This past summer, I was fortunate to attend the 2019 Cullowhee Native Plant Conference at Western Carolina University (NC) in the Smokey Mountains. I was raised a city girl and only recently have learned how vital native plants species are for the survival of wildlife, including the beautiful butterflies that grace each spring and summer. Sure, swallowtail butterflies will flock to a butterfly bush (native to Asia) or a lantana bush (native to the tropics) for the nectar. But we would not have any butterflies without native plants.

Each butterfly species seeks out a specific plant on which to lay its eggs; that plant provides the exact right food for the caterpillars that will eventually turn into butterflies. The bright yellow cloudless sulphur butterfly needs a senna plant (usually considered a weed). The tiger swallowtail lays its eggs on aspen, black cherry, and tulips trees; and the large, orange and silver- spotted gulf fritillary needs passionflower (maypop), a native perennial vine that quickly (and weed-like) spreads during summer and dies back with the cold. And butterflies are not unique. Other pollinators and insects (which, after all, are the foundation of the food chain for many species) evolved with a dependence upon a specific food.

It got me to thinking about humans.  We are in the midst of the great processed food experiment, now almost 150 years long. These boxed-up foods have largely taken the place of native foods that people had eaten for generations. Ophtalmologist Chris A. Knobbe, MD, calls these new foods “displacing foods”; they have displaced our native foods. Some time ago, Dr. Knobbe began investigating the connection between processed food consumption and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). He and Marija Stojanoska, MSc, gathered information about AMD prevalence and processed food consumption from 25 countries. They used sugar and ‘harmful’ vegetable oil as markers for processed food, defining ‘harmful’ oil as those with high polyunsaturated content, commonly used in processed foods (soybean, corn, canola, cottonseed, sunflower, safflower, rapeseed, grapeseed, and rice bran oils).

AMD was ‘a medical rarity worldwide’ from 1851, when the first ophthalmoscopes permitted doctors to view the optic nerve, until the 1930s. By 1975, AMD had risen to ‘epidemic’ proportions in the US and UK—but not in Japan and some other countries. Then, the Japanese diet became increasingly “Westernized.” As their consumption of processed foods increased, so has the incidence of AMD.

In a 2007 study, 10% of Japanese residents age 50 and older had early AMD and 1.4% had late AMD. In contrast, Knobbe and Stojanoska found that the Pacific Island nations of Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Kiribati, which have maintained traditional diets (seafood, taro, yams, and other roots and tubers, and a variety of tropical fruits) with few processed foods, have an incidence of 0.2% or less—including people age 60 and older.  While sugar consumption varied, all three countries, had extremely low consumption of ‘harmful’ vegetable oils (“essentially zero”), according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Maybe it’s time for us to learn from nature and follow the wisdom of eating “native.” What do you think?

Klotter J. “Displacing Foods” as Primary Cause of Age-Related Macular Degeneration?
TL April 2019

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on Ultra-Processed Foods
by Dr. Jacob Schor