Primal Meats is more than a meat company; we represent a movement for regenerating human and ecological health.
What we choose to eat every day is probably the most crucial decision we can make. Every ‘micro’ choice compounds into either a healthy life, able to do the things we want or a life plagued by disease and disability.
In Dr Mark Hyman’s excellent new book, the ‘Pegan Diet’, he shockingly highlights that our modern western diet is currently the biggest killer on the planet, exceeding smoking and every other cause. Conservatively our modern diet rich in processed foods, sugar and vegetable oils and lacking in protective healing whole foods kills 11 million people a year. He suggests this is a gross underestimate!
At Primal Meats, we have always supported using evolutionary and ancestral wisdom to understand better what to eat and which foods need to be politely escorted from our cupboards straight into the bin. We believe that human and planetary health and thoroughly intertwined.
You may choose to follow a paleo or pegan diet, a gut healing protocol such as GAPs or AIP, the advice of the Western A Price foundation, or simply be guided by sound science-based functional health wisdom from inspirational health leaders such as Dr Chattergee, Dr Mark Hyman or Shawn Stevenson. These approaches share the same principles and reflect the lifestyle that brought our hunter-gatherer forefathers such robust health. 1
Our modern world is at times exciting, convenient and full of mind-bogglingly clever innovations in technology – we have so much to be grateful for. Most of us live in more comfort with more access to helpful resources than a royal family would have enjoyed 100 years ago.
But – and it’s a big but – this has not led to the health and happiness you would expect. We are considerably more depressed, more stressed and less satisfied with life than we were before many of these conveniences became available. The health of the westernised civilisations has plummeted in recent years. 2
As part of our move towards modernity, we have become dependant on science to decide what is good for us and protect us from disease. Although we managed to ‘out evolve’ every other species on the planet without the requirement of a single peer-reviewed scientific study to tell us how to live, nowadays, we give almost no credibility to ancient wisdom, traditional customs or intuitive nutrition.
This could be a big mistake.
Along with junk food comes junk science, and it’s a rapidly growing problem potentially more harmful than any disease. The issue is rapidly gaining attention; a paper published December 16 in PLOS ONE reports that more than 13 percent of peer-reviewed studies in 10 of the top nutrition science journals had connections to the food industry—and of those, more than half reported findings favourable to business interests.
Conducting good science is an expensive business – the corporations with enough money to fund such research are highly unlikely to be the same ones selling nutrient-dense whole foods!
Evolution has proved that there’s simply no doubt that basing our diets on real whole foods such as grass-fed nutrient-dense meats, organic vegetables grown on healthy soils, wild foods, and eliminating refined sugar, processed foods and vegetable/seed oils is a HUGE piece of the health puzzle. But there’s a lot more to health than what we eat.
Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes now account for 90 per cent of deaths each year in the UK.
These so-called ‘lifestyle’ conditions are a well-known problem in the west. Much less understood is that they now account for the majority (53 per cent) of deaths and disabilities in the developing world – taking 31 million lives a year.
NCDs are not driven by infections and viruses but by behaviours such as poor diet, smoking, moving too little, alcohol and drugs. 3
Along with the murderous modern western diet comes the modern western lifestyle. The direct impact of losing connection with our roots is pretty hard to accurately measure scientifically – as it inevitably comes hand in hand with modern junk based diets, but it seems it matters a great deal.
You could have the best diet in the world. Still, if your sleep is disturbed, you spend more time on Facebook than you see family face to face, you sit all day at a computer, have a lily-white complexion from avoiding the sun, and generally see more nature on your TV than actually spending time in wild places. Your risk of disease is going to increase significantly.
Research has found that people who sleep less than six hours per night have a higher risk of death from any cause, and one large-scale study found that people with short sleep have a significantly increased risk of cancer and stroke.
An analysis of 13 studies of sitting time and activity levels found that those who sat for more than eight hours a day with no physical activity had a risk of dying similar to the risks of dying posed by obesity and smoking. 4
Loneliness was associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide. Loneliness among heart failure patients was associated with a nearly four times increased risk of death, 68% increased risk of hospitalisation, and 57% increased risk of emergency room visits. 5
Over the last two decades, we have even been convinced into thinking we should be afraid of the sun! Once again, questionable science funded by the very companies hoping to profit from the result. A new study published in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA found that several active ingredients in different sunscreens enter the bloodstream at levels that far exceed the FDA’s recommended threshold.
A huge and growing amount of research has now shown that avoiding sun exposure has created an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency. Current estimates are that at least 50% of the general population and 80% in infants are deficient in vitamin D. Low levels of D3 are now known to play a major role in the development in many of the chronic degenerative diseases. In fact, vitamin D deficiency may be the most common medical condition in the world and vitamin D supplementation may be the most cost effective strategy in improving health, reducing disease, and living longer. Those deficient in vitamin D have twice the rate of death and a doubling of risk for many diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma and autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis. – Dr. Michael Murray 6
Our hunter-gatherer forefathers had a tough and uncomfortable life of extremes – sometimes leading to traumatic death – but living in close communities, waking and sleeping with the sunrise and sunset, moving throughout the day, experiencing periods of hunger, and being exposed to the sun clearly has its health benefits. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
It appears that our lifestyles and reliance on scientists to guide our health decisions are not serving us that well after all. It is time for common sense, critical thinking, ancestral wisdom and high-quality, independent research to prevail. 15
In our Primal Living series, we’re going to bring together wisdom and stories from healthy nature-based peoples – past and present, along with research and top tips from scientific studies and health professionals to inspire you to regenerate your health.
We’ll be covering everything from how to optimise your sleep, the importance of functional movement and why digital distraction is making us stressed, depressed and ineffective, to why spending time in nature is not only a nice thing to do but can actually change your physiology for the better.
We’ll be diving in cold water, walking in the wilds, drinking from natural springs, cooking with wild food and setting you mini ‘rewild yourself’ challenges.
We’ll be exploring the microscopic world of gut health and the incredible disease suppressing world of phytochemicals in our wild plants.
Before you know it, you’ll be dropping your I phone and picking up a book, ditching the TV for yoga in the woods, and padding around the garden barefoot.
Follow us on Instagram for our primal living stories, ancestral recipe ideas, and so much more. We have even got a social platform dedicated to regenerative agriculture and primal health – we’re just getting started, so we hope you’ll join us on this regenerative journey back to your healthy roots.
Caroline
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