Sun, Mar-26-17, 10:00
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Senior Member
Posts: 15,075
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Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154
BF:
Progress: 104%
Location: Ontario
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Oral health in transition: The Hadza foragers of Tanzania
Quote:
Abstract
Conventional wisdom holds that a decline in oral health accompanies the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture, given increased consumption of carbohydrates. This widely touted example of the mismatch between our biology and modern lifestyle has been intuited largely from the bioarchaeological record of the Neolithic Revolution in the New World. Recent studies of other populations have, however, challenged the universality of this assertion. Here, we present the first comprehensive study of oral health among a living population in transition from the bush to village life, the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania, to test the hypothesis that the shift from foraging to farming, or agricultural intensification, inevitably leads to increased periodontal disease, caries, and orthodontic disorders. Our results showed that women living in villages consuming a mostly agricultural diet exhibited more caries and periodontal disease than those living in the bush consuming a mostly wild-food diet. Furthermore, men living in the bush consuming mostly a wild-food diet had more than those living in the village consuming a mostly agricultural diet. These findings are explained by the high incidence of maize consumption in village settings, along with previously recognized variation in rate of caries between men and women. The unexpected discovery of high caries incidences for men in the bush is likely explained by heavy reliance on honey, and perhaps differential access to tobacco and marijuana. These data support the notions that mechanisms of cariogenesis are multifactorial and that the relationships between oral health and the shift from a predominantly wild-food diet to one dominated by cultigens are nuanced.
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Sometimes I find I've wandered into some blog extolling the virtues of honey, referencing high seasonal consumption among the Hazda. I think when it comes down to it, the null hypothesis should be that naturally refined sugars are still refined sugars. There may be contexts where a diet high in honey doesn't lead to obesity--like the Hadza. But unless you convince some Hadza to switch the honey for sucrose, and see what happens, they can't be used as an example of how honey is superior to sucrose, I think the null hypothesis should be to be just as suspicious of honey as you are of sucrose or high fructose corn syrup.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/ar...al.pone.0172197 |
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