5719_NHLS_Vanda Elisa_Gatti

BCFN Young Earth Solutions YES! For a better life, we should learn to eat from the Chimpanzees Abstract: Nowadays on the earth 1 billion undernourished people coexist with 1,4 billion overweight people. The majority of the population on our planet has an unhealthy lifestyle: bad alimentary habits, diets based on sugars and fats, along with little physical activity, develop into obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular and tumor-related diseases which also have an important economic impact. At the same time though, in developing countries there is a persistent condition of undernourishment and malnutrition, caused by a shortage of vitamins, minerals, iron and iodine. The production of food causes the exploitation of resources, the depletion of the territory, a strong economic impact and pollution. The consumption of raw foods can be a solution to this problem. Based on the strong similarities between humans and chimpanzees, we can say that eating raw food provides all the nutrients needed by man to carry out his daily life. With a raw food diet, the cost on the environment would decrease dramatically. Our choices, in a time of emergency like the one we are experiencing, can really make a difference. It is necessary to change the way we produce, but also the way we consume.

Author

Vanda Elisa Gatti Silvia Bini

For a better life, we should learn to eat from the Chimpanzees

Nowadays 1 billion undernourished people coexist with 1,4 billion overweight people, causing 36 million deaths a year.

17% of American children aged between 2 and 9 are obese, while in Europe about 400.000 children are overweight and over 85.000 are obese. European and American longevity is compromised by bad alimentary habits, mainly due to diets full of sugars and fats and little physical activity. This unhealthy lifestyle develops into obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular and tumorrelated diseases and it also has an important economic impact.

In fact, an American study on young people aged between 6 and 19 has demonstrated that obese subjects have generated an increasing cost of $14,2 billion year for the Health Care System. At the same time in developing countries there is a persistent condition of undernourishment and malnutrition causing 4 million children under 5 years to die every year.

In 2010 FAO estimated about 925 million people are suffering from malnutrition: 230 million in Sub-saharian Africa, 580 million in Asia, 60 million in Latin America and Caribbean, 40 million in Africa and in Middle East.

In these countries the shortage of food and essential nourishment (vitamins, iron and iodine) causes stunting, severe wasting and intrauterine growth compromising both adults’ health and a healthy growth of children.

A Raw food diet is one of the possible solutions in order to tackle malnutrition and obesity.

Furthermore it could solve the environmental impact caused by the exploitation of resources to produce food.

The absence of cooking techniques makes food more digestible, which is why we recommend starting your meal with raw food: it provides digestive aid to the enzymes, so it is easy to understand the positive detoxing effects of a raw food diet.

Scientists at the Chimpanzee & Human Communication Institute at Washington Grand University believe that "chimpanzees should be categorized as a people", also because humans and chimpanzees share an estimated 99.4% of DNA sequence. Many nutritionists connect human

health problems with nutritional deficiencies because humans have lost their natural way of eating. The most remarkable fact is that the majority of the chimps, as opposed to humans, have not been influenced by civilization.

This then gives us hope for finding answers to important questions such as: “How is the human diet supposed to be? How was it originally?� This way, understanding chimpanzees' eating habits may help us better understand human dietary needs.

The two major foods consumed by chimpanzees are fruits and greens. Two to seven percent of their diet is pith and bark, where piths are the stems and more fibrous parts of plants. They also consume small amounts of insects and even small animals.

If we compare the standard American diet with the diet of chimpanzees, they hardly have anything in common. Humans eat mostly things that chimpanzees don't eat at all, such as cooked starchy foods, oils, butter, yogurt, cheese, hamburgers, etc. and the intake of greens has dramatically declined.

A Raw food diet shows a vast improvement over the regular diet. Firstly, all ingredients in a raw diet are uncooked, and full of enzymes and vitamins. Raw foodists eat a lot of fruit and consume noticeably more greens than people on an average mainstream diet, for whom greens almost never constitute 45 percent of their food.

Instead of their missing greens raw foodists consume large amounts of fruits, nuts and seeds. They often use nuts as a substitute for carbohydrates, even though nuts are 70-

80% fat. Also, the raw foodists increase their consumption of oils and avocados because the most common way of eating salads, their main staple, is to have it mixed with dressing, sauce or guacamole. Another big quota in a typical raw diet belongs to root vegetables mostly due to juicing.

Considering all of these factors, when we compare the typical raw food diet with the chimpanzee diet, we can clearly see that there are two main ways to further improve our individual eating patterns: to increase our consumption of greens, and to reduce our intake of nuts, seeds, and oils.

In addition we have to consider the different lifestyle between humans and chimpanzees.

In fact chimpanzees never eat in the late afternoon and have to work hard in order to get their food, climbing many trees or searching through numerous low shrubs. Most often they feed on fruit in the morning and a little bit on leaves. Then the chimps resume feeding, eating mostly greens until about three or four o'clock in the afternoon.

There are also positive environmental effects of a raw food diet on a global scale, since it can eliminate 90% of garbage produced each day contributing to environmental protection, as well as drastically limit the use of gas and electricity. This kind of diet can also improve sustainable agriculture, a sector that contributes to income growth in all countries.

We should think of food as a product with a specific "life cycle", where each phase should be considered individually: from production, processing, wholesale and retail distribution, to consumption by the city and waste management.

By choosing a raw food diet, the cost for the environment decreases dramatically, in particular in terms of water and CO2.

You must also favor direct consumption from the producer to the consumer in order to reduce the cost of the entire product life cycle as described above.

Having said that, it is evident that as our choices, especially in a time of emergency like the one we are experiencing, can really make a difference; they can reverse a trend that has ravaged the planet and looted its own resources with subsequent pollution of the ecosystems. It is absolutely imperative to change the way we produce, but also the way we consume. Our choices have a great power: to direct the market and reduce as much as possible the impact on the environment. What are we waiting for?