Slashdot Mirror


The Evolution of Diet

An anonymous reader writes Here's a story from National Geographic that looks at the historical diets of people from around the world and what that diet might look like in the future. From the article: "So far studies of foragers like the Tsimane, Arctic Inuit, and Hadza have found that these peoples traditionally didn't develop high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, or cardiovascular disease. 'A lot of people believe there is a discordance between what we eat today and what our ancestors evolved to eat,' says paleoanthropologist Peter Ungar of the University of Arkansas. The notion that we're trapped in Stone Age bodies in a fast-food world is driving the current craze for Paleolithic diets. The popularity of these so-called caveman or Stone Age diets is based on the idea that modern humans evolved to eat the way hunter-gatherers did during the Paleolithic—the period from about 2.6 million years ago to the start of the agricultural revolution—and that our genes haven't had enough time to adapt to farmed foods."

2 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. craze? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    What a handful of trust fund rebels indulge is a "craze?" NPR-bait — "urban foragers" and other assorted yippie nonsense.

    Foodies are what emerge when a people suffer too much wealth and too much peace for too long.

  2. Re: Correlation Does Not Imply Causation by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 1, Troll

    Get her addicted to cigarettes and cocaine. And pull out her molars. That'll get the weight off.

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth