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> The narrative presented is often that our bodies aren't suited to modern diets and people used to be a lot more healthy. It's true we eat a lot of processed
by hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> The narrative presented is often that our bodies aren't suited to modern diets and people used to be a lot more healthy.
It's true we eat a lot of processed crap today, but if you read about a diet and see any claims that people used to be a lot more healthy you can probably ignore the rest. The paleo diet for instance, which is big nowadays, isn't based on any knowledge about what humans actually ate during the paleolithic [1]. What people forget is that the lifespan of the average human used to be much shorter, and our ancestors just had to live long enough to have offspring instead of living healthy long lives for us to be here today.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOjVYgYaG8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOjVYgYaG8
- throwaway2048 13y agothis is something that is often misunderstood about pre-modern life expectancy. When life expectancy is calculated it includes infant mortality and child mortality, which historicly was extremely high. If you managed to live past about 10 or so in an ancient soceity your life expectancy was typically 70 or better.
- adamnemecek 13y agoYeah, it kind of blew my mind when I learned this as well.
- maxerickson 13y agoThat seems like something you could cite. Not the misunderstanding of life expectancy at birth vs after childhood, the 70 year figure.
- tokenadult 13y agoNo. (And I learned some of the references for this here on Hacker News, and others by personally knowing local researchers on extreme longevity.) Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-why-we-die-global-life-expectancy http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w... An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why" gives more of the background. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/life_expectancy_history_public_health_and_medical_advances_that_lead_to.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...
- Nick_C 13y agoNeither link disproves his point, which is about pre-modern life. His claim is what I've always understood too, admittedly without questioning it. But in my university studies of art history, it is common to read about Renaissance masters in their 60s and 70s. It's so common that no contemporaneous authors remark on it, which I imagine they would do otherwise.
- svedlin 13y agoAye, "The average modal age of adult death for hunter-gatherers is 72 with a range of 68–78 years" [1] [1] http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2...
- maxerickson 13y agoMy reading of that article says that 1 of 3 ten year olds will not reach 45 years. Then they start dying even faster. That is not similar to modern survivorship. Looking at the plot associated with your quote emphasizes the difference.