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Early Humans Likely Ate Carbs and Sugary Foods
- dboreham 2mo agoI don't think this is new. The idea always was that proto-humans had to live in an environment rich with energy dense food (fruit) prior to growing a brain large enough to figure out how to make barbeque. Otherwise you never get to the barbeque capable brain. The whole point of making fire and therefore consuming cooked meat is that now you can migrate to places that don't have abundant sources of energy dense food.
- pfdietz 2mo agoCooking also increases the energy available from plant matter, particularly starchy tubers.
- smellsfruity 2mo agoWhy is it assumed that learning to cooking animals is a necessary hurdle? When we’re capable of eating animals raw. And bugs and worms etc. Whereas in order to consume a wider variety of plants, cooking and other more complex perpetrations are absolutely necessary.
- defrost 2mo agoIf you're quite finished parroting RFK Jr pro-parasitic brain worm talking points not even aboriginal Australians ate their fish and meat raw. * https://warndu.com/blogs/blog/traditional-aboriginal-food https://warndu.com/blogs/blog/traditional-aboriginal-food
- smellsfruity 2mo agoAnd we know that because Australian Aborigines have a written history dating back 90,000 (or whatever the number is this week) years.
- defrost 2mo agoMidden piles.
- smellsfruity 2mo agoWhich part of my first comment isn’t factually correct?
- defrost 2mo agoThe implication that because humans are "capable of eating animals raw" they therefore must do a lot of that (isolated idiots aside).
- SamoyedFurFluff 2mo agoActually yeah Australian aborigines have a famously rigorous oral history.
- conductr 2mo agoHave to consider meat digestion from a net calorie perspective. Eating raw meat is possible sure. But once you get to dense protein meats like a red meat, your body expends a lot of calories in the act of digesting it raw. Cooking it is like a pre-digestion step and allows your body to digest it with less energy expenditure. It also probably was helpful for other reasons. You could store cooked meat easier/longer without refrigeration or kill off some of the bacteria and such making it healthier.
- margalabargala 2mo agoMuch like today, early humans were indeed capable of eating meat raw. Also much like today, early humans did not do so if there was a way to cook it.
- conductr 2mo agoMy interpretation was similar. The carb-sugar diet was never a highlight because it was a given. The article talks about primates that have high carb-sugar diets but doesn't explain why their brains remain so small compared to humans. Maybe they will eventually evolve? Maybe cooked meat / dense protein is the X factor? If so, that takes back to the beginning and highlights protein. It seems reasonable the combination of the two would be important. Protein enables muscle development, human evolution made us exceptionally well-suited for long-distance and endurance travel compared to all other living primates. This further improves are ability to forage and is just an evolutionary winning combination. My curiosity leads me more towards, are their other primates that had similar / convergent evolution that independently discovered dense protein sources? Is homo sapien really just a path of singular linear "march of progress" evolution? Were there other marches of progress from other primates or any other species that we competed against or merged with? Those kind of questions become more interesting once you realize the diet combination that creates big brains
- fsckboy 2mo ago>about primates that have high carb-sugar diets but doesn't explain why their brains remain so small compared to humans. Maybe they will eventually evolve? if they have abundant sources of carb-sugar, there would be no selection pressure to evolve in a particular direction.
- conductr 2mo agoDon't most evolutionary traits/changes come at times of restrictions? I don't think many traits are developed during times of abundance, it's when there is a shortage and they have to seek out something else; like protein. Or, sometimes it's just natural competition for the share of the abundance. If there where a big brain out competing you for your carbs, you might have to reconsider your dietary options and make substitutes/changes that would have evolutionary implications.
- funcDropShadow 2mo agoInteresting, but I've read for a long time, that our humanoid predecessors at some point figured out how to get to bone marrow with tools. That provided the energy dense food as well an evolutionary impetus to develop larger brains to build better tools and handle them better. Fire and the capability to cook were developed much later.
- moltar 2mo agoI don’t know how true that is. But I read a theory somewhere that people developed bigger brains when they started eating more fish which contains omega 3s.
- louiereederson 2mo agoIf you’re constantly moving sugar is a necessity for maintaining glycogen. There’s nothing inherently wrong with any food type, it’s all about context.
- steve_adams_86 2mo agoKind of; humans do adapt remarkably well to low-glucose diets, and we can produce glycogen without sugary inputs via gluconeogenesis. They do make it much easier, though.
- rzmmm 2mo agoWell you need some substrate which can be metabolized into sugar, such as carbohydrate or protein.
- steve_adams_86 2mo agoDefinitely. I was only responding to the statement that sugar is a necessity for energy if you’re moving around a lot. You can do this without sugar.
- moltar 2mo agoThat’s false. Carbs are not a requirement for human body. Proof of that are native populations living far north, exclusively off of animal food sources. Human body prefers ketones as a source of energy. But glycogen is faster. My simplified mental model is like this. Ketones are normal gasoline. And glycogen is racing fuel (ethanol). If you run a stock car on racing fuel it may start and drive for a while but it’s damaging the engine and creates unnecessary wear.
- andor 2mo ago“Ketones are normal gasoline” is a very fringe view. Ketone supplements have been available for a while, and nobody was able to show any benefit of using them. 100% snake oil. If on the other hand you want to produce ketones endogenously, you basically have to put your body in a state of starvation. It’s not really gasoline then, more like burning the passenger seats as fuel so you can arrive at the destination.
- slicktux 2mo agoThere’s many theories but one that I learned was that women and children provides the bulk of the calories for Early Humans. While the men went out and hunted for meat they also relied on the fruit harvested by the women and children. That would give them the energy necessary for trekking and hunting.
- pfdietz 2mo ago> fruit harvested Also tubers.
- smellsfruity 2mo agoSo we’re expected to believe each man is carry a basket of rapidly deteriorating fruit (and tubers). Or a knapsack of dried fatty meat with a fairly indefinite shelf life.
- cgyvbunji 2mo agoMaybe they took dried fruit
- smellsfruity 2mo agoMaybe they took both.
- cgyvbunji 2mo agoOk.
- ux266478 2mo agoFruit doesn't go bad in a day.
- margalabargala 2mo agoThe Inca had a method of drying potatoes such that they were stable for multiple years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu%C3%B1o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu%C3%B1o
- accountrequired 2mo agoSugar is life. Saccharides FTW!!! vrooooooooooooooooomm
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2mo agoWhat a coincidence, so do I
- OrangeDelonge 2mo agoDoes this mean you are a human??
- jhoechtl 2mo agoToday we know sugar was a key ingredient for brain development in humans, not just proteins because of eating meat.
- funcDropShadow 2mo agoHow do we know that? Any sources?
- defrost 2mo agoSeveral are mentioned in the article, eg: While meat was definitely a caloric bonanza for early humans, recent primate studies offer evidence that sugary fruits continued to be a critical “brain food.” A 2017 paper looked at 140 primate species and compared their brain sizes with their diets. “What [that study] showed very clearly was that the fruit-eaters, the frugivores, had 25 percent bigger brains, on average, than the folivores, the leaf-eaters,” Brand-Miller says. The fruit-eaters also had bigger brains than the omnivores, which ate meat. which is one thread of the argument laid out in: A central role for dietary sugars in human evolution - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aed8437 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aed8437 the paper centrally discussed.
- andor 2mo agoFunny how science deniers will downvote anything that doesn’t fit their world view
- miika 2mo agoIt’s interesting. Human baby is in ketosis when born, breast feeding maintains it. There is no essential carb.. Switching to ketogenic diet is cure for many health issues. Then again, I know fruitarian who runs ultramarathons. He eats only sugar, so clearly human body can run on two different fuels very well. Maybe we shouldn’t mix them but choose just the other? Carbs or fat. It would make sense that if there are two paths to get energy from eating, the system may not run optimally if you keep feeding both at the same time?
- xeromal 2mo agoHumans seem to do alright with most diets except for the eat too much one
- j4yav 2mo agoWhy would that make sense? People are always coming up with diets that look something like “stop eating bananas because they have been secretly making you sick and only eat blueberries which cleanse all your toxins” (and whatever variants thereof). It makes sense in a “doctors hate this one simple trick” sense but not biologically.
- hbarka 2mo agoWho knew the human body is multi-fuel.
- aorloff 2mo agoanyone who reads Gary Taubes
- sebstefan 2mo agoThe link doesn't work (it only serves a redirect to hearsnetworks.com/) if you are outside the united states
- jamesgill 2mo agoHumans have always eaten carbs; it’s the body’s preferred energy source. But human bodies can get energy from three sources, in order of preference—carbs, fat, and muscle (when all else fails). Our bodies evolved to store fat for this very reason—future energy needs. Ancient humans lived feast or famine, and our biology adapted. We’re built to fast for days, using body fat for energy. When carbs are available, they’re preferred because they are faster and easier to burn. Sugar is carbs. But ancient fruit in no way resembles today’s cultivated monstrosities, in appearance or sugar content. Our modern problem is—we gorge on carbs all day long. So our body helpfully stores the excess as body fat for future use—because it expects eventual ‘famine’ where we’ll be fasting with few carbs available and need it. But we never let our body get to burn that fat.
- orwin 2mo agoTo nitpick: at rest, muscle cells use fat over carbs to produce ATP. It is only during effort that the cells start to use more carbs than fat. The rest of the post is, to my understanding, correct.
- andor 2mo agoWhen exogenous carbs are available, they are used preferentially, also at rest. Carbs need to go somewhere, and they only end up in fat storage after all other options are exhausted. As intensity increases during exercise, the body starts releasing muscle glycogen. If previously the muscles were mostly using fat (because no exogenous carbs were available), now that endogenous carbs are ready, the muscles will use them instead. You cannot, however, reduce muscle glycogen use by supplementing extra carbs.
- moltar 2mo agoBody’s preferred food source is ketones. It functions most optimally when using ketones. But the fastest accessible energy source is glycogen, which comes from carbs.
- OutOfHere 2mo agoTheir carbs were natural, and they walked all day. It has no relation to consuming foods and drinks with added sugar, especially while relatively sedentary.
- IAmBroom 2mo agoThe body makes no distinction between "natural" and "artificial" anything. It's just chemistry. Likewise, eating berries or honey is absolutely related to drinking (e.g.) sugary drinks. You are personally making the distinction. If your body could do that, dieting would be A LOT easier!
- OutOfHere 2mo agoYou are speaking nonsense, since natural carbs, with the exception of honey and coconut juice, are embedded with fiber. Artificial carbs predominantly lack the natural fiber matrix, which leads to inflammatory microbiota and systemic inflammation. Berries on the other hand are anti-inflammatory.
- IAmBroom 2mo agoI'm speaking biochemistry, not nonsense, and you are conflating carbohydrates with "foods containing carbohydrates" (which is: all food).