The low carbohydrate movement has demonized bread. But is bread fattening? Does it cause inflammation? And if so, why do we call bread the Staff of Life?

Imagine calling white bread the staff of life. And yet bread is more responsible for humans ending a nomadic existence. The cultivation of wheat and barley, both in the Nile and in the Euphrates/Tigris rivers, led to civilization.

Calendars, Art, Religion

Not having to forage meant there was time to build a more permanent shelter. It also meant a steady supply of food.

This also meant a calendar was needed because when is the optimal time to plant?

The calendar helped predict when the rivers would swell and recede. The bottom land, with its rich topsoil, is ideal for growing crops.

When you don't need to spend time looking for food, you have time to develop other things:

• Make a religion around grains - the god of the weather, of the earth of the river
• Grain can become the first currency, facilitating trade
• Art because you spend less time seeking food
• Storage systems to overcome times of famine.
• Mathematics, weights, and measures are needed to buy and sell grain
• Writing to make contracts and facilitate trade of the grain
• A government is needed to settle disputes

Harvested grain can be stored. Storing grain in Egypt was easier because of the dry climate. Joseph, of the Hebrew Bible, prophesied to the Pharoh of an upcoming famine. As a result, the Pharoh built silos and stored a portion of each harvest. Seven years later, the harvest failed. But

The silo system was complex. Filling from the top and arranged in a way that winds would keep the grains cool. Where did Egyptians get the idea for such an invention? From bees. You can see the bees' natural ventilation system here:

Bees were the symbol of royalty in ancient Egypt. Their honey was tears from the sun god. Bee architecture was copied for the ventilation system for the silos storing grain. Thus, the storage of grain allowed society to thrive during the time of famine.

Bread was portable. Served as currency. Allowed armies to march. Facilitated trade between city states. The grain rich regions of the Nile produced grain traded with Mycennians for olive oil and wine.

The Roman emperors gave bread to the poor as welfare. Part of the bread and circus program to keep Romans happy. Bread was imported to Rome, and ultimately, Roman citizens were given "their daily bread."

Rome fell, but bread continued to be important.

Grains, including bread, were the major source of calories for most of Europe. From the fall of Rome through the Middle Ages, bread was the main source of calories, along with other grain products.

White bread was considered pure, hygienic, the whiter the better. Brown bread could be contaminated. The ability of mills to separate wheat from chaff, and to make bread without a human hand touching it was irresistible. Industrial bread slicing resulted in "best thing since sliced bread."

White bread became the preferred style of bread from the 1920s until 2009.

Fortification of bread with vitamins in the 1940s made bread a health food. Pellagra (vitamin B 3 deficiency) and beriberi (thiamine deficiency) had sadly become common in the US and were eliminated by fortification. So it was indeed revolutionary, but calling it a health food? Even the Federal Trade Commission had issues with this "12 ways campaign" and sued Wonder Bread. The Feds lost.

In spite of the world loving white bread,

Today, the low-carb/carnivore community has a new enemy. It is seed oils. Here is their argument:

• There were no seed oils in ancient lands
• Seed oils are highly inflammatory
• Seed oils are extracted with hexane, a cancer-causing agent
• The rise of seed oils correlates with the rise of obesity
• Seed oils are high in omega-6 fatty acids, which are inflammatory

That is the summary of their logic. Now, let's get to the science.

See those beautiful seeds, in them are bits of oil. This is the rapeseed plant, which we have covered before. From rapeseed came canola oil. And this has been used as a source of oil starting about 4000 years ago. A much misunderstood oil, please see our previous podcast.

Every seed has oil. Nuts are a type of seed, and their caloric density comes from oil. Oddly, low carb/keto types tend to eat nuts, the carnivore crowd avoids them.

Seed oils are another name for vegetable oils, and they are used often in cooking because they have a neutral taste and high smoke point. The more common ones include corn, peanuts, sunflowers, grapes, and others.

Besides the logical fallacy about what ancient humans ate, seed oils have been cultivated and used for the whole of written humanity. Ancient Egyptians used oils for cooking and perfume. Even the Bible talks about the use of oils, including the gifts sent to the birth of Jesus. To summarize, humans have recorded the use of oils from seeds through all recorded history.

There is no one "oil" that can chemically be called a "seed oil." Rather, every seed contains different compositions of oils, and it is how the body uses those particular oils that makes us interested in them. Thus, seed oils as a term is silly. I wonder why the carnivore/keto crowd decided to use "seed oils" instead of vegetable oils? After all, they don't call beef tallow "meat oil."

Oleic acid is the main fatty acid in olive oil (55-85% of the oil). This is a mono-unsaturated fatty acid, which everyone seems to agree is heart healthy. Hence, the more oleic acid in something, the better.

• Peanut oil 48%
• Canola oil 65%
• Palm oil 39%
• Soybean oil 23%
• Coconut oil 7%
• Beef Tallow 47%
• Butter 24%

The short answer is no. To be inflammatory, they would have to elicit an inflammatory response. This means that inflammatory markers in the blood would be elevated for those who use vegetable oils over meat oils. In contrast, there is no increase in inflammatory markers of those who use vegetable oils.

Want to see the data? Take a look at this paper where they look at foods, like vegetable oils, with high ratios of omega-6 fatty acids. What didn't they find? Higher levels of inflammatory markers. Thus, seed oils are not inflammatory.

Atherosclerosis and Seed Oils

Do vegetable oils increase your risk of atherosclerosis, or do they decrease it? If the carnivore crowd is correct, they have not been yet, then their view of the vegetable oils is that it would increase your risk of atherosclerosis

Courville AB, Majchrzak-Hong S, Yang S, Turner S, Wilhite B, Ness Shipley K, Horneffer Y, Domenichiello AF,

There is an appeal to ancient history: the idea that ancient beings were either "designed"—as from a creator—or "evolved" to eat in a certain way. Both are logical fallacies, but both are meant to be the "ex-cathedra" in a debate.

You read these logical fallacies in communities that claim they understand this. Here are some comments you will get:

• Our ancestors ate xyz (fill in the blank) and never had the modern chronic diseases
• Our teeth have (canines/molars), so we were designed to eat only (meat/plants)
• You won't see broccoli on the walls of caves
• If we ate like our ancestors, we would be in great health.

Appealing arguments, but they are as flawed as they are simply incorrect.

Of the early human records, they are based on precious little data. Consider in the fossil record we have about our ancestors? And by the way, where do we start?

If we begin with homo sapiens, we have been around as a species somewhere between 70,000 to 250,000 years.

Often the "low-carb" community will conflate distant cousins of homo sapiens as direct ancestors. Most of them were not but were a branch on the tree of evolution that are only related to us.

Perhaps the best adapted was the homo erectus, which was around for two million years. It is doubtful that homo sapiens will make it that long, but we can hope.

Most fossil finds come from Australia and Asia - where they not only foraged but also established some organized hunting.

There are about 6000 fossils of early man. That's it. Just 6,000. When we look for fossils of our particular, such as early homo sapiens, we have enough fossils that we might fill up a school bus.

How long did they live? It turns out we know. Many died around the age of 35 years. So why do we want to eat like they did?

At this point, someone in the audience will be bound to say - "They lived longer if you take into account infant mortality."

When we date a fossil and see when it died, we don't average the infant mortality of the time.

Bones and teeth from seen people, and isolated teeth, were reported recently. These came from a cave in Morocco. As these teeth are from about 15,000 years ago. Hence, the diet was before the advent of agriculture.

Evidence points to plants being a major part of these hunter-gatherer's menu. As plants can be stored by hunter-gatherers all year round to protect against seasonal prey shortages. Thus, there is a regular food supply.

The famous caveman diet- life wasn't so simple.

When people of the carnivore tribe try to convince you about their diet, they invoke the mighty hunter.

A better term was that our ancestors survived by being fishers, gatherers, and scavengers.