A light bulb just went on in my head

[Roger B]

For 600 generations my wife, sisters-in-law, and their ancestors have been eating fish, rice, green veggies, etc, typical Filipino food. Most paleo thinkers that I have read say that the last 12,000 years doesn't matter because that is too short of a period of time for human beings to adapt to agricultural foods.

However, the genes in our cells are not the only genes that matter. 12,000 years is far more than enough time for the genes in the bacteria in our guts to adapt. And scientists and others interested in health have become more and more impressed (read: blown away) with the importance of our gut microbiota, as they call it, for our health. I have seen numbers like 90% of our health and immune system depend upon our gut microbiota.

My ancestors very gradually changed diets from the dawn of the age of agriculture to the present, perhaps 12,000 years. One generation after the other, little changes, were made so that our gut microbiota could adapt. Even when they crossed the Atlantic in the age of discovery they kept their diets with them and made slow gradual changes. My wife Loribelle, her sister, and their ancestors ate traditional foods, what could be called cooked hunter-gatherer, for 1,000,000 years, and then in 19 hours, the time it takes to fly from Manila to San Francisco, they switched diets to modern American food. Both Loribelle and Nennette were lucky to land husbands who were both health nuts. But that is not enough, especially for Nennette.

Both the tradition food Weston A. Price people and the paleo people are right. It is because of this failure to realize how important our gut microbiota is and how rapidly it adapts that there has been confusion between these two approaches to diet. Both must be taken into account, and I have to encourage Loribelle and Nennette to get back to a tradition Filipino diet.
Sincerely,
Roger Bird