In the Defense of Food, Michael Pollan mentions a study about a group of Aborigines in 1982 that spent seven weeks eating like hunter-gatherers. Before the study, they had been eating western food for years and had contracted type two diabetes. During the seven weeks, they ate food such as birds, plants, shellfish, yams, turtles, seafood, and figs. After the study, their health had improved immensely by lowering blood pressure, weight loss, and greatly improving the type two diabetes.
Another study mentioned a man named Price who quit his dentistry job and went to the mountains in Switzerland and Peru to study the effects of traditional foods. Price found that isolated populations eating a wide variety of traditional foods had no need for dentists. They had no idea what a toothbrush was, but their teeth were free of decay.
Although these studies show incredible health benefits from eating unprocessed foods, it is not practical to expect people to quit their jobs and become hunter-gatherers just to be healthy. Even the ten aborigines went back to eating western food after the seven-week study, despite the miraculous health effects, the lifestyle is not practical or easy. Industrialized food is cheaper and offers centralized purchasing of food from all over the world. So, although many processed foods have negative health benefits, the industrialized food chain has also allowed different fruits and vegetables to be flown in from all over the world. Bananas are shipped from the Caribbean. Tomato’s come from Britain, Spain, and Portugal. Many other fruits and vegetables are quickly flown in from all over the U.S. and the world to be purchased by consumers.