Douglas Schorr

In the warm Australian afternoon of 2024, I sat across from a young mother nursing her newborn. “I used to think all these health issues were just bad luck,” she said, watching her baby. “Now I understand they’re choices.” Her words crystallized sixty years of observations I’d witnessed across continents – the systematic dismantling of human health through the destruction of our microbiome.

In the 1960s, when I was young, we carried within us an evolutionary masterpiece – trillions of microorganisms forming a perfectly calibrated ecosystem, shaped by millions of years of evolution. Our microbiome. Each population had its unique microbial signature, as distinct as fingerprints, adapted to local environments and dietary patterns. A wild dog in Africa’s Horn carried exactly what it needed, just as we once did. A wild dog in South Africa was different enough, just as events such as the Black Death and the Spanish Conquistadors prove we once were.

The transformation began subtly. First came the “improvements” to childbirth. What started as emergency C-sections became scheduled conveniences. Natural birthing practices, which ensured babies received their mother’s microbiome, gave way to sterile hospital protocols. Breastfeeding, our first immunological education, was replaced by formula – all in the name of progress.

All the while the food revolution was gathering momentum. I watched as traditional diets crumbled before the advance of processed foods. The Seventh-day Adventist Church’s vegetarian ideology merged perfectly with corporate interests, reshaping global nutrition. Butter became the enemy. Eggs were demonized. Red meat was suddenly dangerous. Each change seemed logical in isolation and always backed by paid-for research, but collectively they amounted to an all-out assault on our microbiome.

The numbers tell a stark story. Today’s Americans consume 65-70% of their calories as carbohydrates, mostly processed. In Malaysia, where I’ve lived long enough to witness the transformation, the national blood bank struggles to find healthy donors. In China, in just 15 years – a child’s school life – cities transformed into places where the new middle class considered “eating like a white” a status symbol, followed predictably by Western diseases.

The medical-industrial complex that emerged is breathtaking in its scope. Don’t just think an extension of doctors-hospitals and back-up. Start with the coffee-deli in the hospital foyer and move through the dozens of specialist support groups, psychologist/psychiatrists, resorts, supplement and etcetera outlets, gyms, personal trainers, nutritionists out of university degree courses, emergency response teams and realize it is a closed loop of destruction at great cost, and rebuilding at massive profit. With the exception of grass-fed livestock, beginning at the farm, food companies create health problems, pharmaceutical companies sell solutions, medical institutions manage chronic conditions, and insurance companies profit from illness.

The blame-game over opioids (and synthetic fentanyl) use in the US has drawn in national leaders yet, although the drug and the compromised food loop do the same thing… a massive high and a long low, poor food continues to be promoted by the US and its countless agencies. There are only two fundamental differences: opioids/fentanyl kills or maims less than 5% of Americans while feeding the wrong food to humans everyone except the rebels!

Even our traditional allies in disease prevention have been compromised. Vaccines have been one of medicine’s greatest achievements – especially critical since the age of steam ships and motorcars accelerated global travel, exposing populations to new pathogens before they could develop natural immunity. They served as elegant training programs for our immune systems and worked brilliantly in metabolically healthy humans, creating robust herd immunity while reducing the need for microbiome-destroying antibiotics. We trusted vaccines because we remembered grandma’s horror stories of the Spanish Flu and witnessed polio’s devastation. But as our processed diets and damaged microbiomes weakened our metabolic health, vaccine efficacy declined. The COVID-19 debacle laid this bare – highlighting how a population with widespread metabolic dysfunction responds poorly to immunological challenges. Yet instead of addressing the underlying metabolic crisis, we doubled down on pharmaceutical solutions, creating a perfect storm where compromised hosts require ever more aggressive interventions.

More disturbing is what we’re doing to our children. A baby born today inherits their mother’s compromised microbiome, not the robust ecosystem our grandparents received. The results are everywhere: childhood obesity, diabetes, autism, ADHD, celiac disease, and a surge in cancers. We’ve created a biological echo chamber where each generation starts life more disadvantaged than the last.

The irony of our “woke” times is that while we debate social constructs, we remain blind to the biological destruction of our species. The same institutions that created this crisis now position themselves as saviors. Big Pharma offers medications for diseases caused by Big Food, while Big Tech promises digital solutions to analog problems.

Yet, as I write this in 2024, powerful forces push harder in the opposite direction. Our governments, captured by industrial interests, accelerate policies that further disconnect us from natural food sources. The World Economic Forum’s agenda threatens to eliminate traditional animal husbandry, while synthetic alternatives proliferate.

Hope lies in understanding that this is all about food. From our earliest biological origins, the competition for resources shaped life itself. From the time we emerged in the African jungle, we’ve fought for our right to take in the food to maintain a proper human diet. We are basically carnivores – without a surfeit of animal products our guts are in turmoil, our microbiome slowly collapses and our mitochondria are forced to do whatever they can. It’s about reclaiming our biological heritage. The truth our bodies never forgot remains simple: real food from animals that graze grasslands, browse forest edges, forage woodland floors, and scratch through savanna – all raised in harmony with nature’s varied ecosystems. Like any recovery from addiction, healing begins with acknowledging the problem and choosing a different path.

The window for action narrows with each passing year, each new regulation, each corporate consolidation of our food supply. The question isn’t whether we can restore our microbiome – our bodies retain that ancient wisdom. The question is whether we’ll have the courage to fight for access to the foods that made us human before it’s too late.