The Modern Diet Is a Biosecurity Threat
If a life of foraging is really better than a life of farm labor, why wouldn’t humanity find a path back from agriculture to hunting and gathering? The best guess is that early farm settlements faced a one-way demographic trap. Here is a simple illustration: Suppose that the first generation of farmers got a boost from farming. Instead of eating tw
... See moreJeffrey D. Sachs • The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions
short time after these populations turned away from their native diet and began eating processed foods, all of the above factors shifted in a most detrimental fashion: dental caries rapidly became prevalent; degenerative diseases appeared with great frequency; and insanity, mental retardation, criminal behavior, and delinquency all became commonpla
... See moreDavid Pesek • How We Heal
No amount of nostalgia for the pastoral foods of the distant past can wish away the fact that our ancestors lived mean, short lives, constantly afflicted with diseases, many of which can be directly attributed to what they did and did not eat.
Rachel Laudan • A Plea for Culinary Modernism
The human animal now lives in a strange and unfamiliar world. Our bodies, sculpted by millions of years of evolution, are not just ancient. They are prehistorical. Our anatomy, physiology, and psychology are adapted to life in a wild, outdoor environment. At our core, we are hunters and gatherers, primed for life in natural habitat. But today we’re
... See moreFrank Forencich • The Art is Long: Big Health and the New Warrior Activist
Human biology is optimized for conditions that existed 100,000 years ago, not for the world in which we actually live today. Food is everywhere; predators are not. You no longer have to be in constant motion; instead, you probably spend most of your time occupied by sedentary activities, like sitting behind a desk at a computer. As a result, we fac
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