A Viral Twitter Thread Reawakens the Dark History of Anthropology
In March, a diet coach named Anthony Gustin, founder of an online food store called Perfect Keto (“Empowering your health journey in a food system that doesn’t care”), went viral on social media. The “clinician” and “food and fitness skeptic,” as he refers to himself on Twitter, tweeted that he had recently traveled to Africa to spend time with the Hadza, a group of foragers in Tanzania, to learn more about living a healthy lifestyle. In a hunting trip set up for tourists, Gustin followed the Hadza as they went about their day, observing how they hunt, socialize, and make their living. In the viral thread, he favorably contrasts these “wild humans” with “chubby, modern humans” living in “manmade zoos.” He calls studies of the Hadza a “LIE” and “mythical.” A photo shows Gustin sitting alongside several Hadza men, appearing pensive. “I hunted, killed, and ate a wild baboon (brains and all) with the indigenous Hadza tribe in Africa,” he tweeted. “Here are 13 things I learned about human health along the way.”
In his tweets, Gustin makes some astonishing observations about the Hadza. They “barely eat any plants” or fiber. “The men dream about big game hunts. Not huge salads or leafy greens.” Both the men and women only work for “3-4 hours a day.” The Hadza create no waste. They rarely rush, stress, or worry. And, believe it or not, they “rarely drink water,” opting instead for a “few sips of mud.” Though “nearly extinct,” the Hadza are still thriving in their “natural habitat.”
As an anthropologist, I’m used to encountering misconceptions about hunter-gatherers in the media. But rarely had I seen such a harmful combination of tropes, inaccuracies, and stereotypes—at least, not from the 21st century. Initially, I didn’t want to reply to the thread for fear of further amplifying it. But as the attention grew and multiplied, I felt compelled to correct the record. I replied to Gustin on—but also explained how his claims had reawakened tropes from the darkest ages of anthropology. Gustin, who now has almost 23,000 followers on Twitter, called me a woke idiot and blocked me.
