Evolution of Diet
Category archives for Evolution of Diet
How Dogs Won The World
Posted by Greg Laden on November 13, 2015 
Years ago I proposed a theory (not anywhere in print, just in seminars and talks) that went roughly like this. Humans hunt. Dogs hunt. Prey animals get hunted. Each species (or set of species) has a number of characteristics such as the ability to stalk, track, kill, run away, form herds, etc. Now imagine a…
Meat, Processed Meat and Cancer Risk: Interview
Posted by Greg Laden on November 6, 2015 
A few days ago the UN agency in charge of keeping track of cancer risks listed meat and processed meats as to some degree or another likely to cause an increase in cancer risks. I wrote about that here. More recently. I was interviewed by Joshua Holland on the Politics and Reality Radio show about…
Micro-Evolution In Greenland: Inuit Diet, Weight, and Stature
Posted by Greg Laden on September 18, 2015 
There is a new paper in Science linking genetic variation in people living in Greenland with long term selection for managing a marine-oriented diet, affecting stature, weight, and probably, physiological processing of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). The vast majority of the variation we seen in stature (height) among humans is not genetic. That is…
Did you ever wonder how you are going to die?
Posted by Greg Laden on May 7, 2014 
I’m thinking it will be the food you eat that gets you. Here’s why. Humans eat a wide variety of foods; as a species, the diversity of species we eat is greater than any other animal by a very large margin, with the only quirky exception being the animals that we take along with us,…
Catching Fire. The other one.
Posted by Greg Laden on November 24, 2013 
Catching Fire is apparently a very popular book and/or movie that everyone is very excited about. But Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human is a different a book about some interesting research I was involved in about the origin of our genus, Homo. You can pick up a copy of our paper on this…
Meat’ing future food demands
Posted by Greg Laden on October 30, 2013 
My friend and colleague Emily Cassidy gave this TED talk! Her research is some of the most important work being done. Have a look:
New link between exercise and weight loss uncovered?
Posted by Greg Laden on August 27, 2010 A recent paper provides the groundwork to establish a way for exercise to diminish appetite. Or, more likely, for sedentary behavior to increase appetite.
Nyamulagira Volcano and Human Evolution
Posted by Greg Laden on January 4, 2010 I had mentioned earlier that the volcanoes of the Virugna region in the Western Rift Valley (as well as other highland spots) have often been islands of rain forest separated from each other by different habitats, including grasslands and wooded savannas. this has produced an island effect that has been a laboratory for evolution, and…
Musings on the Aquatic Ape Theory
Posted by Greg Laden on August 4, 2009 The Aquatic Ape Theory is being discussed over at Pharyngula. As PZ points out, an excellent resource on this idea is Moore’s site on the topic. Here, I just want to make a few remarks about it.
Two chimps walked into a bar …
Posted by Greg Laden on February 12, 2009 … and made a real mess of the place when one of them spotted the jar of pickles on the counter. They fought over it until one of them had almost all the pickles and the other one had a number of bruises and a tiny fragment of one pickle that the other chimp dropped…