How the Western Diet Has Derailed Our Evolution - Issue 30: Identity - Nautilus

The Western world has stomach microbial communities that could digest junk food and might re-diversify and recover (to a limited extent) if we just ate more whole grains and veggies.

The microbial die-outs, a form of mutation inside our stomach due to our specific diets, gets compounded across generations.

This is leading to a sort of internal 'extinction' of microbes, which were abundant inside our ancestors, but are not present in us.

As Western civilization fails to nourish key microbes, the type of food taken is starving them out of existence. Many factors cause this:

• Antibiotics 'nuke' our internal ecosystems, killing all good microbes.
• Sanitary facilities of the modern age prevent the sharing of disease, along with health-promoting microbes.
• City life limits our exposure to soil, plant and animal microbes.

As the Medical and Pharma industries get equipped with better research and technology, there should ideally be a decline in diseases. Instead, we have an increase in non-communicable diseases.

This rise can be blamed partly to the microbial extinction inside us, altered by Sanitation, Antibiotics and Junk food.

Westerners who grew up in villages, in farms, living among livestock at a ranch, or are exposed to certain infections at an early age, tend to have a lower risk of autoimmune diseases.

Americans consume less fiber than what is recommended, eating fewer nuts, whole grains and fruits and vegetables.

A fiber-rich balanced diet is known to prevent colon cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.

Regular poor diet leads to a rise in endotoxins in our bloodstream, making the immune system respond to this by inflammation.

Chronic inflammation, every time we eat junk food, leads to cellular dysfunction and diseases of the stomach and organs.