- [!] Status - status-updated:: created 2021-08-13 When it comes to diet advice, I'm totally uninterested in things like what our ancestors used to eat. I don't care that our ancestors used to grind bread grain from random grasses. We're not the same evolutionary makeup as our ancestors were what I am interested in is statements like our ancestors didn't have a particular problem, because they had a particular diet. So if you tell me that ancient humans didn't have obesity problems, because their diet was so high in fiber and non nutritive things that every speck of calorie they got was valuable, and that's useful to know, and helps explain why fiber, high fiber diets are helpful. The more I learn about domestication, the more I come to understand stuff. I don't care about what our ancestors evolved for because evolution is not a static product. It's not like we sprung fully formed from the head of Gaia 5000 years ago or even 500,000 years ago, the reality is that, much like dogs who evolved. Extra chromosomes that love them, create more enzymes for digesting corn and grains in China, different humans have evolved for different things. Lactose Intolerance is more common in different parts of the world. For that matter grain tolerance is more common in different parts of the world, depending on the kinds of nutritional practices were necessary in those environments, evolutionary is not a static process, it's ongoing. One of the best things I've seen come out of modern science, even though it's definitely not 100% there yet, is the idea that you can have a genetic profile taken and get told what kinds of weight loss systems will work for you. On the one hand, I think focusing on weight loss per se, to the detriment of worrying about things like healthy lifestyles and lower stress, as a society is silly and pointless, and that if we as a society cared about the obesity problem that we are facing we would focus on things like better bike paths, and fewer working hours, and lower stress better social supports for people, and less hierarchically separated populace because all of that plays in to If we really want to talk about how our ancestors lived that our ancestors lived with a percentage child mortality rate and realistically we all have different ancestors some of our ancestors were seafarers and some of our ancestors are sedentary and some of our ancestors were nomadic hunter gatherers, so you can't make broad generalizations about the human species because even though we are all human, and cross compatible. We are a very diverse species, and that's great. But it also means that we need to be careful about over generalizations and oversimplifications. For example I think it's mostly useless to hyperfocus on how "paleolithic humans" coslept with their babies or whatnot because the whole lifestyle of a hunter-gatherer is so fundamentally different from that of most parents arguing about safe sleep practices. ## Related - [[domestication led to some dogs having omnivorous diets]] - [[adult lactose tolerance was rare in Ancient Rome]]