Submitted by: Submitted by lemonadegirl79
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Date Submitted: 01/25/2014 11:59 AM
Big Brother and the American Diet
Nicole Caldwell
DeVry University
Big Brother and the American Diet
Until about 12,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers sourced food and raw materials from animals and plants (Serpell, 1996). Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that hunter-gatherers were pretty lean, fit and healthy (living mostly without signs of chronic diseases). With the birth of agriculture, about 10,000 years ago, came a transition to an agricultural grain-based diet which in turn, resulted in deterioration of overall human health. According to Braly & Hoggan (2002), “Grain consumption has taken place for less than one half of one percent of our evolutionary history” (p.20). Meats have been part of the human diet 207 times longer than grains! Studies of bones and teeth reveal that populations that had changed to a grain-based diet had shorter life spans and especially high childhood mortality rates (Foods Identified, 2013). While the human genetic makeup has barely changed since the Stone Age, people are consuming smaller amounts of the types of food that the body has evolved to thrive on, and ‘new’ foods (those not available to our ancestors) make up over half of the human diet (Eaton & Cordain, 1997). The two largest groups of these ‘new’ foods are grains and dairy, in that order. The human body has adapted to an evolutionary “biological environment” (1997, p. 35) and yet people have strayed from this in the furthest sense possible. According to Eaton & Cordain (1997), “Post agricultural humans are the only free-living mammals to consume foods whose natural origin is unrecognizable” (p. 30). That’s quite alarming when pondered with any real seriousness, but a very real issue that humans are facing right now. Take, for example, an Oreo cookie: what exactly, is one of those made out of? Most people couldn’t probably even pronounce many of the ingredients. Modern-day American lifestyles reflect an epidemic of obesity, type...