Read more: "Don't swallow it: Six health myths you should ignore"
Our bodies didn't evolve for lying on a sofa watching TV and eating chips and ice cream. They evolved for running around hunting game and gathering fruit and vegetables. So, the myth goes, we'd all be a lot healthier if we lived and ate more like our ancestors.
This "evolutionary discordance hypothesis" was first put forward in 1985 by medic S. Boyd Eaton and anthropologist Melvin Konner, both of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (NEJM, vol 312, p 283). In it they claimed that while our genes haven't changed for at least 50,000 years, our diets and lifestyles have changed greatly since the advent of agriculture 10,000 years ago, and it has all happened too quickly for us to evolve to deal with it. This, they argued, is the reason why diabetes, heart disease and cancers are ...
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