Origins and evolution of the Western diet: health implications for the 21st century1,2
Loren Cordain, S Boyd Eaton, Anthony Sebastian, Neil Mann, Staffan Lindeberg, Bruce A Watkins, James H O’Keefe and Janette Brand-Miller
1 From the Department of Health and Exercise Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins (LC); the Departments of Radiology and Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta (SBE); the Department of Medicine and UCSF/Moffitt General Clinical Research Center, University of California, San Francisco (AS); the Department of Food Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia (NM); the Department of Medicine, Lund University, Sweden (SL); the Department of Food Science, Lipid Chemistry and Molecular Biology Laboratory, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN (BAW); the Mid America Heart Institute, Cardiovascular Consultants, Kansas City, MO (JHO); and the Human Nutrition Unit, Department of Biochemistry, University of Sydney, Australia (JB-M)
2 Address reprint requests to L Cordain, Department of Health and Exercise Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523. E-mail: cordain@cahs.colostate.edu
This paper can be accessed at: http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/81/2/341#R157
The author states: "In the United States and most Western countries, diet-related chronic diseases represent the single largest cause of morbidity and mortality. These diseases are epidemic in contemporary Westernized populations and typically afflict 50–65% of the adult population, yet they are rare or nonexistent in hunter-gatherers and other less Westernized people....The ultimate factor underlying diseases of civilization is the collision of our ancient genome with the new conditions of life in affluent nations, including the nutritional qualities of recently introduced foods".
The paper notes that food staples and food-processing procedures
introduced during the Neolithic and Industrial Periods have fundamentally altered the nutritional characteristics of ancestral human diets. The recently introduced foods include, wholegrain cereals, refined cereals, refined sugars, refined vegetable oils, alcohol, and margarine.AMAZON UK Politically Incorrect Nutrition: Finding Reality in the Mire of Food Industry Propaganda
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