History of Human Misery: Where do you want to be?

Gene Expression has a facinating post on the transition from foraging to agriculture and how it affected human welfare. The graph Razib drew is interesting:

Thinking about it in a dietary context, I added a green line. Of course it is a rough approxamation. It would certainly be interesting to do a really well-researched version of this graph taking into account the archeological evidence, but this graph does show some important things. We in the modern era (well, some of us in 1st world countries at least) are lucky in many ways, as mortality is pretty much lower than its ever been. We don't have to worry very much about ourselves and our children getting felled by a random infection or being eaten by wild animals. But the so-called diseases of civilization really keep us from living up to our full genetic potential.

Where on this timeline do you want to eat? There are actually several good choices that seem to allow one to avoid diseases of civilization.

• The paleolithic diet, emulating hunter-gatherers.
• The mesolithic diet, emulating peoples who would have eaten small amounts of agricultural products, but also would have supplemented with wild foods. I think some diets that are similar to this would be the acorn-based diets of some Native west coast cultures or the reindeer-herding Sami. Many foraging cultures that survived beyond the paleolithic, don't really eat a diet that would be considered paleolithic. Reliance on nuts as a major food source, for example, seems to start after the paleolithic period.
• and traditional nutrition, which emulates the diet of healthy peasant societies. The modern Weston A. Price society aims for this diet.

I suppose it all depends on that dotted line from this graph on Demeter's Legacy. Certainly, there are both cultural (soaking and fermenting grains) and genetic adaptations that make agricultural food less harmful to humans. Eliminating the basic poisons of the Industrial Revolution like refined sugars and grains is often enough to restore health. I suppose it is up to you as an individual to decide if you are experiencing maladaptation from an agricultural diet. The cause of maladaption could be genetic, but it also could be that the illnesses developed on an inappropriate diet require going back to the basics. I feel that is certainly the case for me.