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Fat, Not Meat, May Have Led to Bigger Hominin Brains
- stevenwoo 8y agoFat from marrow and brains to be clear, other articles make that distinction in the title, and do not jump to the fat conclusion in the title.
- riffic 8y agosomewhat related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_Was_the_End https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beginning_Was_the_End
- felipemnoa 8y agoAnd the only reason they went after the marrow and brain was because they were eating the leftovers, according to the article. They couldn't really eat other parts of the animal unless they wanted to become food to other predators.
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- koverda 8y agoWouldn't other animals with strong bites be capable of crushing bones to eat the marrow inside? The theory is big on assumptions, but I guess that's how it goes when you're trying to figure out what happened millions of years ago.
- analog31 8y agoI'm imagining that the humans might have taken the bones somewhere else to deal with them, possibly breaking them open with stones.
- pvg 8y agoThe article talks about primates but there are similar theories about other brain-and-marrow gastronomes. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/inside-the-brains-of-the-bonecrushers/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/laelaps/inside-the-brai...
- bitwize 8y agoOne of the reasons why dogs gnaw on bones is to get at the marrow inside.
- code_duck 8y agoSome animals like snakes simply swallow prey whole. Dogs and pigs are known for eating hastily with minimal chewing, and I'd imagine many other predators are the same. No idea how efficiently their respective digestive systems extract nutrients from solid mammal chunks.
- lustysocietyorg 8y ago> Dogs and pigs are known for eating hastily with minimal chewing, Because they have no or smaller cheeks. But they have very acid stomachs. The Comparative Anatomy of Eating http://www.vegsource.com/news/2009/11/the-comparative-anatomy-of-eating.html http://www.vegsource.com/news/2009/11/the-comparative-anatom... Omnivore or Herbivore? https://livinontheveg.com/omnivore-or-herbivore/ https://livinontheveg.com/omnivore-or-herbivore/ Milton Mills, MD: Are Humans Designed to Eat Meat? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXj76A9hI-o&t=66 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXj76A9hI-o&t=66
- darkpuma 8y agoI was under the impression that it had more to do with lips than jaws. Hyenas can outbite humans a thousand times over, but they can't drink a milkshake through a straw! In other words, breaking bones is the easy part; sucking out the marrow is the tricky bit.
- pm 8y agoHyenas are known to eat bone. The bearded vulture is the only known bird that eats bone marrow, and cracks open bones by dropping them on rocks from a great height.
- burtonator 8y agoOne of the first human foods was actually bone marrow which is basically pure fat. This happened about 2MYA by Homo habilis who figured out that you could use rocks to bust open bones. Lions and Hyenas would leave huge piles of bones in the middle of the dessert which had been picked clean by vultures. One of our ancestors had the brilliant idea to use a rock to bust open the bones. Well it's a massive source of free calories. It's absolutely brilliant. It's just sitting there and there are no other predators or species around to fight with at that point. It's also very safe to eat even days after since the marrow is wrapped in bone. Next time you're out at a fancy restaurant and they have bone marrow GET IT... Then realize you're eating one of the first foods that modern man ate and think of the gift he gave us.
- gerdesj 8y ago"who figured out that you could use rocks to bust open bones." Most carnivores use their teeth to crush bones - lions and hyenas both do it. Heck, we buy doggie treats related to marrow and I have watched my own dogs crush bones to get to the marrow. Marrow is quite accessible to all, including me - omnomnomnomnom.
- reaperducer 8y agoReminds me of family holiday meals as a child, with all the uncles arguing over who gets to slurp the marrow out of the bones. Except on Thanksgiving, when they argued over who gets the "Pope's nose."
- quadcore 8y agoI use to feed street dogs in Thailand. I gave them BBQ-cooked chicken legs, and gosh, there would be nothing left in 10 seconds.
- SRTP 8y agoWhile I'm sure you did this out of good will, please don't give chicken bones to dogs. They tend to splinter, leaving sharp spikes that may hurt the dog's intestines. Beef and pork bones are better since these don't shatter.
- samstave 8y agoI thought this was known. When my first born was a toddler, she would go into the fridge and eat butter. I expressed concern to my grandmother, a life long nurse who was born in 1920 said to me; “the brain knows that it needs fats to grow, just let her eat butter. It is what her body is saying she needs” She is super smart and it wasnt an issue otherwise.
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- EnderViaAnsible 8y agoThe translation of deficiencies into food cravings has always fascinated me. People with pica, for example, often compulsively eat non-foods that are in fact related to a deficiency they have. Anemics sometimes crave dirt (which does contain iron). But how does it "know"?
- s_y_n_t_a_x 8y agoProbably a memory of the taste and the vitamins that follow it. My wife craves mints when she's low on iron.
- samstave 8y agoBut do mints provide any iron?
- bjoli 8y agoIf they are fortified they do, or better up if they are some kind of mint-flavoured supplements.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 8y agoDepends on which kinds. Spearmint can contain up to 15% of your DV of iron.
- wccrawford 8y ago
- shard972 8y agoIt's still a bit bizarre watching the western world switch form carbs good, fat bad to carbs bad fat good in the span of like a decade.
- XaoDaoCaoCao 8y agoGoing from a high carb diet to a high fat diet was amazing. "Wait instead of feeling omnipresent urges to overeat and snack, my satiety system actually works? I stop getting dips in energy throughout the day?" Said it before but a diet of bacon and eggs would be superior to the diets of most Americans.
- rgbrenner 8y agoI find when you make major changes to your diet, your urges to eat, cravings, etc adjust to the new diet after a couple of weeks. I eat a pretty balanced diet that includes plenty of carbs. I also only eat once a day (at about 6-7pm). I get no cravings during the day until just before it's my regular time to eat. I should add, most of the carbs I eat are fruits, beans, whole grains, rice, quinoa, etc... not: white bread, juice, cereal, etc that digest quickly.
- village-idiot 8y agoI think fruit, especially the modern stuff, is bad for you. In particular the stuff you want to avoid is. fructose, which is toxic for humans. Fructose is harder on the human liver than alcohol on a gram by gram basis, and over consumption of fructose can cause cirrhosis and fatty liver disease. Edit: source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
- rgbrenner 8y agoI thought you would get from the "balanced diet" part that I generally don't feel the need to demonize individual food groups. Moderation is a good thing. Fruit packages fructose with fiber, giving your body more time to process it. It also includes vitamins, minerals, etc that are good for you. I don't know how you jumped to saying it's worse than alcohol. Alcohol actually damages the cells of the liver, making it function less efficiently. Whereas fatty liver caused by fructose is because of the quantity in a short period, overwhelming the liver. If you're worried about fructose, then you should be focusing your efforts on hfcs, sugar/sucrose, etc that are roughly half fructose, half glucose that are put into so much processed food with no fiber to slow digestion. A 12oz can of cocacola has 2-3x (39g) the sugar as a piece of fruit. Added sugars account for 14%[0] of the daily calories in the average american's diet (note, added means not natural sugars like that in fruit.. but sucrose, hfcs, etc). Any increase in fatty liver disease would be caused by the inordinate added sugar intake of american's, not fruit. 0. https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/data-statistics/know-your-limit-for-added-sugars.html https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/data-statistics/know-your-limi...
- strainer 8y agoI don't subscribe to New Scientist's trick title or the theories of nutrient limited mammalian brain evolution. Compare brain size of carnivore species with herbivores - there is no overt division in average or max brain size. Generally, herbivorous mammals seem to evolve brains just as large as carnivorous ones. Elephants, orangutans, gorillas grow big brains on a vegetarian diet. If predator diets contain a special surplus of evolutionary-brain-growing nutrients, a few predator species should manifest that claim ~ besides our own artful and fire cooking one.
- village-idiot 8y agoBrain size to body size matters a lot too. Sperm whales have about 6x the brain we do, but far more than 6x the body to control.
- strainer 8y agoJust looking now.. Mice have similar brain/body-mass ratio as humans. There is no strong (or visible) distinction in brain size between carnivores and herbivores in these comparisons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio#Comparisons_between_groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio#Compa...
- gus_massa 8y agoYou don't have to compare brain-mass/body-mass. You have to compare brain-mass/body-mass^(2/3). > This phenomenon can be described by an equation of the form E = CS^r, where E and S are brain and body weights, r a constant that depends on animal family (but close to 2/3 in many vertebrates
- im3w1l 8y agoI know this is the conventional wisdom but it doesn't really make sense. Controlling a sperm whale's body doesn't seem like a hard computational problem.
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- chiefalchemist 8y agoMakes sense. The brain needs fuel. Without adequate fuel there's no way for it to grow, unless the body gave up some of its need for the same fuel. So I would presume there's that as well. That is, the body also evolved to feed the brain.
- sc4les 8y agoWell fat to grow but it burns sugar
- chiefalchemist 8y agoI was under the impression one of the things the brain "burns" is cholesterol. Yes? No?
- glastra 8y agoIt can burn glucose (table sugar is sucrose). It can also burn other stuff [0] and have almost no requirements for glucose, all of which can be provided through gluconeogenesis from amino acids and the glycerol backbone of fat. [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874681/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2874681/
- ulisesrmzroche 8y agoIt prefers to burn glucose. You have to be starving it to get it to use ketones. What does that tell you?
- glastra 8y agoYour body also prefers to metabolize ethanol (which provides quite a bit of energy, by the way) before anything else in the bloodstream. What does that tell you? Absolutely nothing. I could go with the "get rid of poison" narrative, but that is a bit too extreme and is usually taken with a great deal of psychological resistance. I couldn't blame you. Also, I believe that a well-formulated ketogenic diet is pretty far from starvation, enabling me to do exactly the same, if not more, as when I was running on carbohydrate. Of course, you might believe otherwise, but do take the time to think critically about where this belief stems from.
- mattnewport 8y ago> “We have no examples today of animals that scavenge but don’t hunt,” he adds. I've seen a number of articles in the last few years talking about how scavenging meat seems to be much more common amongst animals we typically consider herbivores (like deer) than previously realized. There are also a number of opportunistic omnivorous scavengers that rely more on scavenging than hunting it they hunt at all. This claim seems bogus to me.
- jessaustin 8y agoMost ungulates eat their own afterbirth. Sure, that's easier to digest than most carcasses would be, and less likely to spread disease, but it shows that meat digestion is possible.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoIf I'm to believe [0], that applies to many if not most mammals, some humans included. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placental_expulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placental_expulsion
- Steuard 8y agoI was shocked when I first heard a colleague in my college's biology department talk about this. He said that when he puts nets up to collect birds for banding, it's essential not to leave them up too long at a time: if you do, passing deer will spot the trapped birds and eat them.
- sabareesh 8y agoSo everyone get in keto diet and get smart.. When I grew up bone marrow is my favorite meat but now in US it is hard to find
- thornjm 8y ago- The break down of fats for energy is called beta-oxidation and is not performed by brain cells. - The brain relies on the liver to produce ketone bodies instead. - Our cells break down carbohydrates, then proteins and then fats A diet high in fat only contributes raw calories to the brain - the fuel is unusable directly. The argument basically boils down to: more calories led to bigger brains.
- the_fonz 8y agoWhale blubber and mammal livers are high in vitamin c and considering primates lost the function of the GULO (L-gulonolactone oxidase) gene, one could surmise from megafauna extinctions that hunting was essential to most nomadic hominids. Also, GULO is one of many interesting genes to contemplate resurrecting.
- knowThySelfx 8y agoGhee is considered "Brain food" in Indian culture. It is included in many food items and also in Ayurvedic Meds. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/amp39Gheeamp39-and-its-many-benefits/articleshow/10979319.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/amp39Gheeamp39-and-its-m...
- pts_ 8y agoThere is no one "Indian" culture. In the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, goat bone marrow is relished a lot, and fatty fish brain is relished and considered brain food.
- knowThySelfx 8y agoDoes this mean Ghee is generally not used in WB? Sure there will be local variations due to a variety of factors - invasion of other cultures (islamic, christian, chinese etc) The Ghee thing does have its general influence in Indian culture.
- pts_ 8y agoGhee is used in WB but bone marrow is loved a lot by young and old alike and I thought it pertained to the report.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> It is included in...Ayurvedic Meds “Ayurveda medicine is considered pseudoscientific” [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayurveda https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayurveda
- knowThySelfx 8y agoI know it will be considered pseudoscientific. I've used it and had positive results. What I am posting here is based on my own experience and observation from living here in India. I didn't come here advocating it. Just stating what I experienced. It may not always have a scientific basis in the modern sense.
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- huffmsa 8y agoThis is new news? O thought it was established a while ago that humans have only made the progress we have because of an increase in animal fat consumption. Hell, with a few exceptions, you can cluster mammals in a pretty accurate grouping of intelligence by the percentage of animal fat in their diet.
- vanderZwan 8y agoIt's an ongoing debate: > In a wide-ranging review published in February’s issue of Current Anthropology, Thompson joins a team of researchers to weave together several strands of recent evidence and propose a new theory about the transition to large animal consumption by our ancestors. The prevailing view, supported by a confluence of fossil evidence from sites in Ethiopia, is that the emergence of flaked tool use and meat consumption led to the cerebral expansion that kickstarted human evolution more than 2 million years ago. Thompson and her colleagues disagree: Rather than using sharpened stones to hunt and scrape meat from animals, they suggest, earlier hominins may have first bashed bones to harvest fatty nutrients from marrow and brains. > Then, starting in the mid-1980s, an opposing theory arose in which Homo’s emergence wasn’t so tightly coupled with the origins of hunting and predatory dominance. Rather, early hominins first accessed brain-feeding nutrients through scavenging large animal carcasses. The debate has rolled on through the decades, with evidence for the scavenging theory gradually building. > Because large animals such as antelope pack a serious micro-and-macro-nutrient punch, scientists have thought their meat contributed to humanity’s outsized brains. A consensus arose in the 1950s that our ancestors first hunted small animals before moving on to larger beasts around 2.6 million years ago. Flaked tool use and meat eating became defining characteristics of the Homo genus. You know, "science advances one funeral at a time" and all that. Plus, I'm sure there is some kind of power-fantasy attachment to the older theory that basically puts humans on top of the food chain as apex predators due to our intelligence.
- huffmsa 8y ago> Plus, I'm sure there is some kind of power-fantasy attachment to the older theory that basically puts humans on top of the food chain as apex predators due to our intelligence. Probably has more weight than it'll ever be given credit for. "Early man noticed cats and hyenas are bigger, faster, stronger, starts picking the bones of their kills. Hundreds of generations later, man's need for more fat and meat exceeds what's available from scavenging. With his increased brain and brawn, he begins digging pungee pits to kill his own animals." Not very glamorous.
- tosca 8y agoOh come on. Evolution is a lie. The chance of even a single 150 amino-acid protein forming spontaneously is nil.
- vanderZwan 8y agoTangent: this is a Scientific American "reprint" (reshare?) of a Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 licensed article originally published here: https://www.sapiens.org/evolution/brain-evolution-fat/ https://www.sapiens.org/evolution/brain-evolution-fat/ I don't know if that matters to others, but I personally prefer the original source for articles like these.
- Mikeb85 8y agoIt was likely both. Protein offers diminishing returns after you have 'enough', fat offers good amounts of energy and nutrients. Also, humans likely have always eaten some plant material, but wild plants are quite poor in calories and macronutrients.