A much tweeted and blogged about article just published. This new Review Article explores the links between our western diet, lifestyle and the diseases of civilization. The review article is free. Below is an abstract. Click on title for the link. This is a peer reviewed article that appears in Research Reports in Clinical Cardiology.
The western diet and lifestyle and diseases of civilization
Review
Authors: Pedro Carrera-Bastos, Maelan Fontes-Villalba, James H O’Keefe, et al
Abstract: It is increasingly recognized that certain fundamental changes in diet and lifestyle that occurred after the Neolithic Revolution, and especially after the Industrial Revolution and the Modern Age, are too recent, on an evolutionary time scale, for the human genome to have completely adapted. This mismatch between our ancient physiology and the western diet and lifestyle underlies many so-called diseases of civilization, including coronary heart disease, obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, epithelial cell cancers, autoimmune disease, and osteoporosis, which are rare or virtually absent in hunter–gatherers and other non-westernized populations. It is therefore proposed that the adoption of diet and lifestyle that mimic the beneficial characteristics of the preagricultural environment is an effective strategy to reduce the risk of chronic degenerative diseases.
It’s a shame the scientific article wasn’t published in a major cardiology journal where more people would get wind of it.
-Steve
Agreed!