Table Of Contenti
Decolonizing the Diet
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iii
Decolonizing the Diet
Nutrition, Immunity and the Warning
from Early America
Gideon A. Mailer and Nicola E. Hale
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Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2018
by ANTHEM PRESS
75– 76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
© Gideon A. Mailer and Nicola E. Hale 2018
The authors assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Mailer, Gideon A., author. | Hale, Nicola E., 1985– author.
Title: Decolonizing the diet : nutrition, immunity and the warning
from early America / Gideon A. Mailer and Nicola E. Hale.
Description: London, UK; New York, NY: Anthem Press, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018004290 | ISBN 9781783087143 (hardback) |
ISBN 1783087145 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Nutrition – History. | Diet – History. | Indigenous people. |
Immunology. | BISAC: HISTORY / Native American.
Classification: LCC RA784.M293 2018 | DDC 613.2–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004290
ISBN- 13: 978- 1- 78308- 714- 3 (Hbk)
ISBN- 10: 1- 78308- 714- 5 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e- book.
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[…] our fathers had plenty of deer and skins, our plains were full of deer, as also our
woods, and of turkies, and our coves full of fish and fowl. But these English having
gotten our land, they with scythe cut down the grass, and with axes fell the trees; their
cows and horses eat the grass, and their hogs spoil our clam banks, and we shall all
be starved […]
— Miantonomo, 1642
Any person […] who neglects the present opportunity of hunting out good lands […]
will never regain it.
— George Washington, 1767
The circumstance of my Nation is changed, the game is gone, our former wilderness
is now settled by thousands of white people, and our settlements are circumscrib’d and
surrounded, and it bec[o]m es necessary that my Nation should change the Custom,
and leave our forefather’s ways.
— David Folsom (Choctaw), 1824
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions,
great is our sin.
— Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle
There is no death, only a change of worlds.
— Duwamish Native American Proverb
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Nutrition and Immunity in Native America:
A Biological and Historical Controversy 1
Conceptual and Moral Minefields between the Humanities and Science 6
1. The Evolution of Nutrition and Immunity: From the
Paleolithic Era to the Medieval European Black Death 17
Expanding the Expensive Tissue Hypothesis: Evolutionary Nutritional
Interactions between the Small Gut and the Large Brain 20
Immunity, Inflammation and the Evolution of Nutritional Needs 23
Evolutionary Health and the Rise of Neolithic Agriculture: A Useful
Category of Historical Analysis 30
Mitigating Nutritional Degradation through Genetic or Societal Adaptations:
A Neolithic Model Denied to Native Americans after European Contact 41
The Medieval European Model of Nutrition and Contingency 49
2. More Than Maize: Native American Subsistence Strategies
from the Bering Migration to the Eve of Contact 53
The Earliest Indigenous North American Subsistence Strategies 55
The Positive and Negative Consequences of Maize Intensification
in Native America 58
Adapting to Agricultural Intensification through Continued Hunting
and Gathering 65
Southeast North America 66
Southwest North America 72
The Northeast Atlantic, New England and Iroquois Country 75
From the Great Plains to the Great Basin 79
Ancient and Precontact California 81
The Pacific Northwest before Contact 84
Precontact Alaska and Arctic North America 85
3. Micronutrients and Immunity in Native America, 1492– 1750 91
Beyond Virgin Soils: Nutrition as a Primary Contingent Factor in
Demographic Loss 93
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viii DECOLONIZING THE DIET
New Ways to Approach the Link between Nutrition and Immunity 100
Nutritional Degradation and Compromised Immunity in Postcontact Florida:
Understanding the Effects of Iron, Protein and B- 12 Deficiencies 102
Nutritional Degradation and Immunity in the Postcontact Southeast:
Framing Deficiencies in Zinc, Magnesium and Multiple Vitamins 107
Nutritional Degradation in the Postcontact Southwest, the Great Plains
and the Great Basin: Essential Amino Acids, Folate and the
Contingent Threat to Demographic Recovery 117
Nutritional Degradation in the Postcontact Northeast, New England
and Iroquois Country: Zoonotic Diseases and the Interaction between
Plant Micronutrients and Animal Fats 126
After the Revolution 133
4. Metabolic Health and Immunity in Native America,
1750– 1950 137
The Insulin Hypothesis and Immunity in Native America after Contact 140
Shattered Subsistence in California and the Pacific Northwest in the
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Acorns, Resistant Starch
and the Assault on the Indigenous Microbiome 150
Shattered Subsistence in Alaska in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Centuries: Seasonal Vitamin D, Fatty Acids, Ketosis and Autophagy 162
Epilogue. Decolonizing the Diet: Food Sovereignty and Biodiversity 175
From Compromised Immunity to Autoimmunity in the Modern Era 177
From Native America to North America: Compromised National
Nutritional Guidelines 183
Modern Tribal Sovereignty as a Model for American Biodiversity
and Public Health 186
Notes 193
Index 301
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was inspired by a collaboration that began several years ago. We
began to draw together materials from history, anthropology, evolutionary
biology, genetics and nutritional biochemistry, for a unique interdisciplinary
course at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, on nutrition, evolutionary
medicine, and early American and Native American history. We soon realized
that no existing text synthesizes the science of immunity and autoimmunity in
light of historical case studies of nutritional change.
We noticed the ways in which the history of the agricultural transition
10,000 years ago—and its health dynamics—could inform the history of the
Euro-American assault on Native American subsistence and nutrition after
1492. In writing and researching the book over the last few years, we also
became increasingly aware of its place within broader public health debates.
We are grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers in both stages of the review
process. This book required a great deal of cross-disciplinary expertise from
the reviewers, as well as specific knowledge in their various fields (whether in
biological science, history or Native American studies). Thus, we are extremely
grateful for their time and their recommendations. Without their comments
and critiques, this book would not be what it is today.
Nicola is grateful to all those who have helped her skills in research and
synthesis at the University of Cambridge over the years, particularly during
her time at the Glover lab under Dr. Nikola Dzhindzhev and as a research
assistant at the Laura Itzhaki lab investigating protein structures and protein-
protein interactions. She is also grateful for the mentorship she received
during her year working at the Kevin Hardwick lab at the University of
Edinburgh, Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, in 2012. She is grateful to
the anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Evolution and Health, who refined her
thinking on the genetic adaptations relating to nutrition and disease resistance.
Gideon is grateful to the Department of History and the dean of the
College of Liberal Arts, at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, Dr. Susan
Maher, for their support in this project, and the Academic Affairs Committee
for its help and comments during the development of the course that gave
