating tofu with dementia. Being married to a Japanese woman, can you imagine how much trouble I get into by mentioning this factoid at the dinner table? Or daring to question the magic of soy, in all its manifestations?
So, the single star is due to all the punishments I visited on me over tofu.
[BTW, last time I looked, this book was available in html format on the author's website.]
June 7, 2012
I bought this book after reading Steve Gibson's (grc.com) recommendation. As a bit of a skeptic, I have to admit parts of it were a little tough to swallow (no pun intended), but the author made some very salient points and I'm going to make an attempt at moving away from the "Red" foods as suggested.
January 6, 2016
Well referenced with solid science about nutrition. Takes an objective view without bias about "traditional" healthy foods. Some parts are a bit pessimistic about human nature and differences between sexes without much solid evidence.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews