ABSTRACT
Our human ancestors, like most foragers today, were relatively tall and lean. We know this from skeletal data and by making ethnographic extrapolations. We also know that their lifestyle demanded plenty of physical activity. The chapter compares and contrasts present-day human populations eating a modern diet to early humans eating as foragers would have, the difference to health is palpable. Biocultural diversity in rates of heart disease, diabetes, digestive disorders, and so forth reflect diversity in human subsistence patterns. For the majority of human beings, now and throughout time, staple foods are not hunted: they are plant-based. The infant's immaturity, related to the human need to give birth before the child is too big for passage, is offset by adult care. On the bright side, most cultures accepted such diversity as part of the human experience and had no expectation of the kind of bodily homogeneity or perfection' projected in today's movies and magazines.
