Tag: chimpanzee

• Foundations of Naturopathic Nutrition by Fay Paxton – a text book

  Fay Paxton (PhD) is an Australian-based naturopath and nutritionist. She has taught nutrition at the Southern School of Natural Therapies and has worked as a consultant for dietary and herbal supplement manufacturers.

  She is an author of a popular text book, Foundations of Naturopathic Nutrition.

  Unfortunately, she is an advocate for low-carbohydrate diets and paleo diets.

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  14 June 2018

• Eating Red Meat is Not Natural

  Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose is popularly known as alpha-gal. It is a carbohydrate found in the meat of mammals – exceptions being primates (which includes humans) and other African and Asian apes.

  Since the early 2000s, severe allergic reaction has been observed several hours after the consumption of red meat. Several deaths have occurred. This is associated with IgE antibodies to alpha-gal as a result of the patients been bitten by ticks. This has occurred in eastern Australia, south-east USA and Sweden.

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  11 September 2017

• What is the natural diet for humans?

  What is the natural diet for humans?  This is a common question but — we evolve based on behaviour and our behaviour may have a number of consequences, some beneficial and others not so much.

  Giraffes have long necks, not to enable them to reach leaves high in a tree, but because males fight using the necks.  Males with the longest, strongest neck wins. It does make life more awkward when eating grass or drinking from a water-hole in the evening.

  Evolution is based on changes that enable us to pass on genes for future generations.  If a genetic change affects cholesterol metabolism and causes an increase in heart disease this may not be relevant in evolutionary terms because heart disease usually affects people later in life.

  It still may have an impact on human society because of the important influence of grandparents involved in child-minding and their importance as a repository of knowledge.

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  16 November 2016

• How Cooking Changed Us

  Richard Wrangham is a Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University. He is also the curator of Primate Behavioral Biology at the Peabody Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a director of the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in Uganda.

  Wrangham began his career at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania as a member of Jane Goodall's chimpanzee research team.

  The standard view of evolution is that by eating meat, humans were able to evolve the larger brains that distinguish us from other primates. Wranghams’s view is that cooking food is a fundamental activity that transformed humans and our society. He is not the first to propose this view but has developed the concept.

  Cooking increased the value of our food. It changed our bodies, our brains, our use of time and our social relationships.

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  20 March 2016