There's been some evidence that sugar is actually worse for you that we used to think.
It makes a bit of sense really. Fat and salt has always been part of the human diet, but large quantities of refined sugar are very recent.
It makes a bit of sense really. Fat and salt has always been part of the human diet, but large quantities of refined sugar are very recent.
That kind of reasoning is very much flawed. Why would the diet of x years ago be relevant versus having a better diet nowadays ? For all we know, our ancestors were eating berries and much less meat than we do, yet we seem to live longer those days and yet we ingest substances (such as medicines) that were not part of the human diet before.
Actually, that line of reasoning does not make sense at all. That's why we run clinical studies. To find out answers.
That's not very likely and there are plenty of studies that back me up here [1]. For a simple explanation as to why that's not likely look at the calorie counts for berries [2]. You'd have to eat about 10 pounds (~4.5 kg) of blackberries a day to get 2000 calories. There are other more calorie dense non-animal foods like nuts, but most likely around 65% of a hunter gatherer's calories came from meat [1]. This is much more than the amount of protein consumed by the average American today, who gets less than 20% of his or her calories from meat [3].
>yet we seem to live longer those days
Most of the improvement in average lifespan is a result of the drastic decline in infant mortality rate. Hunter gatherers regularly lived into their 70s [4] and when you account for the decline in infant mortality the difference isn't as great as most people imagine. The combination of reduced infant mortality, medical care, and relative safety of civilization are what accounts for our increased lifespan. It's very likely (almost certain given the obesity numbers) that our modern diet is driving the numbers down below what they should be given our other advances.
> That's why we run clinical studies. To find out answers.
Yes it is, and those studies are showing that too much sugar (and most of western civilization eats too much sugar) leads to metabolic syndrome which leads to heart attacks. The debate is on whether sugar does this because it directly causes insulin resistance, or if it is just very calorie dense and thus eating too much simply causes weight gain, or if it reduces satiety and actually causes you to eat more.
I'm not saying eating like a hunter gatherer is necessary for your health, and sure we need to do research--I'm not sure why you think I implied that we didn't. However, it seems logical (again the research we have done backs me up here) that our bodies may not be adapted to handle something we've never eaten in anywhere near the quantities we eat now--specifically the fructose in sugar.
[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11965522
[2] http://calorielab.com/foods/berries/66
[3] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/87/5/1554S.full
[4] http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2...
- big factor in longer life spans are the advances in medicine last 150 years - our increase in meat consumption and cooked meat goes ways back and likely tied to our (threefold) increase in brain size
That's not true at all. We're eating more meat than we did 100 years ago sure. But looking back significantly further than that, it's estimated that hunter gatherers got about 65% of their calories from animals, compared to much less than 20% we get today.
See my reply above for references.
EDIT: Besides, I can tell you from what I know on how people were living 50-70 years ago (grandfathers for example) that meat was expensive during their youth and that they only ate it once or twice a month, certainly not every single day like we do now. So I'm not sure where you got the impression people ate so much meat in the early 1900s while it defies all conversations I had with people who lived in that era.
I said this in the comment you're replying too "We're eating more meat than we did 100 years ago sure". I'm agreeing with your assertion that we eat more meat than we did 100 years ago. 100 years ago we ate significantly less meat than our hunter gatherer ancestors did.
>I'll check you references later, but I'm wondering where the hunter gatherers got so much meat before they had industrial meat factories that we have
They didn't need industrial farms because there were far fewer people. They hunted animals, which were relatively abundant. Meat is much more calorie dense than most plants.
Hunter gatherers didn't have agriculture, so many of the plants we eat today weren't yet domesticated. They lacked entire categories of food that we have today.
The largest percentage of daily caloric intake today comes from grains--hunter gathers didn't farm grains, so they had to get the largest share of their calories from something else--meat.
>Besides, percentages is one thing, absolute intakes are another, too.
An average adult male can't live long term with fewer than around 2000 calories per day (A very active hunter gatherer would require a far amount more than 2000 per day). The average American male eats about 2700 calories per day.
Let's take the lower end estimate for 2000 calories per day for a hunter gatherer. At 65%, meat accounts for 1300 calories per day.
At 20% of 2700 calories, an average American male gets 540 calories per day from meat.
So 1300 for the hunter gatherer vs 540 for the average American male. Almost 3 times as much. Even in absolute numbers, the hunter gatherer at much more meat.
It cost a lot of time/energy to hunt, for sure. But that's basically all they did. And reading descriptions of say, the Americas before European colonisation, meat was plenty despite industrial breeding, or any breeding at all.
The most recent change I think was to make it a strange looking thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_guide_pyramid#mediaviewer...
With "milk" being it own category. (Hello Milk Lobby) and then some humanoid shape running up the stairs.
Basically the message is "eat whatever is marketed to you, but if you get fat is because you didn't run up the stairs enough".