MIFFED (Make It Fit For Evolutionary Diet)

Well, I've been threatening to do it for a while now, and it is a wet day, so no golf. I've therefore been beavering away at a more sensible RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance). 

Having long been dissatisfied with the official dogma that dominates the recommendations for what we should eat - and which are doing increasingly little for public health, I've come up with my own set of criteria for what constitutes an evolutionarily appropriate target for macro and micro-nutrients. 

Something made us get bigger brains and smaller intestines - and it wasn't the sort of food that dominates the centre aisles of modern supermarkets. It wasn't even the food that was 'grown' by humans - our brains got larger long before we started growing, raising and manufacturing our foods. It certainly wasn't plants - because plants (especially those which we could gather during prehistory) just couldn't deliver the nutrients needed to feed our brain on such a small intestine. Simply put, it was eating animal material, whether from land or sea, that allowed us to get the high concentration of nutrients needed to make us who we are. 

Unfortunately, it seems that RDAs are set based on the nutrients we get from our modern diet - the same diet that is making us increasingly fatter and sicker. For example, the amount of vitamin C is determined based on what might be needed to metabolise some of the highly refined carbohydrates that are now in our food chain. The more refined carbs you eat, the more vitamin C you need. It turns out that if you eat just fresh meat, you don't need any more vitamin C than is contained in the meat - which is how I've been eating for the last 3 years (and look - no scurvy!)

My suspicion is that many other nutrients fall into a similar category - if they aren't in meat, then you don't need them. Additionally, nutrients such as iron, calcium, copper, magnesium are more 'bioavailable' in animal-based food than in plants. This may mean you need to eat huge amounts of plants to harvest the nutrients you need (if you get them at all). 

My strategy in developing the new MIFFED guidelines is to go back to foods that we know are fine for us and base the RDA on what they contain - leaving out all the new foods and stuff we've come up with in the last 15,000 years. 

The amounts of nutrients in the following table are based on a simple menu of foods as follows: 

• 400gm of fatty beef (in this case rump or top round)
  including added tallow to make it representative of the whole animal
• 100gm of salmon
• 100gm of mussels
• 100gm of mushrooms

Additionally the following supplements because not everyone has equal access to the sun and salt may be needed to prevent cramps. Adjust to suit yourself.

• 1lt of salted water (6gm) salt
• 5000IU of D3 supplementation

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