3 ms·
> Stuff which modifies them greatly Like ... food? This is an amino acid, the building block of protein. Many amino acids have pronounced effect in the body or
by nkozyra 8y ago
> Stuff which modifies them greatly
Like ... food? This is an amino acid, the building block of protein. Many amino acids have pronounced effect in the body or when lacking.
Our bodies are fine-tuned to be somewhat fault-tolerant, but evolution is extraordinarily slow. If our diets diverge over a few hundred years, there haven't been nearly enough evolutionary cycles to compensate for whatever effect that has; particularly if it's minor annoyances like getting jittery with coffee, which was consumed far less as far back as a few hundred years ago.
- magduf 8y agoDidn't coffee only become a popular drink with westerners in the late 1800s or so?
- zimpenfish 8y ago> evolution is extraordinarily slow Wouldn't this entirely depend on selection pressure, rate of mutation, and turnover of, er, subjects? Certainly bacteria can evolve extremely rapidly and it's been noted in animals too, cf http://discovermagazine.com/2015/march/19-life-in-the-fast-lane http://discovermagazine.com/2015/march/19-life-in-the-fast-l...