Why is nutrition important?
It seems like a strange and obvious question. Of course, it’s important.
You’ve likely heard, nutrition is essential when it comes to:
- Reducing and maintaining a healthy weight
- Reducing the risk of chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer
- Overall good health
But, what does “good overall health” actually mean?
Eric Edmeades, our founder, got the inspiration for WildFit when he read an article about circus elephants and its captive diet.
The article’s main argument was that elephants in captivity died much younger than elephants in the wild. It examined what the wild elephants were eating.
They realized, by mimicking the wild elephant’s diet, it significantly improved the longevity of the captive elephants.
At that moment, they realized that the wild elephants weren’t eating their intended diet. The food they were receiving in captivity, was far from the elephant’s true diet, and they were getting sick and dying. As soon as they started feeding the elephants what would have been closer to their “wild” diet, they got healthier.
They also realized that every species on earth has a specific diet, and this includes humans.
The more closely a species adhere to their natural evolved diet, the healthier that species will be. — Eric Edmeades
We’re the most intelligent species on earth, and we’re also the sickest.
What is the human diet?
Before we started farming, we lived as hunter-gatherers. Most of our DNA had already evolved before we began with agriculture.
Biological anthropologist Clark Spencer Larsen of Ohio State University says:
“As the earliest farmers became dependent on crops, their diets became far less nutritionally diverse than hunter-gatherers’ diets. Eating the same domesticated grain every day gave early farmers cavities and periodontal disease rarely found in hunter-gatherers, says Larsen. When farmers began domesticating animals, those cattle, sheep, and goats became sources of milk and meat but also of parasites and new infectious diseases. Farmers suffered from iron deficiency and developmental delays, and they shrank in stature.”
“Despite boosting population numbers, the lifestyle and diet of farmers were clearly not as healthy as the lifestyle and diet of hunter-gatherers. That farmers produced more babies, is simply evidence that you don’t have to be disease free to have children.”
At WildFit, we believe the closer you eat to the hunter-gatherers’ diet, the healthier and stronger you will be.
Fruits and vegetables do not fight disease; it is their absence that causes it.— Eric Edmeades
How to live like a modern hunter-gatherer
I understand that living like a hunter-gatherer can be inconvenient today, but you can become a modern representation.
It goes like this: Go to your grocery store. Gather fruit and nuts. Then hunt down meat, fish, and eggs. It’s more straightforward than you would think.
Don’t know what to cook and want inspiration for delicious and healthy food?
Click below to purchase our Living WildFit Cookbook.