@rachellaudan Here's why I objected to your article: The idea that grain—or the transition away from a hunter–gatherer diet/lifestyle—is responsible for many "diseases of civilization" is a scientific hypothesis for which people have marshaled theoretical and empirical evidence.
@rachellaudan You can take this hypothesis seriously without rejecting a progress narrative. Agriculture can be good on balance without being good in all respects. Hunter-gatherers could have been worse off while having much lower rates of certain cancers, heart disease, diabetes, etc.
@rachellaudan If we are genetically adapted to thrive on a diet with the basic properties of the diet of hunter-gatherers (in terms of things like vitamin intake and the ratio of macronutrients), it could be that we would get fewer diseases if eschewed some new foods like grain.
@rachellaudan The evidence that grain is bad isn't definitive—almost nothing in nutrition is. But it should be taken seriously.
@rachellaudan One of the main dietary consequences of the transition to agriculture was carbohydrate intake (mainly from grain) increased dramatically. Some suggestive evidence that this was a bad thing (again, not meant to be definitive):
@rachellaudan This large, recent study of subjects in 18 countries on 5 continents found that high carb intake is associated with mortality. The association held when looking at Asian or non-Asian countries, and when controlling for SES: thelancet.com/journals/lance…
@rachellaudan That's not proof of a causal relation, of course (although a lot of mainstream dietary advice is based correlational evidence). This paper argues that the carb-mortality link may be due to carb-induced hyperinsulinemia: cell.com/cell-metabolis…
@rachellaudan This paper refers to other research linking hyperinsulinemia to a variety of specific diseases: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
@rachellaudan This paper reviews evidence that consuming wheat and other cereal grains can increase intestinal permeability, which stimulates inflammation and can lead to autoimmune diseases: mdpi.com/2072-6643/5/3/…
@rachellaudan There are a lot of other sources of evidence that eating grain may be bad for us. A number of studies suggest that extant hunter-gatherers tend to be on average healthier in certain respects than Westerners. E.g., ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22615114
@rachellaudan Some evidence related to diabetes: cardiab.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…
