http://www.billythebrick.com/blog/index.cfm Billy the Brick en-us Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:16:48 -0700 Sat, 02 Sep 2006 06:10:00 -0700 BlogCFC http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss billythebrick@gmail.com billythebrick@gmail.com http://www.billythebrick.com/blog/index.cfm/2006/9/2/Human-Dietary-Habits "Then God said, 'I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has seed in it. They will be yours for food...l give every green plant for food.' And it was so." -Genesis 1:29 This biblical quote says nothing about dairy, eggs, fish, grain, meat, oil, poultry, or sugar. From the evolutionary standpoint the dietary advice comes out the same. Our remote primate ancestors evolved over 56 million years living in trees where the food supply was mostly fruit, leaves, and nuts. Most of our physiology developed on these foods. Three million years ago our hominid ancestors descended to the ground and began adding meat to the diet as a survival strategy, but all the essential amino acids, fatty acids, and vitamins in the human diet are still synthesized by plants, not animals. Milk was never a large part of the adult human diet until the agricultural revolution ~ 12,000 years ago. Oils were never part of the diet until ~ 5500 years ago and that culinary disaster known as "frying" first appeared in the English language ~ 1100 AD . Refined sugar did not enter the diet until ~ 400 years ago. From an evolutionary standpoint, these are short time periods and humans are poorly adapted to animal source food, vegetable oil, and refined sugar. Most of the degenerative diseases of our time are at least partly due to our departure from the diet on which we evolved. Veganism Sat, 02 Sep 2006 06:10:00 -0700 http://www.billythebrick.com/blog/index.cfm/2006/9/2/Human-Dietary-Habits