Subconscious Fat at 30,000 Feet
Benjamin Franklin was hosting a dinner party at Passy, France, during his years as America’s representative in France.
On one side of the table sat the Americans. On the other, the French.
Among the French guests was the influential writer Abbé Raynal...
The French intellectual Abbé Raynal was arguing a popular European theory of the day: nature—and even human beings—had somehow “degenerated” in America.
Franklin apparently had enough.
He looked around the table and proposed a wonderfully simple experiment:
“Let both parties rise, and we will see on which side nature has degenerated.”
They stood.
The Americans towered over the French.
Thomas Jefferson later recorded the story, describing Franklin’s American guests as men of impressive stature while the French guests were remarkably smaller.
Mr. Skeptical clears his throat.
“Hermann, that’s a funny dinner-party story. It isn’t a randomized controlled trial.”
Correct, Mr. Skeptical.
But here’s where the true story gets much more interesting.
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Based in the Greater Chicago area, David challenges organizations to look beyond rules, regulations, and compliance and recognize the human side of workplace safety—the employees, families, and communities affected when leadership and safety fail.
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David will be my guest on The Better Wealth and Health Podcast, dropping tomorrow at 11:57 a.m. Eastern.
Subconscious Fat at 10,000 Feet
Historical height records indicate that Franklin wasn’t simply benefiting from an unusually tall group of dinner guests.
Research using colonial and Revolutionary-era records estimates that American men were approximately two to four inches taller than Europeans around this period.
Why?
Nutrition matters.
Colonial America had enormous amounts of land, wildlife and livestock relative to its population. Historical accounts indicate that meat was substantially more available to many Americans than to Europeans, where malnutrition was considerably more common.
Protein-rich animal foods have also been associated historically with greater stature.
Height is influenced by genetics, childhood disease, sanitation, overall calories, protein intake, socioeconomic conditions and other environmental factors.
Still, Franklin may unknowingly have been observing a biological consequence of America’s unusually abundant food environment.
Mr. Skeptical interrupts.
“So you’re telling me steak made Americans giants?”
No.
I’m saying something more interesting:
When human beings have abundant nutrition during childhood, their physical development tends to reveal it.
And animal foods play an important part in that abundance.
Subconscious Fat at Eye-Level
Now comes the historical irony.
Fast-forward roughly two centuries.
America—the country whose abundant food supply may have helped produce unusually tall people—became ground zero for another erroneous nutritional idea:
Animal fat was killing us.
Ancel Keys became one of the most influential proponents of the diet-heart hypothesis and led the famous Seven Countries Study.
The countries studied included the United States, Finland, the Netherlands, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece and Japan.
Notice somebody missing?
France.
France later became famous for something called the French paradox: comparatively low rates of coronary heart disease despite a diet high in fat.
The historical reversal is delicious and ironic.
In Franklin’s day:
Americans stood up and embarrassed the French with their stature.
Two centuries later:
The French became an awkward nutritional question for Americans.
Mr. Skeptical smiles.
“So now the shrimp gets his revenge?”
Apparently history has a sense of humor.
Practical Suggestions and Conclusions
There’s a bigger lesson here than Americans versus Frenchmen—or meat versus vegetables.
Human biology doesn’t change because nutritional fashion changes.
For most of human history, obtaining enough calories, protein and micronutrients to maximize growth was difficult. Animal foods provided extraordinarily dense packages of protein, fat, vitamins and minerals.
History should make us humble.
Yesterday’s nutritional certainty can become tomorrow’s TIME magazine retraction.
Franklin didn’t need an epidemiological model at that dinner table.
He simply asked everyone to stand up.
Sometimes nature leaves clues right in front of us.
The difficult part is deciding whether we’re willing to see them.
George Santayana famously wrote in 1905, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Maybe nutrition should spend a little more time remembering the past.
Be aware.
Other links related to this post:
Is It True that Humans Were Taller?
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Full disclosure: ChatGPT was used to research and enhance this post.
🎙️The Better Wealth & Health Podcast with guest David A. Ward Sr is dropping tomorrow at 11:57 AM Eastern.