In the Northern Hemisphere, we are now moving into the Fall and Winter Seasons. This period of time is also when Vitamin D deprivation increases unless individuals increase their daily intake of Vitamin D3 supplementation.
Please listen to this Mentza conversation to learn more about the relationship between autoimmune diseases and Vitamin D deprivation.
Dr. Anth Talks released several videos that form an important collection. The topics discussed include what humans are meant to eat and how the development of agriculture created major changes to ecology, diet, and human health.
Those videos are collected in this post for ease of access and viewing.
Check out the Dr. Anth Talks You-Tube Channel for all the Dr. Anth Talks videos.
Scarcity is the limiting factor that can make life more difficult whether the scarce resource is money, time, energy, etc. It becomes more difficult to make appropriate decisions when the brain’s cognitive capacity is focused on that scarce resource. Thinking of cognitive capacity as ‘bandwidth’ allows us to realize that there is only so much bandwidth available. If we are already heavily using it, for instance, by trying to figure out how we will pay this month’s bills, there is little left over for other important decisions, such as planning how to save for a college education.
This issue of scarcity and how it affects decision-making is taken on by authors Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafirwhen scarcity pressure reduces bandwidth, there is too much going on to effectively process all that needs to be done or decided.
Mullainathan and Shafir devote a large portion of the book to discussing poverty and its relationship to scarcity and bandwidth reduction. Many of those who are poor may appear to make unfortunate decisions. It is not because they are incapable of making better choices, but because their cognitive bandwidth is over-taxed due to their inadequate resources. In one experiment, “The poor responded just like the rich when the car cost little to fix, when scarcity had not been rendered salient. Clearly, this is not about inherent cognitive capacity. Just like the processor that is slowed down by too many applications, the poor here appear [italics in original] worse because some of their bandwidth is being used elsewhere.” p. 52 “We would argue that the poor do have lower effective [italics in original] capacity than those who are well off. This is not because they are less capable, but rather because part of their mind is captured by scarcity.” p. 60
Poverty is a serious issue for the future since it affects the children. “Nearly 50 percent of all children in the United States will at some point be on food stamps. About 15 percent of American households had trouble finding food for the family at some point during the year.” p.147 Not only are children going hungry, but their parents have trouble parenting due to reduced cognitive bandwidth. “Being a good parent requires many things. But most of all it requires freedom of mind. That is one luxury the poor do not have.” p. 137 How can children do well in school when their cognitive bandwidth is occupied with hunger and a chaotic home life? “An overtaxed bandwidth means a reduced ability to process new information…Our data…suggest that much of the correlation between income and classroom performance may be explained by the bandwidth tax… Absorbing new information requires working memory.” p. 158
Many of the poor are striving for better lives for themselves and their children. A college education is now considered a basic requirement for many jobs, but the cost of a college education has sky-rocketed at the same time as grants and scholarships have become more difficult to obtain and/or cover less of the cost. Students are then forced to go heavily into debt, work while taking classes, or both. These students are experiencing scarcity of money and of time. “…the financially strapped student who misses some easy questions looks incapable or lazy. But these people are not unskilled or uncaring, just heavily taxed. The problem is not the person but the context of scarcity.” p. 65
Poverty will be a multi-generational trap that is impossible to escape if nothing is done to reduce the load on cognitive bandwidth. The poor have to constantly re-certify to get food stamps and other government programs. But the neediest often fail to do so because of the bandwidth tax: they forget. This is a tax on poverty. “To see the logic of taxing bandwidth, think about it this way. Imagine we imposed a hefty financial charge to filling out applications for financial aid. We would quickly realize that this is a silly fee to impose; a program aimed at the cash stretched should not charge them much cash. Yet we frequently design programs aimed at people who are bandwidth-stretched that charge a lot in bandwidth.” p. 222 “…the bandwidth tax was sizable: roughly thirteen to fourteen IQ points, with an equally large effect on executive control. These are … very large effects on cognitive function… the bandwidth tax plays a similarly large role in the lives of the poor everywhere.” p. 161-62
Benefits to the poor, such as food stamps, should be paid weekly rather than in one lump sum at the beginning of month. This smooths out the boom/bust cycle. We need to “…create long periods of moderation rather than spurts of abundance followed by heightened periods of scarcity.” p. 223 “The failures of the poor are part and parcel of the misfortune of being poor in the first place. Under these conditions, we all would have (and have!) failed.” p. 161
There are a number of ways in which government and business could reduce the bandwidth tax on the poor. If you are poor and have kids, having highly-subsidized day care frees up lots of bandwidth and makes life easier. “We’d be taking a cognitive load off. As we’ve seen, this would help your executive control, your self-control more broadly, even your parenting. It would increase your general cognitive capacity, your ability to focus, the quality of your work… [H]elp with child care…is a way to build human capital of the deepest kind: it creates bandwidth.” p. 176-77
Jobs paying minimum wages require those with children to work two or more jobs in order to be able to pay the bills. This situation is aggravated when these jobs do not provide consistent work schedules. “In the United States, something as simple as inconsistent work hours…can cause juggling and perpetuate scarcity. A solution would be to create the equivalent of unemployment insurance against such fluctuations in work hours, which to the poor can be even more pernicious than job loss.” p. 178
In order to solve poverty, we must realize that simply having a job is inadequate. “Now, rather than looking at education, health, finance, and child care as separate problems, we must recognize that they all form part of a person’s bandwidth capacity. And just as a financial tax can wreak havoc in one’s budget, so can a bandwidth tax create failure in any of several domains to which a person must attend.” p. 179-80 Social programs and employment structure need to be redesigned: “…a better design will have to incorporate fundamental insights about focusing and bandwidth that emerge from the psychology of scarcity.” p. 181
Our cognitive capacity bandwidth is limited. If it is taxed by inadequate pay, inconsistent work schedules, lack of childcare, unhealthy and/or insufficient diet, a polluted environment, inadequate social services and infrastructure, among many other scarce resources, it should not be surprising if the poor seem trapped in a cycle of poverty. Mullainathan and Shafir
A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about the book The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith. I won’t repeat what I said in that post except to note that humans are not meant to be vegans. We need to eat animal protein (fish, shellfish, eggs, poultry, some red meat) in order to be healthy. Fatty fish and eggs are especially important for proper brain growth, development, and health. Refusing to eat them could result in decreased mental ability as one ages.
Another recent fad is the raw food movement. Now, I am not against eating raw foods. However, I am against the concept that one should eat only raw foods, especially if that means only vegan raw foods (i.e. no sushi).
As neuroscientist Susanna Herculano-Houzel notes in her TED talk, cooking food allowed our human brains to expand in neuronal number and connections far beyond what would be expected for a primate our size. If our ancestors had not begun cooking th
eir food, especially meat, we would not be advanced much beyond chimpanzees in brain capacity and ability.
Vegan/vegetarian diets will also not save our planet from destruction. Keith covers some of the reasons for this in her book, but ecologist Allan Savory’s TED talk provides yet another reason that humans need meat in their diets: in order to reverse climate change and desertification, we need to have large herds of animals mimicking the herds that once roamed the savannas and grasslands
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Herd Animals Can Reverse Climate Change
Savory’s thesis seems counter-intuitive. Even he thought that before he tried it. The results are amazing.
Points to ponder and remember:
1] We need cooked animal protein for healthy brains and bodies.
2] Managing herd animals correctly can save the planet.
3] Grasses (wheat, corn, rice, etc.) are for herd animals to eat, while the herd animals are for us to eat.
See you at the barbecue!
Walking in Sunshine: LifeStyle Changes to Make for a Bright, Healthy Future, the book that can change your life, is now available for free download. Click on the link, download the PDF, and
Discover Why:
The best way to begin the day is awaking after having slept 7 to 9 hours. I will discuss sleep in more detail in a later post, but for now it is important to know that a good night’s sleep is critical to your health and well being.
Once awake, you need to hydrate and stretch. I drink a cup of fruit tea while doing a series of flexibilities. The flexibilities keep my joints loose, get the blood flowing to my brain, and energize me. Click here to access the PDF of the Flexibilities so that you can begin doing them yourself.
Once stretched and hydrated, it is time for a healthy breakfast. A good breakfast makes for a good day. I suggest a two egg omelet (actual eggs, not egg whites) with tomato salsa. I also eat a bowl of blueberries (frozen, but thawed) and a half grapefruit (in season). Eggs provide high-quality protein and are good for the brain. Breakfast must include high-quality protein.
Well-rested, hydrated, stretched, and well-fed: this is the best way to begin the day.
As I discussed previously, we humans are who we are in part because of a fish/shellfish diet that allowed for advanced brain development. Without these items in our diet, I think it is doubtful that our hominin ancestors would have advanced much beyond the bonobos/chimps. What will happen if we no longer have access to these food sources?
Given that we live on an ocean planet, this fear would seem pointless. The world ocean is vast and immensely deep. And yet, we are destroying its productivity at frightening speed. The 1990s saw the total collapse of what had been one of the most productive fisheries on Earth: the cod fishery of the Georges Bank off Newfoundland. Almost overnight, families who’d produced fishermen for generations were suddenly out of work. A great book on the story of cod is Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky. Cod were once so large and numerous that they could be scooped from the sea with buckets. Now they are so scarce and tiny, that fishing for them is under extremely strict regulation and management. Without such management, cod have little chance of rebuilding a healthy, sustainable population.
But it isn’t just cod. Factory ships are scraping the seabed clean of everything, whether they want it or not. Unwanted sea life is dumped overboard becoming sea death. These ships are devastating the seas and the livelihoods of traditional fishing groups, and destroying the life of the seabed. They are also threatening the survival of seabirds who rely on these same sea food sources the factory ships are harvesting or destroying with abandon. More information on the problems associated with overfishing can be found at Oceana.org.
Tuna and salmon are especially problematic fish whether wild caught or farmed. Farmed salmon develop lice that spread to wild salmon. Catching wild tuna and salmon with factory ships has all the problems mentioned above. The best thing to do is to quit eating tuna and salmon. Switch to sardines. Get all the brain and health benefits of eating fatty fish without the problems associated with tuna and salmon. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has developed Seafood Watch which gives guidance on the best fish and seafood to eat and which should be avoided in order to preserve ocean productivity.
We still have so much to discover about the world ocean. How can we continue to support activities that will destroy it before we are truly able to explore the Deep in all its glory?