However, maybe neither one of these hypotheses is right. Maybe it's not the diet high in grains nor the fact that those who were mummified ate rich diets. Maybe it's something else.
Dr. McDougall wrote:Problems with the teeth are found in mummies. The most common abnormality is wearing down of the teeth by friction caused by eating gritty bread made from flour contaminated by windblown sand and other abrasive materials from the soil and grinding stones.
I'm pretty sure that sand was never meant to be part of the human diet. What if eating sand regularly, even though unintentionally, caused chronic low levels of inflammation which leads to many health problems, including atherosclerosis? In addition to their bread, it was probably present in just about everything they ate -- not to mention the rest of their environment, so they probably breathed sand or dust from sand as well.
What if the problems seen in studying these mummies had nothing to do with what they chose to eat, but everything to do with what they ate and breathed unintentionally? Our scientists are so trained to look at diet as the cause of all our health problems, that maybe they forget to look outside the (sand)box.
