Razzleccentricity

Wow. Just watched a segment of the BBC's current series, The Truth About Food. Go to their video clip index and check out the first one, "Can eating like an ape save your health?"

Apparently influenced by Katharine "Diet and Primate Evolution" Milton (hee), a group of folks with high blood pressure & cholesterol levels were a) put into a UK zoo exhibit for a week, and b) fed only raw fruit & veg, water, some nuts, and one olive a day during their stay.

First off, I am delighted by the humans-in-the-zoo concept. I wish ALL zoos had a human exhibit ALL the time. And how interesting it must have been for the other primates! You know they're all thinking, "Well it's about freakin time you ogling bastards were on the inside!"

Scientifically speaking, I'm not impressed by the diet components. I know the title says "eat like an ape" (which is decidedly un-Darwinianly-correct to begin with) but the narration discusses hominid evolution and pre-agricultural diet. Presenting our evolutionary diet as being completely devoid of meat is not at all accurate - what about the insects for heaven's sake?! But for the purposes of simplicity I understand using the vegan approach.

The results of their raw foodist week were impressive. All that fibre did its noble duty, lowering their collective cholesterol levels by 23%. Woo! Blood pressure went down too (I suppose spending a week goofing off in a bucolic park setting had nothing to do with that ;) and one guy's sodium level plummeted. I was impressed that weight wasn't mentioned by the nutritionist - chances are they didn't lose much if any weight, but look at how nicely their biochemical risk factors decreased anyway!

No, this isn't a valid research study by any means, but it's a REALLY cool idea. How I would love to do something like this!