There is much debate over natural diet and what that means for our current consumption. Obviously, our ancestors didn't have McDonald's, but we should also be questioning very basic assumptions about what governments tell their respective people in regard to a safe and healthy diet:

For the key to the osteoporosis riddle, don’t look at calcium, look at protein. Consider these two contrasting groups. Eskimos have an exceptionally high protein intake estimated at 25 percent of total calories. They also have a high calcium intake at 2,500 mg/day. Their osteoporosis is among the worst in the world. The other instructive group are the Bantus of South Africa. They have a 12 percent protein diet, mostly plant protein, and only 200 to 350 mg/day of calcium, about half our women's intake. The women have virtually no osteoporosis despite bearing six or more children and nursing them for prolonged periods! When African women immigrate to the United States, do they develop osteoporosis? The answer is yes, but not quite as much as Caucasian or Asian women. Thus, there is a genetic difference that is modified by diet.

To answer the obvious question, "Well, where do you get your calcium?" The answer is: "From exactly the same place the cow gets the calcium, from green things that grow in the ground," mainly from leafy vegetables. After all, elephants and rhinos develop their huge bones (after being weaned) by eating green leafy plants, so do horses. Carnivorous animals also do quite nicely without leafy plants. It seems that all of earth's mammals do well if they live in harmony with their genetic programming and natural food. Only humans living an affluent life style have rampant osteoporosis.

If animal references do not convince you, think of the several billion humans on this earth who have never seen cows' milk. Wouldn't you think osteoporosis would be prevalent in this huge group? The dairy people would suggest this but the truth is exactly the opposite. They have far
less than that seen in the countries where dairy products are commonly consumed.

There are more great points brought up in this article, mainly surrounding how cows are treated, and simple analyses showing that cow milk is for cows and human milk is for humans.

In Europe, local cultures brought us niceties like Italian and French cheeses, Polish and German sausage, etc., but when all of those customs were picked up in the United States, suddenly there was a huge influx of dairy and meat consumption that is far beyond what is necessary. Our decadent lifestyles in "developed" nations have led us to consume the richest products of these cultures instead of developing a sane and healthy diet mostly free of dangerous chemicals and unnatural ingredients. Throw in fast food and one can understand just how damaging our modern diets can be.

Farmer subsidies encourage the production of cow's milk in the US, and government-sponsored initiatives follow through by encouraging US citizens to drink more milk and eat more beef (yes, even recently, where obesity has become a huge problem). This has resulted in hormones and penicillin making its way into our diets, abnormal growth patterns, and perhaps even higher incidents of disease and cancers – caused by continued consumption of something that not only was unnatural to begin with (cow's milk for humans), but is only supposed to occur in infancy.

The point we should take from this information is that nature and traditional culture typically know what's best for our bodies. Anything unnatural that's introduced into our diets is only going to be harmful down the road, especially if we are told to consume vast quantities of such things.

One extreme form of following a natural diet is the Paleo diet. Some examples of what to eat and what to avoid when following this diet include:

Eat none of the following:

• Grains- including bread, pasta, noodles
• Beans- including string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas and peas
• Potatoes
• Dairy products
• Sugar
• Salt

Eat the following:
• Meat, chicken and fish
• Eggs
• Fruit
• Vegetables (especially root vegetables, but definitely not including potatoes or sweet potatoes)
• Nuts, eg. walnuts, brazil nuts, macadamia, almond. Do not eat peanuts (a bean) or cashews (a family of their own)
• Berries- strawberries, blueberries, raspberries etc.

Try to increase your intake of:
• Root vegetables- carrots, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, Swedes
• Organ meats- liver and kidneys (I accept that many people find these unpalatable and won’t eat them)

There may be some debate over the specifics – certainly, bread and aged cheese are parts of the diet in traditional European culture - but there probably isn’t any harm in following the diet, as it’s grounded in common sense when considering our genetic makeup has not changed significantly in thousands of years.

Cows, chickens, eggs, milk – none of this was ever meant to be consumed in exactly the same absurd quantities across millions of people and different geographical locations. Corporate farming may have brought us equality on the supermarket shelf, but has certainly messed with our diets, and now we're seeing serious consequences.