Bushmen Paradox
PUFAs Good
The hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari seem to have eaten a lot of Mongongo nuts. Two quotes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongongo:
Mongongo nuts are a staple diet in some areas, most notably among the San people of northern Botswana and Namibia. Archaeological evidence has shown that they have been consumed by the San communities for centuries. Their popularity stems in part from their flavor, and in part from the fact that they store well, and remain edible for much of the year.
and
A diet based on mongongo nuts is in fact more reliable than one based on cultivated foods, and it is not surprising, therefore, that when a Bushman was asked why he hadn’t taken to agriculture he replied: “Why should we plant, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?”
They also seem to have been in good health. In all the photographs I can find they just look like normal hunter-gatherer types, lean and fit and BMI around 20, like all ancestral populations apparently were.
Mongongo nuts contain an awful lot of PUFA, apparently
per 100g 57g of fat, of which 44% PUFA
(according to that same wikipedia page)
At that point you might as well be swilling sunflower oil for a living, as far as PUFAs go.
I think PUFAs bad. In particular, probably the cause of atherosclerosis and slow metabolism and damaged glucose metabolism, and thus hypometabolism in all its many and terrible aspects, and probably something to do with obesity.
It’s not, I think, possible to believe all the above things with the same brain, if one is thinking coherently.
And so I wonder which one is false?
I want to believe “PUFAs bad” if and only if PUFAs bad. Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want, as a very wise man once said.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve seen nothing but good effects from forswearing all polyunsaturated evil. But of course that’s involved giving up all most all “ultra-processed food”, and eating mostly whole foods that I’ve cooked myself, or things with very pure and wholesome ingredients lists indeed.
It will be a cold day in Hell before I go back to my old ways.
I’m pretty sure there’s a poison lurking somewhere in modern food. But maybe it’s not the PUFAs?
Some questions
Why have these hot-climate nuts got so much PUFA in them? There’s a trade-off in fatty acids between stability and liquidity. Plants use fats in their seeds (not in their own energy stores, which are mainly starch) because seeds need to be light and small and travel well.
Cold-climate plants usually use PUFAs so their seeds don’t go solid in cold weather. They care less about stability in the cold.
Hot-climate plants usually use more saturated fats for stability. Famously coconuts are about as saturated as it gets.
And why do these nuts store well, in a hot place, if they are full of PUFAs? They should go rancid pretty quickly, in a warm place with oxygen around.
How much PUFA did the healthy Bushmen in the pictures actually eat?
Did they store it in their fat like we do? If not why not? Did anyone do a fat biopsy on the Bushmen back in the days when they were eating their traditional foods and hadn’t come into contact with modern peoples?
Do they have some sort of PUFA adaptation? The Eskimos also lived on a high-PUFA diet, and entirely by coincidence they have a very strongly selected mutation that disables fat transport into the mitochondria and they can’t do ketosis, in an environment where you’d think both those things were very very important things to be able to do.
Was the Bushmen’s health actually that good? In the pictures they’re clearly not suffering from an obesity crisis, but what do we know about other aspects of their health. Did they routinely get coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, the various consequences of hypometabolism, or any of the other things we think might be caused by PUFAs?
Tucker Goodrich thinks their glucose tolerance is not that good https://x.com/TuckerGoodrich/status/1423418240026386432, and points to a 1971 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1799259/ article in the BMJ about it (which also confirms their BMI ~ 19, as it should be).
Still,
That’s not nearly enough of a health crisis if they really are eating this apparently vast quantity of PUFA. They should look like Americans. And they should be lazy and fat and depressed and prone to heart attacks.
I want to believe “PUFAs bad” if and only if PUFAs actually bad.
A man should pay extra attention to the things that don’t fit. To those quiet, nagging doubts. As a very wise man once said.
The fact that medical “science” just ignores inconvenient paradoxes is one of the reasons that I don’t trust it.
I’ve been looking for this for a long time. A healthy population that eats a high-PUFA diet. Thank you to u/c0mp0stable for bringing this to our attention, and for noticing that it’s important.
Either we can explain away this paradox, or something we believe is wrong. Maybe PUFAs are not in fact bad?
??? Likewise, great reduction of n-6 in my diet has resolved a # of health issues. never goin' back, again.
About the mongongo - "The high content of α-eleostearic acid, a conjugated linolenic acid, is a key characteristic that differentiates mongongo oil from other plant oils." No idea what that implies, but may be a clue.
Ok finally looked into that study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1799259/pdf/brmedj02672-0042.pdf
That bushman looks skinny fat to me. His belly is almost pregnant looking. Post-prandial glucose control is diabetic.