37.
Kalenjins And Tarahumara
Power of Natural, Chemical Free, Plant Based Diet
In this chapter we reproduce two articles about two different tribes whose dietary habits and lifestyle have endowed them
with exceptional physical abilities. This shows in order to achieve optimum health, we don’t need anything super-extraordinary. A simple, natural, chemical free, unprocessed plant based diet is all that we need.
with exceptional physical abilities. This shows in order to achieve optimum health, we don’t need anything super-extraordinary. A simple, natural, chemical free, unprocessed plant based diet is all that we need.
Secrets From The Savannah: The Diets Of Elite Kenyan Runners
By Jonathan Bechtel
East african runners have a record of dominance in elite distance running. Since pushing themselves into the spotlight by steamrolling the competition in the 1968 olympics, Kenyans and Ethiopians have enjoyed a peculiar success at international events. Since that time they’ve grabbed 10 of the 20 top times for middle and long distance cross-country races. This success naturally led to curiousity about these runners’ origins and practices.
Studies of their biology, conditioning, and nutritional habits have been both illuminating and confusing. A surprising fact discovered by western researchers was that running prowess is not evenly distributed in these countries. Within Kenya and Ethiopia are different geographies, cultures, and tribes that create very different lifestyles from one region to the next.
It was eventually discovered that the majority of Kenyan runners came from a small ethnic group called the Kalenjins, who live in the Great Rift Valley in northern Kenya. They make up less than 10% of the Kenyan population, but won a staggering 40% of middle and long distance races in international competition from 1987 to 1997. Such a story naturally stokes the imagination. What is it about this band of people that makes them world-class runners? Is it in their genes? Was it a culture that glorified running? Was it something special in their diet? Ensuing research provided some answers, but no silver bullet.
You could write a book (and some have) about all the unique wrinkles in Kalinjin life that led to their running prowess, but this article will slice one important variable: their diet. Any runner knows the importance of nutrition in a training regimen, and studies of Kalinjin eating habits both re-affirmed currently held beliefs while raising doubts about others.
East african runners have a record of dominance in elite distance running. Since pushing themselves into the spotlight by steamrolling the competition in the 1968 olympics, Kenyans and Ethiopians have enjoyed a peculiar success at international events. Since that time they’ve grabbed 10 of the 20 top times for middle and long distance cross-country races. This success naturally led to curiousity about these runners’ origins and practices.
Studies of their biology, conditioning, and nutritional habits have been both illuminating and confusing. A surprising fact discovered by western researchers was that running prowess is not evenly distributed in these countries. Within Kenya and Ethiopia are different geographies, cultures, and tribes that create very different lifestyles from one region to the next.
It was eventually discovered that the majority of Kenyan runners came from a small ethnic group called the Kalenjins, who live in the Great Rift Valley in northern Kenya. They make up less than 10% of the Kenyan population, but won a staggering 40% of middle and long distance races in international competition from 1987 to 1997. Such a story naturally stokes the imagination. What is it about this band of people that makes them world-class runners? Is it in their genes? Was it a culture that glorified running? Was it something special in their diet? Ensuing research provided some answers, but no silver bullet.
You could write a book (and some have) about all the unique wrinkles in Kalinjin life that led to their running prowess, but this article will slice one important variable: their diet. Any runner knows the importance of nutrition in a training regimen, and studies of Kalinjin eating habits both re-affirmed currently held beliefs while raising doubts about others.
Ingredients
Whenever a mysterious tribe or part of the earth is discovered, rumors quickly spread about a new superfood or diet with extraordinary health properties. Acai berries, mangosteen fruit, and chia seeds are the products of such hype. Did the Kalinjin diet have a special ingredient? Would their eating habits shed new light into running and nutrition the same way the Okinawans did for longevity? The answer is a decisive no. The Kalinjin diet, it turns out, is pretty plain.
Surveys and observations done in person confirmed that a typical day’s food consists of cabbage, potatoes, kidney beans, boiled rice, and ugali, a paste made from corn maize. Drinks usually consisted of water and tea. The nutritional quality of all these foods was high, but none were out of the ordinary. Overall macronutrient intake among Kalinjins conformed to traditional canons of athletic nutrition, and studies of their diet confirmed conventional beliefs about the macronutrients you should consume in your diet and did not turn over any new leaves.
(Jonathan Bechtel is a lifelong marathoner. He covers health, nutrition, and benefits of a whole foods diet in his writings).
Surveys and observations done in person confirmed that a typical day’s food consists of cabbage, potatoes, kidney beans, boiled rice, and ugali, a paste made from corn maize. Drinks usually consisted of water and tea. The nutritional quality of all these foods was high, but none were out of the ordinary. Overall macronutrient intake among Kalinjins conformed to traditional canons of athletic nutrition, and studies of their diet confirmed conventional beliefs about the macronutrients you should consume in your diet and did not turn over any new leaves.
(Jonathan Bechtel is a lifelong marathoner. He covers health, nutrition, and benefits of a whole foods diet in his writings).
Secrets of the Tarahumara Runners
Adapted from Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.
The man in the shot may look like an ancient Aztec goofy-footing his way down a rockslide. But he’s actually a Tarahumara Indian, a member of a tribe living deep in Mexico’s remote Copper Canyons. When it comes to going ultra-distances, nothing could beat the Tarahumara – not a racehorse, not a cheetah, not an Olympic marathoner. Very few outsiders had ever seen the Tarahumara in action, but amazing stories of their superhuman toughness and tranquillity have drifted out of the canyons for centuries. One explorer spent 10 hours crossing a mountain by mule; a Tarahumara runner made the same trip in 90 minutes.
The man in the shot may look like an ancient Aztec goofy-footing his way down a rockslide. But he’s actually a Tarahumara Indian, a member of a tribe living deep in Mexico’s remote Copper Canyons. When it comes to going ultra-distances, nothing could beat the Tarahumara – not a racehorse, not a cheetah, not an Olympic marathoner. Very few outsiders had ever seen the Tarahumara in action, but amazing stories of their superhuman toughness and tranquillity have drifted out of the canyons for centuries. One explorer spent 10 hours crossing a mountain by mule; a Tarahumara runner made the same trip in 90 minutes.
When it comes to the top 10 health risks facing American men, the Tarahumara are practically immortal: Their incidence rate is at or near zero in just about every category, including diabetes, vascular disease, and colorectal cancer. Age seems to have no effect on them, either: The Tarahumara runner who won the 1993 Leadville ultramarathon was 55 years old. Plus, their supernatural invulnerability isn't just limited to their bodies; the Tarahumara have mastered the secret of happiness as well, living as benignly as bodhisattvas in a world free of theft, murder, suicide, and cruelty.
So how do they do it? How is it that we, in one of the most technologically advanced nations on Earth, can devote armies of scientists and terabytes of data to improving our lives, yet keep getting fatter, sicker, and sadder, while the Tarahumara, who haven't changed a thing in 2,000 years, don't just survive, but thrive? What have they remembered that we've forgotten?
-Christopher McDougall
Tony Ramirez, a horticulturist in the US, who’s been obsessed with Tarahumara foods for decades.“Anything the Tarahumara eat, you can obtain easily,” says Ramirez. “It’s mostly beans, squash,chilli peppers, wild greens, ground corn and chia.” (Chia is a seed that can absorb more than 12 times its weight in water.)
The Tarahumara’s favourite drink, apart from home-brewed corn beer, is a little concoction whipped up by dissolving chia seeds in water and adding a little sugar and a squirt of lime. As tiny as those seeds are, they’re packed with omega-3s, protein, fibres and antioxidants. And there’s no arguing with its pedigree: On a diet like that, a 55-year-old Tarahumara runner won a 160km race through the Colorado Rockies.
The Tarahumara’s favourite drink, apart from home-brewed corn beer, is a little concoction whipped up by dissolving chia seeds in water and adding a little sugar and a squirt of lime. As tiny as those seeds are, they’re packed with omega-3s, protein, fibres and antioxidants. And there’s no arguing with its pedigree: On a diet like that, a 55-year-old Tarahumara runner won a 160km race through the Colorado Rockies.
“Sooner or later your fingers close on that one moist-cold spud that the spade has accidentally sliced clean through, shining wetly white and giving off the most unearthly of earthly aromas. It's the smell of fresh soil in the spring, but fresh soil somehow distilled or improved upon, as if that wild, primordial scene has been refined and bottled: eau de pomme de terre. You can smell the cold inhuman earth in it, but there's the cozy kitchen to, for the smell of potatoes is, at least by now, to us, the smell of comfort itself, a smell as blankly welcoming as spud flesh, a whiteness that takes up memories and sentiments as easily as flavors. To smell a raw potato is to stand on the very threshold of the domestic and the wild.”
~ Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World