ABSTRACT
Individual responses to unprecedented social–economic–environmental stressors in our lives vary but in many cases have led to physical and mental health risks, exacerbated by unhealthy coping mechanisms. It is becoming clear that poor diets are contributing more to health problems than any other cause. In an extensive evidence-based paper, Loren Cordain, professor emeritus and researcher in the Health and Exercise Science Department at Colorado State University, has emphasised the importance of understanding basic human evolutionary processes in terms of the relationship between food and human biology. His main argument is that the foods that humanity originally evolved to eat and those we now eat in modern civilization are in many cases significantly different – yet our basic underlying genetic inheritance remains basically the same as it was before, and has only evolved slightly since. Thus many of the foods we now eat are discordant with our genetic inheritance.
