Trying to eat something different everyday is an American obsession that I'll never understand. It's just so stressful and inconvenient. I grew up in a small town where eating the same for dinner everyday was extremely common. Tea or coffee and bread. The only variable would be what you put in your bread. Some days it would be butter, some days it would jam. Some days it would be honey, some days it would be avocado.
I think eating the same thing every day is fine, though you need to make sure to have a balanced diet with good nutrition. The author mentioned his uncle who just ate bread, butter, and cheese for every meal, and I’m not sure how you can even survive off of that. Surely it’s lacking something important with no fruit or vegetables.
I’ve heard that humans had a long period of time after we became sedentary and started relying on agriculture that the average height decreased significantly, and it was only in recent centuries that it has gotten back to normal due to more varied nutrition. So even if you can technically survive on a very limited diet, it can still have negative effects.
> I’ve heard that humans had a long period of time after we became sedentary and started relying on agriculture that the average height decreased significantly, and it was only in recent centuries that it has gotten back to normal due to more varied nutrition. So even if you can technically survive on a very limited diet, it can still have negative effects.
It's not the variety of the diet but the quality of the food itself. Bread is good for energy, but if all you're eating is bread, you're not getting complete proteins, omega 3s, and other nutrients. It's fine, however, to eat nothing but meat and many societies did this for hundreds of thousands of years.
Farming is anything but sedentary, especially in the 19th century and prior. People's height was stunted because food was not abundant enough. Agricultural societies tended to grow faster than farming productivity could keep up with. A lot of people were simply malnourished and therefore never reached their natural height capacity.
But as you say, the hunter / gatherers such as the native Americans were taller on average than the first European settlers to arrive in America. This is not due to a particularly diverse diet. Most cultures subsisted on meat from hunting (largest source of nutrition) and a select few vegetables. The difference is that hunter / gatherer societies tended to self regulate their population according to available resources.
I think it's false. Hunter gatherer communities (no societies back there) lived by what they could find - either hunt animals or look for fruits, plants and mushrooms.
Then there was a shift towards agricultural societies, where people relied on their plantations and domesticated cattle. I don't think the cattle meat would be enough for most of their meals, probably the most of them would be bread and soup.
This is just a vague recollection from A Brief History of Humanity, but it makes sense to me. Eating just meat sounds terribly "costly", you have to actively ignore all other sources of food around you.
Even ancient hunter gatherers probably ate a diet of more (wild) plant than meat. Catching animals is hard work, with the technology of the time.
But in general, I think we know a lot less about the lives of people so long ago than many people (including academics) like to think. Research methods are often based on either assuming modern people's lifestyles are "just like" ancient people, or big leaps from extremely limited archeological evidence.
No, of course they didn't. They lived in the Ice Age. Edible veggies and nutrients were extremely sparse and hard to come by for 1M years. Also wild plants prior to cultivation were not these big beautiful tomatoes, apples, bananas, and cucumbers we see in the grocery stores today. Those plants were selectively bred for thousands of years to produce what you see today.
Grass-eating bison, aurochs, horses, goats, sheep, etc were our primary source of nutrition in the ice age, not to mention mammoths (as well as fish).
And this is evidenced by ancient cave paintings tens of thousands of years old depicting hunts as well as the bone remnants in the caves and homes of ancient humans.
But mostly what the conflicting theories with consensus that changes from generation to generation tells me is that it's very hard to know for sure how people 15K+ years ago lived.
So really all societies did this until the advent of agriculture ~10K years ago. And even then, the agricultural revolution was not evenly distributed and hunting or fishing as a primary source of nutrition was common even just 150 years ago.
> The author mentioned his uncle who just ate bread, butter, and cheese for every meal, and I’m not sure how you can even survive off of that. Surely it’s lacking something important with no fruit or vegetables.
The only thing you're really missing there is dietary fiber, which -- being indigestible -- doesn't have nutritional value. However, it does interact with your intestines as it passes through them in a manner which tends to promote their health.
So no, survival is not even a question that should come up.
“Not even a question that should come up” is a pretty sour attitude to take in general, and I don’t even think you’re right.
Fiber does have a health impact as you say, and having good health is one of the main ways known to delay death. And what is survival but the delay of death?
My point is that by eating a larger variety of nutritious food, you are less likely to suffer from poor health due to a lack of something you need.
There are a long list of illnesses caused by vitamin deficiencies, including Scurvy, Rickets, magnesium deficiencies and iron deficiencies (as well as others). These can be life threatening too, so survival is very much a question that should come up.
> you need to make sure to have a balanced diet with good nutrition
You know, you are going to die. They're going to lower you into a hole in the ground. The worms will have you for dinner. That's it.
Right before you die, are you going to say to yourself, "boy, I'm sure glad I made sure to have a balanced diet with good nutrition" ? Will you say, "I'm glad I didn't enjoy cheese and bread with butter every single day" ?
70 years of pure joy, of every moment counting, of getting just what you want, is worth a million years of trying to extend your life and health. Don't live the life you think you're supposed to, and don't live for the future. Whatever you like, do it now.
What an insightful point! Maybe I should eat nothing but candy, smoke cigarettes, and go into bright sunlight with no sunscreen everyday. Who cares if I get diabetes or mouth, lung, or skin cancer!
Or maybe I can just take basic precautions like eating more than three different foods? You make it sound like that is such a burden, but it really isn’t. It’s possible to enjoy your life even while taking care of yourself.
In fact, I have a much easier time being happy when my health is good than when I am sick, so I’d say these precautions are important for a good life.
> The author mentioned his uncle who just ate bread, butter, and cheese for every meal, and I’m not sure how you can even survive off of that. Surely it’s lacking something important with no fruit or vegetables.
Exactly, wouldn’t you end up with scurvy from the lack of vitamin C?
Is the author overweight? Over weight for what? For living a life of hard manual labor? Well in his 70s and still mobile and able to run a farm seems like he's doing fine. Besides ... he may have gained weight after his stroke; used to eating a farmer's meal but not moving about much.
Besides ... you've heard of studies that have shown that the calorie expenditure of hunter-gatherers, walking around all day, is about the same as couch potato Americans sitting around all day... here's the link: https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/06/13/191036200/what-...
Eating something different every day is not "an American obsession". Heck most people I know would want change and something different in their routine of food. I personally have 10-12 breakfast recipes that I cycle through and regularly try stuff I find online
I'm American, and I have to disagree. I have the same thing for breakfast every day, and I love it. I usually have the same thing for lunch, too. It's convenient and I change it up just a little now and then. For dinner, my daughter and I do different things. I think that embracing this is a good thing. It's comfortable. It's safe, and I am content. On the weekends I do change it up too, but during the week, I find my favorite foods to be part of my daily routine. I like it.
I tried eating a particular dish every day for a while. (To the exclusion of other foods.) I didn't get tired of it -- I loved it and still do. But I had to stop because, after a while of this, I would still be hungry after eating a large meal. My stomach would be physically full, but I'd be hungry anyway.
I'm still not sure what the problem was. It was a dish basically consisting of lentils, onions, and shredded chicken, spiced heavily; I'd eat it spread over bread.
Try milk, cheese, grains, egg, muesli, stew, varied foods, get recepees known to work like ayurvedic ones or good veg recipes. Avoid too much bread, good rice (basmati) can be filling. Organic ecological foods also.
If you only eat one dish, it better have everything needed and even then it can be lacking. No need to torment oneself.
I could eat the same thing every day, as in I don’t really care what I eat.
However it doesnt feel like a good idea for nutrition reasons. So I try to eat as different as possible with minimal effort instead. Like getting the dishes I’ve never heard of when eating out.
My parents come from a place that is the polar opposite of America, and eating the same thing repeatedly would get you sent to a mental asylum, based on how my family life revolves around food.
The idea of not using an innumerable number of fruits, vegetables, meats, and spices available is crazy to me. We’re even excited to go back to the city try at various times of the year because different seasons bring different foods.
We need some amount of stressors in our lives to keep from feeling bored and stagnant. Exercise is literally an imposition of stress, but increases our well-being. Really a matter of picking your poison.
Farming might be samey, but if something is hard work it's also stressful.
As an irishman, i can so relate to the comment on the jam :)
"My uncle, a bachelor and farmer like me, had the same food for every meal. He had bread, butter, cheese and tea for breakfast, lunch and dinner (although he would bring out the jam for visitors)."
> Trying to eat something different everyday is an American obsession that I'll never understand. It's just so stressful and inconvenient.
It's not like we do this to because variety is intrinsically good and we have to force ourselves. It's more like we're addicted to variety; the more often you have the same meal the less appetizing it becomes.
An American obsession? I think that is a gross over-generalization. I am American, by birth, and am happy eating mostly the same thing day after day. My spouse is from Poland, and she is not satisfied by that approach to food. Not by a long shot.
I feel you. I eat the same thing for weeks or months at time until I get tired of it. Unfortunately it's not just an American thing though. I've experienced the same in Spain, Denmark, Sweden and to a lot lesser degree in Portugal...
