5 ms·

Very useful data as to food consumption patterns. Nowadays we ruin our body with unnatural eating cycles. Basically fasting for around 16 hours a day is good f

by Mikho 8y ago

Very useful data as to food consumption patterns. Nowadays we ruin our body with unnatural eating cycles. Basically fasting for around 16 hours a day is good for health. From the evolutionary perspective--that invested in a human body 200K years--the way we eat today is broken. And our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Not to mention like adapting to changes in a food consumption we see in the last 50 years. A human body during 200K years of evolution was not prepared to eating a lot. Viceversa--it was build to eat less. It needs to store energy and to use stored energy and only after that to store again. That's a natural cycle and functions that our body needs to execute. Nowadays we just store energy 24/7: "Emerging findings from studies of animal models and human subjects suggest that intermittent energy restriction periods of as little as 16 h can improve health indicators and counteract disease processes. The mechanisms involve a metabolic shift to fat metabolism and ketone production, and stimulation of adaptive cellular stress responses that prevent and repair molecular damage." Here is also an interesting patterns of daily and weekly food consumption from this research including the common eating pattern of food consumption upon which the epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and associated chronic diseases has emerged. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/fig03/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/...

projektir 8y ago
Data is good but the "from the evolutionary perspective" argument is extremely strained and is basically a "just so" story.
- stochastic_monk 8y ago
  Just because a system evolved under certain constraints does not mean that said constraints are optimal.
  - firethief 8y ago
    No, but it does mean if you perturb the constraints, the system is likely less adapted to the new situation
    - firethief 8y ago
      To elaborate, this weaker principle seems sufficient to support the existence of a "Naturalistic Effect", where the Naturalistic Fallacy would be the assumption that the NE will dominate any other relevant effects. The NE suffices to justify evolutionary-perspective argument, though care must be taken not to overstate the case.
throwaway8879 8y ago
Where are you getting this arbitrary "200k years of evolution" from? Yes I know anatomically modern Homo Sapiens have been around for around 200k years, but I don't understand that figure in context of what you're saying.
- Mikho 8y ago
  "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316095 https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/d...
jly 8y ago
> our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Humans have many adaptations to the 'modern' diet, consisting of large quantities of farmed animals products and cereal grains. Lactose tolerance is one of several well-known examples. In some cases these have only come about in the last 200-300 generations. The point is that evolution of large, complex polygenic adaptations may be slow but adaptive phenotypic change can occur very rapidly and it has likely accelerated in humans over the last 10k or so years. > A human body during 200K years of evolution was not prepared to eating a lot. We can't go back and ask detailed dieting questions of hunter-gatherer humans 200k years ago, but I'd guess the basic mechanisms of eating were similar to us: they ate when they were hungry and when food was available. For some groups, it seems likely that could often be several times per day. What we do know about pre-agricultural humans is that there is no such thing as a 'typical' diet, and what was eaten and when could vary significantly by geography. Humans have thrived in every region and ecosystem on earth, and our body is highly adaptable and not designed to subsist on a single, perfect diet or eating cycle. Pre-modern humans did one thing very differently to what we do today: when they wanted to eat, they had to move and work to get their food. It could very well be that the 'what' and 'when' of our modern eating is less of an issue compared to the high caloric intake and sedentary lifestyle.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Humans have many adaptations to the 'modern' diet, consisting of large quantities of farmed animals products and cereal grains. Lactose tolerance is one of several well-known examples. In some cases these have only come about in the last 200-300 generations. 200-300 is 6000 years (assuming 30 years per generation), so that's already consistent with the parent's "many thousands of years". Besides that, we've changed our nutrition and its ingredients more in the last 50 years that we had in the last 20000 years. Adaptation takes much more than that (if it's not even harder to adapt to an ever changing list of factory-produced BS substances that weren't ever co-evolved along with humans, but on some food chemist's and big food corporation's whim). >Pre-modern humans did one thing very differently to what we do today: when they wanted to eat, they had to move and work to get their food. Not really. Hunter gatherers are said to have been able to gather food for several days in a few hours in a single day.

by Mikho 8y ago

projektir 8y ago

Data is good but the "from the evolutionary perspective" argument is extremely strained and is basically a "just so" story.

stochastic_monk 8y ago
Just because a system evolved under certain constraints does not mean that said constraints are optimal.
- firethief 8y ago
  No, but it does mean if you perturb the constraints, the system is likely less adapted to the new situation
  - firethief 8y ago
    To elaborate, this weaker principle seems sufficient to support the existence of a "Naturalistic Effect", where the Naturalistic Fallacy would be the assumption that the NE will dominate any other relevant effects. The NE suffices to justify evolutionary-perspective argument, though care must be taken not to overstate the case.

throwaway8879 8y ago

Where are you getting this arbitrary "200k years of evolution" from? Yes I know anatomically modern Homo Sapiens have been around for around 200k years, but I don't understand that figure in context of what you're saying.

Mikho 8y ago
"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316095 https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/d...

jly 8y ago

> our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Humans have many adaptations to the 'modern' diet, consisting of large quantities of farmed animals products and cereal grains. Lactose tolerance is one of several well-known examples. In some cases these have only come about in the last 200-300 generations. The point is that evolution of large, complex polygenic adaptations may be slow but adaptive phenotypic change can occur very rapidly and it has likely accelerated in humans over the last 10k or so years. > A human body during 200K years of evolution was not prepared to eating a lot. We can't go back and ask detailed dieting questions of hunter-gatherer humans 200k years ago, but I'd guess the basic mechanisms of eating were similar to us: they ate when they were hungry and when food was available. For some groups, it seems likely that could often be several times per day. What we do know about pre-agricultural humans is that there is no such thing as a 'typical' diet, and what was eaten and when could vary significantly by geography. Humans have thrived in every region and ecosystem on earth, and our body is highly adaptable and not designed to subsist on a single, perfect diet or eating cycle. Pre-modern humans did one thing very differently to what we do today: when they wanted to eat, they had to move and work to get their food. It could very well be that the 'what' and 'when' of our modern eating is less of an issue compared to the high caloric intake and sedentary lifestyle.

coldtea 8y ago
>our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Humans have many adaptations to the 'modern' diet, consisting of large quantities of farmed animals products and cereal grains. Lactose tolerance is one of several well-known examples. In some cases these have only come about in the last 200-300 generations. 200-300 is 6000 years (assuming 30 years per generation), so that's already consistent with the parent's "many thousands of years". Besides that, we've changed our nutrition and its ingredients more in the last 50 years that we had in the last 20000 years. Adaptation takes much more than that (if it's not even harder to adapt to an ever changing list of factory-produced BS substances that weren't ever co-evolved along with humans, but on some food chemist's and big food corporation's whim). >Pre-modern humans did one thing very differently to what we do today: when they wanted to eat, they had to move and work to get their food. Not really. Hunter gatherers are said to have been able to gather food for several days in a few hours in a single day.