| This ignores all research already done on the brain and nutrition, and also common sense. On Common Sense: The human brain/body evolved to run on minimal glucose. Of the past 2million years of human evolution, only 10,000(from the agrarian revolution) of those years have we consumed excess carbohydrates in the forms of grains etc. Prior to that we were hunter gatherers and ate copious amounts of fat and meat with some vegetables (very low in carbohydrates) and every now and then fruits when they were in season. We also didnt have the luxury of eating as soon as we woke up, we had to hunt for our food, so missing breakfast would have happened more times than not. Again our bodies adapted to that. On All Research: As mentioned in comments below our bodies run perfectly well in states of ketosis. With ketone-bodies providing a much more efficient longer energy burn than carbohydrates. (Think of carbohydrates as kindling and ketones as the logs). Many athletes (particularly the CrossFit athletes) run on ketogenic diets and get better performance. Here are some papers/articles etc. I dug up quickly, but there are many more. [1] Your brain on ketones [2] Weston price Foundation, Lots of references [3] Ketogenic Diets and Physical Performance [4] The metabolic effects of low-carbohydrate diets and incorporation into a biochemistry course [5] Report picking apart the latest dietry guidelines. [1] http://evolutionarypsychiatry.blogspot.com/2010/08/your-brai... [2] http://www.westonaprice.org/ [3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC524027/ [4] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bmb.2005.49403302... [5] http://www.nutritionjrnl.com/article/PIIS0899900710002893/fu... edit: formatting |
But the caveman explanation for health and nutrition always leaves me cold. Yeah ok we can pretty much gauge what proto-humans ate and why it was good for them, but what if it made them miserable? It's romantic to think that early humans lived in the garden of lo-carb eden, but what if it really fucking sucked? What if they were just plain hugnry all the time, it was miserable and only the strong survived?
Don't get me wrong I think most of the conclusions are right, but I prefer evidence collected from modern people to justify those conclusions. Appealing to evolutionary biology is only valid for survival and reproduction. It doesn't say anything about happiness, fulfillment, etc.
I seem to recall some crackpot theory that low-calorie diets (ie., borderline starvation) increase your lifespan. That would certainly jive with the caveman hypothesis, but does it sound like fun? How miserable are we willing to make ourselves for a few extra years in a nursing home? That's probably a false dichotomy, but you get the point.