Are health and ill-health lessons from hunter-gatherers currently relevant?

Are health and ill-health lessons from hunter-gatherers currently relevant?

In their Special Article in the March 2000 issue of the Journal, Cordain et al (1) discussed plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets. They noted from the various reports on the societies of hunter-gatherers that these people were relatively free of many of the chronic degenerative diseases and symptoms that pervade modern societies...

Horticulturalists and Hunter-Gatherers

Voice pitch alters mate-choice-relevant perception in hunter-gatherers.

In humans, voice pitch is thought to be a cue of underlying quality and an important criterion for mate choice, but data from non-Western cultures have not been provided. Here we test attributions to and preferences for voices with raised and lowered pitch in hunter-gatherers. Using a forced-choice playback experiment, we found that both men and women viewed lower pitched voices in the opposite...

From foraging to farming among present-day forest hunter-gatherers: consequences on diet and health

Throughout history, forests dwellers have adapted to permanent changes of forest ecosystems that, in essence, are dynamic. Accordingly, they have long served as models of how humans lived when their lifestyles and genetic endowment were complementary. What is now commonly described as the “paleodiet” tends to be put forward as a benchmark for present-day efforts to promote health and prevent nu...

Obesity, waist-hip ratio and hunter-gatherers.

Obesity is a rapidly growing global problem. It is not simply the result of eating too much, and not all types of obesity have the same significance. Obesity is in part genetic, and one particularly important genetic type of obesity is the tendency to 'truncal obesity',-that is, a raised waist-to-hip ratio. Such obesity is powerfully associated not only with a tendency to diabetes, but also to ...