Tribal Fattening Practices

While in America "thin is in," in some cultures around the world "fat is where it's at." One such culture can be found in the desert-streaked country of Mauritania, located in West Africa. Here, the true marker of beauty and health in a woman is the amount of rolls she has. But there's one problem: human beings eating normal amounts of natural foods don't get obese and overweight, and the common foods available in West Africa include raw goat's milk, meat, millet, couscous, dates, peanuts, and other whole foods. While most of us in the Western world can easily become fat through years of eating fattening, unnatural, metabolism-altering foods like high-fructose corn syrup, trans-fats, and high-gluten white flour, the Mauritanian people don't have such "luxuries" -- so they resort to good old-fashioned force-feeding to accomplish the task.

The Mauritanian fattening practice, called leblouh, takes place when young women enter a tiny sandstone hut. Inside resides an old woman, the "fattener," whose primary job in the community is to make sure these young women (sometimes beginning as young as 5-years-old) become plump and, thus, attractive and suitable for marraige.

Obvious moral and ethical implications of this practice aside, I thought it would be interesting to find out just how much food is utilized to accomplish the fattening. I was surprised to find out that these women typically are force-fed -- to the point of nasuea and vomiting at times -- a whole-foods diet of up to 16,000 calories. This includes four meals per day of:

...crushed dates and peanuts with couscous and oil ... cloying, egg-size balls of around 300 calories apiece. Each girl eats about 40 per day, along with 12 pints of goat's milk and gruel ... (Source)

To bolster the fattening process, the women also must not get any exercise whatsoever, remaining in the huts for several years until they are married off. Additionally, because the task of eating such inordinate amounts of food is so physically challenging to the young women, the old woman "fattener" threatens to beat them if they refuse to eat.

Because the Mauritanian women are limited to traditional foods, which lead to satiety rather quickly due to high nutrient content and are difficult to overeat, some have sought out methods to increase their appetite unnaturally to be able to gain those extra pounds of beauty. One such method is the purchase of certain pharmaceuticals:

Sold secretly at city markets, they include hormones used to fatten camels and chickens, and steroids for asthma and cancer ... (Source)

The difficulty inherent in these traditional peoples' ability to gain weight while eating whole foods challenges the notion, once again, that carbohydrates lead to obesity. Here we have a culture whose only way of fattening young women is by force-feeding them massive amounts of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. If to fatten the young women it was only necessary to emphasize carbohydrates in the diet, as Gary Taubes and other low-carb proponents might suggest, then why must the women be forced to eat excessive amounts food to become overweight? Why not just eat millet and couscous and dates? Many modernized folks seem to have no trouble at all gaining unneeded weight while eating far less than 16,000 calories. Yet these Mauritanian women must resort to appetite increasing drugs or the threat of a beating while eating about that much food to do the same:

Although hardly skeletal at 5'6" and 180 pounds, Hawer [a 26-year-old Mauritanian woman] says she has trouble piling on weight, and was teased by plumper girls as a teenager. Recently, her husband told her that he "didn't like sleeping with a bag of bones. Desperate to be bigger, Hawer uses drugs to aid weight gain." (Source)

It's the quality of food that's the difference. Traditional versus modern food. High-fructose corn syrup, one the great fatteners in the indutrialized nations, would be a prized commodity in Mauritania.

One other interesting observation is that the older women in the culture, who have already gone through the fattening process during their younger years and have resumed eating a normal amount of traditional foods, appear to be at a healthy weight. Did they diet to lose their weight? I doubt it. Below is a picture of women who are campaigning against the practice of leblouh. All have gone through the leblouh in their youth, and none of them remain overweight:

The People of the Deer

Lately I've been enjoying an anthropological narrative called People of the Deer by Farley Mowat -- the famed and tenacious environmentalist, humanitarian, and defender of true scientific inquiry. In this colorful true-story adventure, first published in 1952, Mowat finds himself drawn, as he so often does, to a place far away in the middle of nowhere in the deep northern territories of Canada. It is here that he befriends and lives among an Eskimo group called the Ilhalmiut and begins to understand how modern encroachment -- namely fur-trapping and government policy -- is negatively affecting the native peoples' ability to live in a place where their ancestors had thrived for thousands of years before them. Mowat writes, quite bluntly, in the foreward of the 1975 edition of the book: "Genocide can be practiced in a variety of ways." Similar to Weston Price, he is not hesitant to place blame on Western culture for the decimation and struggle of the traditional peoples with whom he became intimately acquainted. From the foreword:

We have long prided ourselves on being a democratic nation, dedicated to the altar of freedom. Freedom for whom? If it is only freedom for ourselves to do as we please at the expense of others, then our pious stance is even more abhorrent than that of any overt tyrant -- for ours is based on a vile hypocrisy.

Fat and Deer Hairs

While the book contains many fascinating tidbits, among the most intriguing are Mowat's detailed descriptions of the traditional Ilhalmiut diet and their shifting health as a result of Western influence. When he first arrives at the small settlement of Ilhalmiut, the author is welcomed with a tray of meat that might make any Westerner's stomach churn:

Half a dozen parboiled legs of deer were spread out in a thick gravy which seemed to be composed of equal parts of fat and deer hairs. Bobbing about in the debris were a dozen tongues and, like a cage holding the lesser cuts of meats, there was an entire rib basket of a deer.

Still hungry? There's more!

There were side dishes too ... a skin sack, full of flakes of dry meat ... a smoking bundle of marrow bones ... neatly cracked to so that we would have no trouble extracting the succulent marrow. (p. 82)

Yum.

The cooking varied somewhat, but the food did not. The rule was meat at every meal and nothing else but meat, unless you could count a few well-rotted duck eggs which served as appetizers. To satisfy my curiousity I tried to estimate the quantity of meat Hekwaw [a member of the tribe] put away each day. I discovered he could handle ten to fifteen pounds when he was really hungry... (p. 85)

It doesn't take Mowat long to identify the key ingredient of the Ilhalmiut diet: fat. From his own experience on lean meat for an extended period of time, he describes the vast importance of fat in an all-meat diet through his battle with an affliction which he names, for want of a better term, mal de caribou, also known by a great many arctic explorers, prisoners of war, and human carnivores as rabbit starvation:

... persistent diarrhea was only part of the effect of mal de caribou. I was [also] filled with a sick lassitude, an increasing loss of will to work that made me quite useless ...

Mowat's guide -- a half-Eskimo, half-white man named Franz -- prepared and administered a peculiar remedy:

... he took out a half-pound of precious lard, melted it in a frying pan, and, when it was lukewarm and not yet congealed, he ordered me to drink it. Strangely, I was greedy for it ... I drank a lot of it, then went to bed; and by morning I was completely recovered ... I was suffering from a deficiency of fat and did not realize it. (p. 88)

Death and Disease Among the Ilhalmiut

Concerning the health of the Ilhalmiut people, Mowat goes into extensive historic, anecdotal, and statistical detail while attempting to get at the root of the Northern natives' plight of disease and illness following the arrival of Western culture. It's no secret to those who have studied into the writings and theories of nutritional heroes such as Weston Price, Sir Robert McCarrison, T.L. Cleave, and others that when modern foods such as white flour and sugar are introduced to a traditional culture ill health follows, worsening from generation to generation. Farley Mowat joins the ranks of these great independent thinkers when he waxes sensible, explaining his own theory as to why the people of the far North and other native peoples in history have succumbed to tuberculosis, measles, and small pox:

Perhaps you have heard of the decimation of the forest Indians brought about by disease, by lack of adaptability, by inherent laziness and indolence or by other causes ... you have never heard the truth, for all of these apparent causes are manifestions of the real destroyer, which is -- starvation. If you ask about the thousands of Indians and Eskimos who die each year of tuberculosis, if you ask about the measles and smallpox epidemics which ... have destroyed over one-tenth of the Northern natives ... these people too die of starvation ... (p.91)

Is it just me, or is Mr. Mowat on to something here? He goes on to tell the story of an Inuit tribe he lived with in the winter of 1948, the Idthen Eldeli -- literally meaning "Eaters of the Deer":

In 1860 ... there were about 2000 members of the Idthen ... when the deer moved ... the Idthen people followed after ... [they] anually traveled over a thousand miles through the Barrens.

In the eighteenth century the famous explorer Samuel Hearne journeyed ... with a band of these Indians and he speaks, as do many others, of the almost superhuman endurance and physical capacity of the Idthen people.

In the winter of 1948 when I lived with the Idthen ... they numbered a little over 150 men, women, and children who spent the winters on their scanty trap lines, starving through the cold months until they could fish for life along the opening rivers ... They are a passive, beaten, hopeless people who wait miserably for death. (p. 92)

What could be the instigator of such an unfortunate circumstance? Ol' Farley doesn't mince words:

Starvation first came to them when they began to subsist on a winter diet which now consists of 80 percent white flour, with a very little lard and baking powder, and in summer almost nothing but straight fish. The Idthen people now get little of the red meat and white fat of the deer, once their sole food. Three generations have been born and lived -- or died -- upon a diet of flour bannocks and fish eaten three times a day and washed down with tea. Each of these generations has been weaker and had less "immunity" to disease than the last. (p. 93)

Government aid: giving natives the short end of the stick in America since 1492. It's interesting how what Mowat refers to as starvation can also be seen as a displacement of native foods, as Weston Price pointed out in the 1930s. Either way, the result is lowered immunity and degeneration. Mowat's solution for the dilemma of this "starvation?" Here it is, in characteristic common sense:

Surely there is but one way to cure a man of the diseases which are the products of three generations of starvation, and that is to feed him. (p. 95)

Let them eat meat and fat!

The Ambiguity of Scientific Research

It always boggles my mind how, in so much of the health research focusing on diet that we see today, there is little to no emphasis on the types of foods eaten by participants in the studies. One case in point is a study that Stephan Guyenet recently blogged about, called "Effect of a High-Protein, Low-Carbohydrate Diet on Blood Glucose Control in People With Type 2 Diabetes." This study is a typical example of diabetics who go on a low-carbohydrate diet and experience positive results in moderating blood glucose levels. The participants were split into two groups -- one high-carb, the other low-carb. The authors describe the diets as follows (emphasis mine):

The control (15% protein) diet was designed according to the recommendations of the American Heart Association and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The diet consisted of 55% carbohydrate, with an emphasis on starch-containing foods, 15% protein, and 30% fat (10% monounsaturated, 10% polyunsaturated, and 10% saturated fatty acid). A second diet was designed to consist of 20% carbohydrate, 30% protein, and 50% fat. The saturated fatty acid content of the test diet was ∼10% of total food energy; thus, the majority of the fat was mono- and polyunsaturated.

The authors also describe their low-carb diet as a diet "in which readily digestible starch-containing foods have been de-emphasized."

Okay. Is it just me, or are studies like this almost completely worthless? Yes, it's fascinating that when carbohydrates are lowered in the diet, blood sugar levels normalize -- this a very consistent finding throughout the scientific world. But, why? Why does this happen? What is the mechanism behind it? Is it simply a reduction in carbohydrates that makes the difference? Or could it be a reduction in harmful foods like sugar that does the trick?

In other words, the study is setting itself up for ambiguity. Do the results mean that everyone who is near-diabetic should immediately "cut the carbs?" Or should they "de-emphasize" starch containing foods? Or should they reduce sugar consumption? What is the real problem here?

Well, let's see. Maybe -- just maybe -- we can determine the composition of the diet and dive deeper into these questions. Let's take a look at a nifty table from the study:

Not real helpful is it? Now we know that the participants on the high-carb diet ate 274 grams as "starch" and the rest (114 grams) as sugars of some kind. That tells us absolutely nothing about what foods the participants actually ate. For all we know, they could be eating nothing but waffles and sodas for carbs!

Now, the reason this frustrates me is because certain foods -- namely wheat, trans fats, and sugar/high-fructose corn syrup --- can have profound effects on human metabolism in and of themselves. For example, Dr. William Davis of The Heart Scan Blog recently had this to say about the metabolic effects of wheat (emphasis mine):

A patient would come to the office ... with a blood sugar of 118 mg/dl (in the pre-diabetic range) and the other phenomena of pre-diabetes or metabolic syndrome (high blood pressure, high inflammation/c-reactive protein, low HDL, high triglycerides, small LDL), and the characteristic wheat belly. Eliminate wheat and, within three months, they lose 30 lbs, blood sugar drops to normal, blood pressure drops, triglycerides drop by several hundred milligrams, HDL goes up, small LDL plummets, c-reactive protein drops.

As for trans fats, check out what the authors of this study (done on rats) conclude:

In this study, we observed profound metabolic responses to a low-fat diet enriched with trans-fatty acids that were associated with hyperphagia, increased hepatic and visceral fatness, and diminished whole-body glucose disposal, all hallmarks of metabolic syndrome.

(This particular study, it should be noted, has its own flaws in terms of isolating factors, but the stuff on trans fats seems pretty solid.)

And then there's refined fructose-containing foods, such as high-fructose corn syrup and sugar -- don't get me started!

So would somebody please explain to me why these harmful foods aren't taken into consideration in so much of the mainstream dietary research out there (such as the low-carb study that I began this rant with)? It would seem to me that, due to the significant metabolic effects of these foods (vegetable oil, I haven't forgotten about you!), any dietary study not detailing complete food logs is not even worth a glance. It's great that reducing carbohydrates has a positive effect on the health of diabetics, but would simply reducing wheat or sugar or trans fats have the same effect? If there's a study out there that dives into this molotov cocktail of franken-foods, I'd love to see it.

My Health Profile (part 3): The Turnaround

At a friend's potluck in Tucson, I said "what-the-heck" and ate a palm-sized portion of New Zealand Grass-Fed lamb. After all, the meat seemed ethical, and my friend -- who I respected as a morally responsible, spiritually-savvy person -- was enjoying the meat, too. After a few hours, I found myself asking an attractive woman for her phone number. Something was definitely different. My 2.5 year vegetarian streak was over.

The next morning, I woke up with muscles where I hadn't felt muscles in years. My head felt crisp and clear. It was the first time in years that I felt genuinely excited about the day ahead. A gratifying, "Ahhhhh ... " came out of my mouth. That's when I decided that I had found an answer.

A few days later, I was visiting that same friend who fed me my first tasty morsel of meat in over two-and-a-half years, and it just so happened that he had a very intriguing and pertinent book on his book shelf that I was drawn to: Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. I borrowed the book and devoured the information whole like a wolf scarfing down a fresh post-famine kill. I had an intuitive hunch before diving into this book that animal foods were a necessary part of the diet -- after all, I'd felt much better after eating some meat and butter -- but Ms. Fallon, bless her heart, provided me with the reason behind this vague feeling and assisted me in further understanding the whys and wherefores.

Now, I was on a mission to rebuild my body and my life with nutrient-dense foods. I tried eating meat more often and didn't deny myself of Thankgiving turkey or Christmas ham. My first "meat-fest" trials ended in pain and agony as my body had forgotten just how to digest the rich proteins and fats. For a few weeks I had horrible indigestion headaches and a heavy feeling that permeated my entire body. But I was determined to feed myself and get through the adjustment period. Researching information on the internet, I found that the body can take weeks to months to rev up digestive juices for meat after being without it for a long time. This is probably why vegetarians often say, "I tried eating meat again -- I felt horrible!" After about a month's time, I was beginning to feel stronger and lighter in my body. After a few more months I was back to my ideal weight and body composition, my facial hair grew in thicker and more evenly, and my libido was definitely back. And I was genuinely happy and outgoing -- a big change from my low-energy, slightly-depressed vegetarian days.

Nowadays, I feel grateful and blessed to have pulled myself out of the vegetarian abyss that seems to suck so many people in. Many intelligent, environmentally sensitive, and/or health-driven individuals fall far into this black hole of nutrition and can't get out. My hope is that by sharing my story and disseminating nutrition and health information based on evolution, history, traditional cultures, personal experience, and modern-day science, I can influence others to change their bodies -- and their lives -- for the better.

My Health Profile (part 2): Seeking Wellness

After summer was over and my muscles had shrunken significantly, I decided college wasn't for me and rejected a scholarship to the University of Arizona, resolving to fulfill philosophical fancies I'd had since age sixteen to live in the wilderness and learn how to survive with nothing and need nobody.

I ended up in central Arizona as a farm intern at the Reevis Mountain School of Self-Reliance, a living, working homestead eight miles deep into the Superstition Wilderness. It was here that my foray into alternative health and healing began (and my muscles continued to shrink). Despite the fact that the founder of the school, Peter Bigfoot, was a former vegetarian of 30+ years -- fully fruitarian for one of those years -- and was unabashedly eating plenty of meat when I arrived, somehow (possibly from the media and word of mouth) I got the bright idea that vegetarianism was the healthiest diet to consume. Now for the downward spiral.

As I got deeper and deeper into wilderness survival following my time at Reevis, I also got deeper and deeper into simple vegetarian staples: amaranth, quinoa, oatmeal, peanut butter, raisins, beans, huge salads with olive oil, and other "healthy" whole foods. I also got more and more interested in restricing my food intake -- maybe someday I would have to eat so little that I could survive in the mountains all by myself and be a hermit! Wouldn't that be nice? Oh, to be 19 again.

The skinnier I got, the healthier I thought I was becoming. Anyone that ate the typical American diet became a glutton and destroyer of the earth in my eyes. After all, it was the problem of over-consumption that was bringing the planet to an early demise, and food was one of those products that was almost certainly abused and taken for granted. So I was going to be better than that. Yes, I was going to be a low-calorie vegetarian, save myself and save the planet.

Now, not only was I a vegetarian for health and survivalist reasons, but I also had the entire world's suffering behind me to rationalize my choice. I ate less and less. I fasted. I dumpster-dived. I ate wild edibles and garden veggies. I harvested citrus in Tucson over the walls of neighbor's yards. I learned to survive in a brutal, unforgiving, and unethical world. I felt empowered, independent, free. Yeah, I weighed 155 pounds and looked gaunt and sickly -- so what? I was healthy! Wasn't I?

It took about 3 years of that behavior -- that way of relating to myself and the world -- to finally give meat a try again. I was at my body's breaking point. I felt dizzy when I stood up, fatigued and weak. Daily yoga two or three times a day was all that seemed to keep my limbs, joints, and muscles feeling relatively pain-free. My lower back was worn and aching constantly. Anything physical became a chore. My libido was completely shot -- I hadn't thought about being with a woman for years. Then came the miracle.

My Health Profile (part 1): The Formative Years

Health awareness and a desire to be in the best health I could be began at an early age for me. I can recall being six or seven-years-old and eating the crust on my bread -- not because I liked it, but because I was told it was good for me. I would choke down green peas or iceberg lettuce in order to satisfy the arbitrary requirement for something "green" with dinner. Last at the dinner table, I sat slowly chewing gristly, lean meat until every morsel was gone. Then, and only then, could I indulge in some ice cream.

A craving for real food seemed to permeate my childhood. Lean, well-cooked meat, cereal, 2% milk, enriched wheat bread and pasta, and the occasional cookie (or two or three) didn't seem to satisfy this craving. I often found myself nibbling on margarine when clearing the dinner table or spreading some other butter substitute on bread so thick that it would leave teeth marks. Naturally, I desired something fatty and rich and nutrients, but since no such thing was available (besides cheese), I went for the trans-fat laden, unreal goop that was as close to real butter as I could find in the refrigerator.

All that being said, I'd like to believe that I ate better than most kids growing up in America in the 80s and 90s. Or maybe I just ate less junk food than most kids. It seemed to be rare in my friends' households to limit soda and candy as my family did, or to only have dessert when dinner was finished. My family also emphasized exercise, and my brother and I were engaged in sports by age 4. Also, as much as I hated it as a kid, I have to give lots of credit to my dad for insisting that I play outside during the day and only watch a maximum of 2 hours of television daily. This certainly kept me active and physically fit growing up.

At the tail end of elementary school, it was time for that orthodontist-assisted rites-of-passage we call "braces." Pictures of me before the procedure reveal that I was your typical crooked-teeth, pinched nostrils, narrow-faced kid.

When middle school approached and I began to have more responsibility for my health, I would frequently spend some of my lunch money on the soda machines on school grounds. I was up to a 3 soda per day habit, and I felt guilty because I knew soft drinks were "bad" for me in any amount besides moderation. Fast forward to Freshman year in high school when I began abstaining from sodas completely after making a deal with my mom that if I stopped, she would stop, too. From then on, it was mostly water, orange juice, and occasionally gatorade as my beverages of choice. To this day, I haven't taken up drinking sodas again.

High school was a time of pumping iron, playing sports, building muscle, and trying my best to eat "right" according to what the bodybuilders at the gym were recommending: egg whites, protein powders, and lean meat -- essentially an emphasis on protein as the ultimate food and keeping fat as low as possible. Yes, I was attempting to adhere to a low-fat diet. That's probably why I ate so many fructose-fueled Power Bars. I was compensating for the lack of fat in my diet. Looking back, it's astonishing to see how "puffy" my face and overall musculature was. It was also during this time that I had my wisdom teeth removed, a "necessary" procedure (according to the orthodontist) if I was to prevent future dental disasters.

Following high school graduation, I thought, "Time to start being realistic." The expensive protein shakes and Power Bars were not economically viable options if I was to survive in the real world. Nor was a gym membership. I drastically changed my diet and lifestyle to appeal to my economic sensibilities. I stopped lifting weights and pounding protein shakes and began experimenting with hiking for exercise and eating cheap staple foods like beans and rice, pasta and tortillas. A month later, my muscles deflated.

The Darwin of Nutrition

Here is an excerpt from an article I wrote called, "Weston A. Price: A Search For True Health," recently published in The Bulletin of Primitive Technology, Spring 2009.

Following the realization that food was the major contributing factor in human health and disease, Weston Price kept a keen eye out for what specific foods seemed to keep the primitives in good health. It was already obvious that industrialized foodstuffs weren't supportive of optimal health, so now it was Price's mission to determine what particular “nutritional programs” contributed to the well-being of the primitive groups. What food traditions had thousands of years of trial and error resulted in? Dr. Price noted every culture's dietary habits, including special foods utilized during times of child-rearing for the man and woman. It impressed him that the primitives seemed to be aware of preventative measures beginning with the health of the parents:

A very important phase of my investigations has been the obtaining of information from these various primitive racial groups indicating that they were conscious that [physical degeneration] would occur if the parents were not in excellent condition and nourishment. Indeed, in many groups I found that the girls were not allowed to be married until after they had had a period of special feeding. In some tribes a six month period of special nutrition was required before marriage. (Nutrition & Physical Degeneration, p. 3)

Dr. Price was convinced by the ubiquitous nature of this practice that many ailments of modern civilization were caused by prenatal undernourishment and that many of these problems could be prevented by the proper nutritional reinforcement of the parents to be.

Curious about the nutritional content of the primitive diets – particularly those that were emphasized for child-rearing – he took several samples of foods from each locale in order to test them at his laboratory in the United States. Armed with such information, Dr. Price believed that he could then determine what all the varied diets of each culture had in common and further understand the nutritional wisdom of the primitives. When he analyzed the traditional foods, he was excited to find that, on the whole, foods in the native diets were four times richer in water-soluble vitamins and minerals and ten times richer in fat-soluble vitamins than the industrialized American diet of his day. Of the native foods studied, Price realized that the foods which the primitives most emphasized and often times considered sacred (especially for child-rearing) were rich in “fat-soluble activators:” vitamins A, D, and what he referred to as “activator X” – now understood to be vitamin K2. This included foods such as fish eggs, liver, certain insects, and other cholesterol-rich, fat-rich foods (see table below; foods high in fat-soluble vitamins are in bold).

The qualities of the foods, Price came to realize through testing native foods as well as conducting experiments in his laboratory, depended greatly on the quality of the soil and the feed given to the animals. For example, grain and hay-fed dairy products in the United States had far less vitamin and mineral content when compared with dairy products from the Swiss in Loetschental Valley, which was produced from cows grazing on “rapidly growing green grass” in the spring and summer and chlorophyll-rich hay in the fall and winter. Price determined that the color of the butterfat from such dairy products could accurately predict the nutrient-density: a deep yellow or orange color reliably indicated high vitamin content. The laboratory tests of traditional foods further bolstered his confidence in the “wisdom of the primitives.”