I'm happy for whatever health problems it incurred since it seems to have allowed and fostered modern civilization. I think a very important line from that article is this:
> The evidence suggests that the Indians at Dickson Mounds, like many other primitive peoples, took up farming not by choice but from necessity in order to feed their constantly growing numbers. "I don't think most hunger-gatherers farmed until they had to, and when they switched to farming they traded quality for quantity,"
Hunter-Gatherer works fine until you reach a certain population and it seems that that population/lifestyle is below the point where you start to really see civilization lifting up and starting to advance quickly.
Yes, I agree, I'm glad that people of the past sacrificed their dental health to build civilization to where it is now.
However, that's completely irrelevant to our food choices today. Modern agriculture is quite capable of producing foods which are more similar to foods we subsisted upon pre-agriculture. On an individual level, there's no reason for us to choose to eat grains. I suppose if everyone in society decided all at once to stop eating grains, it would cause problems, but that's unlikely; I think if society slowly shifts toward eating fewer grains, modern agriculture will be capable of adapting.
While agriculture has had health-effects, Jared Diamond is a quack who writes shallow fluff-anthropology and seems to take the approach of deciding on a conclusion, then go finding research to justify it.
While I'm with you on Jared Diamond not being the best scientist, your criticism misses the mark. What you've described is part of the scientific method: you come up with a hypothesis and you test it.
A better criticism of Jared Diamond's work would be that his work suffers from a lack of primary source evidence: he's not doing experiments or directly synthesizing actual data, he's synthesizing the results of studies. And since there's no objective way to choose which studies are relevant or evaluate the methodologies of different studies, that inevitably introduces his own bias into the process.
That said, I haven't seen any studies contradicting the claim that grains in diet are correlated with tooth decay (which is a smaller claim than the larger claims Diamond makes about health, and which I think the primary studies he cites actually support).
rtkwe|10 years ago
> The evidence suggests that the Indians at Dickson Mounds, like many other primitive peoples, took up farming not by choice but from necessity in order to feed their constantly growing numbers. "I don't think most hunger-gatherers farmed until they had to, and when they switched to farming they traded quality for quantity,"
Hunter-Gatherer works fine until you reach a certain population and it seems that that population/lifestyle is below the point where you start to really see civilization lifting up and starting to advance quickly.
iamsohungry|10 years ago
However, that's completely irrelevant to our food choices today. Modern agriculture is quite capable of producing foods which are more similar to foods we subsisted upon pre-agriculture. On an individual level, there's no reason for us to choose to eat grains. I suppose if everyone in society decided all at once to stop eating grains, it would cause problems, but that's unlikely; I think if society slowly shifts toward eating fewer grains, modern agriculture will be capable of adapting.
nemo|10 years ago
iamsohungry|10 years ago
A better criticism of Jared Diamond's work would be that his work suffers from a lack of primary source evidence: he's not doing experiments or directly synthesizing actual data, he's synthesizing the results of studies. And since there's no objective way to choose which studies are relevant or evaluate the methodologies of different studies, that inevitably introduces his own bias into the process.
That said, I haven't seen any studies contradicting the claim that grains in diet are correlated with tooth decay (which is a smaller claim than the larger claims Diamond makes about health, and which I think the primary studies he cites actually support).
vacri|10 years ago