Does this mean that I can't keep eating saltwater taffy for breakfast?
"From this perspective, the trial suggests that among the bad decisions we can make to maintain our weight is exactly what the government and medical organizations like the American Heart Association have been telling us to do: eat low-fat, carbohydrate-rich diets, even if those diets include whole grains and fruits and vegetables."
That "among" is working hard there. I am skeptical that a significant proportion of the increase in obesity can be explained by the number of people eating a low-fat diet rich in whole-grains, fruits, and vegetables.
Fuck alla dat shit.
A low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet may increase the risk for cardiovascular disease, according to a large study in Swedish women.
The study, published in the journal BMJ, was based on a random sample of 43,396 women ages 30 to 49, each of whom completed a dietary questionnaire. The researchers used the data to create a 20-point scale, with higher scores indicating a lower ratio of carbohydrates to protein.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/high-protein-diet-is-linked-to-heart-risks/?ref=health
Right - there's the obesity epidemic occurring among people who eat mostly processed foods and fast foods, who could benefit enormously from a couple low-hanging diet and exercise change-ups.
Then there's the vanity-20lbs-epidemic occurring among virtually everyone besides some genetically blessed individuals, who could benefit slightly by the stuff in this article.
Right, but all the people who told us not to eat nuts were wrong. (See also the Framingham heart study.) It's the type of fats we consume too.
If I eat a really low carbohydrate diet, like dairy and meat only and vegetables but no grain or starch at all, my head starts to get fuzzy, and I can't concentrate which is useless.
Note that the article linked in the post is written by Gary Taubes, who has been writing and re-writing this same article for over a decade. That doesn't mean he's wrong, necessarily--I happen to think he's basically right (or, at least, more right than wrong). But his views are exactly the same as they were yesterday, so, unless you're especially wowed by the new experimental results described in the article (which it doesn't seem to me that you should be), your views should probably be unchanged as well.
Also, nobody comes back from the beach and puts a box of bacon on the table in the office kitchen.
unless you're especially wowed by the new experimental results described in the article (which it doesn't seem to me that you should be),
For some reason I did find this particular experimental design more convincing than others I've read.
The obesity epidemic* is driven by a junk diet and sedentary lifestyle that everyone agrees is bad. As a result, there can be no headline-worthy scientific study that addresses the root problem for most people. Any New Scientific Diet will have to be addressed to the small number of people whose problem doesn't have an obvious solution. Since health coverage has to be based around New Scientific Diets, health coverage will never address real problems.
*I'm with those who say the obesity epidemic really should be renamed the type-II diabetes epidemic, because that is the main health problem we actually face. The fat itself is not the problem.
Yeah, Taubes has been on this beat for a while. I'm with Goneril. It's also easy enough to make processed foods to have the fad-of-the-moment in them, and so someone could eat a lot of cookies and ice cream and have it count as a low-fat. It said so on the package!
the type-II diabetes/heart disease/stroke/likely some cancer epidemic
Fixed.
The fat itself is not the problem.
I think many overweight people would disagree. But, aside from that, for certain things, it unambiguously is. For general fatigue, it can be a problem. For joint wear/pain, back pain, foot pain, etc., it can be a problem.
3:Atkins, for instance, is more a high-fat diet than high-protein. Choose ground beef over ground round, cook it medium rare or medium.
When I am cooking a breakfast meal, I save the bacon drippings to mix into the scrambled eggs.
And half my plates are covered with lettuce.
The protein is mostly to keep muscles from deteriorating. Atkins is not a body builder's or athletes diet.
You can either stay thin and ruin your joints by exercise or get heavy and ruin your joints by putting too much pressure on them just in daily life.
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I'm in a bit of a posting drought. This topic seems old and recycled, but so does everything else I think about. My general philosophy is just to keep throwing things up, and let you all be interesting in the comments. But feel free to send me things that are interesting. Email address under my pseud.
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15. To a large extent, this is true. Some people are genetically enabled to live to old age without one or the other of these outcomes, but they're probably a minority.
(Never forget: natural selection favours individuals who live to the age at which they can reproduce and their offspring can survive without them. It doesn't give a shit what happens to you after that. On the veldt, this means somewhere in your early to mid 30s.)
17 cont. Much younger for men, who are essentially hyaena food from their 20s.
And personally, I think sugars and corn syrup are way overrated as a problem. Not that sugar is at all good, and you should drop them because they increase appetite, but they burn fast and I think maybe increase metabolism and activity. Somalians live on sugar.
The problem is breads, carbs, and especially breads in combination with sugars.
"I'll have two double cheeseburgers , two large fries, an order of onion rings, an order of cheesy potato wedges, and...a diet Coke."
"My general philosophy is just to keep throwing things up"
I think everyone agrees that bulimia is not a healthy weight loss regimen.
re: 18
Mostly yeah, but ..
There are group selection/kin selection hypotheses re: the benefits of having old people around, of course.
Plus, even in current 'veldty' populations, who are living in extremely marginal land, there's a fair number of old buggers about, even if the average life-span is short.
16: Is there a discussion I've missed somewhere here about the series of libertarianism posts at CT?
I don't know that it really needs a new thread, though--I basically just have a question. The only responses from libertarians that I've seen are those at Marginal Revolution. Which are laughably bad; honestly, they're much worse than I would have expected. But I don't read a lot of the libertarian blogosphere. Is anyone aware of other libertarian reactions to the CT posts? If there's an interesting response out there, I'd like to read it.
No, come on, there's the whole grandmother hypothesis. Evolution wants me to be healthy and strong enough to hunt, gather, and provide childcare while Sally and Newt's babies need care. This gets women up to about eighty, if you're assuming a grandmother taking care of her late-born daughter's late-born offspring.
All questionnaire-based diet studies should crawl into a hole and die. The only thing they're good for is newspaper articles.
16: I'd say something helpful if I had anything, but you know I haven't had an actual thought since sometime in maybe 2010. You and Stanley are all that's keeping the blog running.
Somalians live on sugar.
And look how skinny they are! I'm quite certain there's a diet book in this for you, bob.
Note that the article linked in the post is written by Gary Taubes, who has been writing and re-writing this same article for over a decade.
IIRC, every staff reporter who writes for the Times about diet and exercise spends most of their time transparently rationalizing their own views or behavior. Kolata does this constantly.
I guess you could check out Reason. I never go there or link it unless forced.
I was very interested in the Dierdre McCloskey books until I encountered her over at Reason.
21. Yes, a few old buggers are useful; everybody crawling around until they're 82 or whatever the median expectancy at 16 in the first world is not provided for by natural selection. The lucky few whose joints hold out anyway are more than enough.
23. Palaeontological evidence suggests otherwise. pre-neolithic people over 40 are extremely rare.
25 You're doing a grand job at CT just now.
IIRC, everystaff reporter who writes for the Times about diet and exercise human being spends most of their time transparently rationalizing their own views or behavior.
FTFY.
Is there a discussion I've missed somewhere here about the series of libertarianism posts at CT?
I was thinking about linking to one of these. The problem is that it all seems so obvious to me that I read it and think "What's to discuss?" But I can suppress that thought.
pre-neolithic people over 40 are extremely rare.
I did not know that.
23. Palaeontological evidence suggests otherwise. pre-neolithic people over 40 are extremely rare.
But if you're having a generation every 14-16 years, living to 38 means you were there to help out with the grandchildren as toddlers.
True, but it does kick the idea of spry eighty-somethings still being useful childcare in the head a bit.
34: You never see them around town.
@22
I had considered posting an off-topic whine about CT and their new "all wanking about libertarianism all the time" format.
The libertarian responders have amply demonstrated that they're sociopaths over and over again in these discussions. As far as I can see at this point there's no upside to interacting with these folks as though they were grown ups. It just encourages them.
The Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog-- http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/ -- has a couple of responses to the Crooked Timber discussion, which was initially directed at them.
Heebie, I'd like a thread discussing the financial stuff in Lindon, because I don't understand it at all. I keep hoping that someone who knows a bit more.
I'm feeling in a similar mental rut myself. Too much stress, too little social interaction. Hard to get out of it even if I sort of understand the cause.
29.2 is both minority wrong and majorly misleading. First, excluding infant mortality, you get paleolithic lifespan estimates in the early 40s, not under 40. Second, while its true that early 40s is not a great overall lifespan estimate, the lower lifespan estimates are generally attributed to war and (currently) treatable disease, not some kind of evolutionary based age cap from general body deterioration. People think that roughly 10-20% of the population achieved ages that we now think of as "elderly" and evidence from modern hunter-gather societies suggest that these people are largely free of the chronic old age diseases that afflict people in the modern west. Interestingly, women seem to have been better adapted to childbirth.
On the OP, I'm as happy to gloat as anyone but Gary Taubes has been writing the same theory (which I think is basically correct) for a long time now.
What urple said. There's a tendency to think of that extra fat as benign but really it's more like carrying around a ginormous endocrine gland with a number of nasty side effects.
You can either stay thin and ruin your joints by exercise or get heavy and ruin your joints by putting too much pressure on them just in daily life.
I'll put the quality of life of thinner + strength training up against obese any day.
it all seems so obvious to me that I read it and think "What's to discuss
Well, I'm currently not playing in the Holbo, Waring, or anti-Lib threads, but the most recent has moved into "What are there no women commenters?" Women commenters are great because they bring specific varied concrete anecdotal evidence to the discussions as opposed to the grand universal totalizing generalities of the patriarchy.
I might have a lot to say about this, or at least it is something I think about a lot.
I am reminded of the article, beloved on the web by thousands by the woman who said "I lived in Japan in the 90s, and I didn't see any stinking clotheswashers."
Which totally trumped the national statistics that showed 90%+ penetration of washers in homes, because, well, Personal Experience!!
Just kidding. The "I've been there, and you haven't, you have only second hand knowledge. STFU." rhetorical gambit was old and varied when Herodotus played it..
40.1: Círdan the Shipwright runs a command economy to ensure that there are enough boats for those elves who want to take the straight path.
Thanks, all. I'm going to get a CT thread up, and then a London financial one up, too. If anyone has a good London link to send me, I'll use it to seed the article.
People think that roughly 10-20% of the population achieved ages that we now think of as "elderly" and evidence from modern hunter-gather societies suggest that these people are largely free of the chronic old age diseases that afflict people in the modern west.
Having 80 to 90% death rates does just wonders for the health statistics of the population of those left behind.
5: Seriously? I've given up picking foods for their supposed bennies of the week. If it appeals I eat it, if it doesn't, I don't. All I watch out for is portion size and maintaining a general activity level. That's gotten me down about ten lbs this year and I'm within six of where I want to be.
I've been trying the low-carb thing some, but really need to make it more scientific. It would be great if I could add some beans back in - I guess the South Beach diet is the low-glycemic index style mentioned in the article?
45: London? The Big Losers in the Libor Rate Manipulation at Barry Rittholz
Felix Salmon is good on Barclay's
The death match for the radical well-grounded-in-mush center waged over at CT between left center liberals and right center liberals fills me with dismay.
46: Yeah, it's the Winston Churchill diet and lifestyle.
41. I think palaeolithic lifespan estimates vary, but 38 or 42 is, as you say, trivial. As to the rest of your point, certainly most people died from disease or violence inter- or intra-specific before they got old, but equally certainly a lot of the old (by modern standards) people who have been found have exactly the same symptoms of skeletal degeneration as their modern descendants. This is more interesting that the truism that under conditions where physical survival depended on the ability to run away from enemies or predators, people who continued able to run into old age were more likely to die old. It's more interesting because it implies that somebody thought the old wrecks were worth saving.
Heebie, I'd like a thread discussing the financial stuff in Lindon, because I don't understand it at all. I keep hoping that someone who knows a bit more.
In my capacity as a low-calorie dsquared substitute I'd be happy to do what I can.
I've been trying the low-carb thing some, but really need to make it more scientific. It would be great if I could add some beans back in
I tend toward the low-carb thing, and I do include beans. For me, the amount of fiber they have balances out their carbiferousness. I also find them really filling, so I don't overeat them.
Yes I agree that there are some very interesting questions raised by the existence of old people -- why humans evolved to survive and thrive well after the years of childbirth. It's not clear that anyone really knows the answer to that question.
I've been eating just a ton of hummus. Does that count as beans? Hummus is great at making me feel full.
54: I once watched some nature documentary where the aged matriarchal elephant led her herd to a hidden source of water during a drought, relying on memories years old. So that's my guess as to what old people are for too; it's why they're so insistent on telling stories about their childhood.
Beans, beans, good for the heart,
The more you eat, the more you fart.
The more you fart, the better you feel,
So eat your beans with every meal!
Beans, beans, the musical fruit,
The more you eat, the more you toot.
The more you toot, the better you feel,
So eat your beans with every meal!
I think the main theories are (1) extended social memory a la the elephant matriarch and (2) assistance in childrearing, but that both theories are basically speculation. But it's not like I'm an actual expert on this stuff.
I think the main theories are (1) extended social memory a la the elephant matriarch and (2) assistance in childrearing, but that both theories are basically speculation. But it's not like I'm an actual expert on this stuff.
We call that a double double, like the hamburger.
38 voices my reaction to the CT threads lately as well, but I feared it was a whiny response: why is interrogating libertarian bleeding heartism an interesting thing to think about at this time, and at excruciating length? Well, I don't know, but people can be interested in what they're interested in. I guess.
I agree that there are some very interesting questions raised by the existence of old people -- why humans evolved to survive and thrive well after the years of childbirth.
Alloparenting is the big one - see Hrdy, "Mother Nature". And also it may not be a case of specific evolutionary pressure to live to 70. Let's say that there's no positive payoff at all to living past 50. That doesn't necessarily mean that evolution will positively favour organisms that die at 51. It could just mean that, after that, evolution doesn't care one way or another, and an organism that's optimised to survive until 50 will generally tend to keep on going for another 20 or 30 years anyway.
Or alternatively, maybe there is a payoff to dying at 51, but there's just no way to increase mortality in the 50-70 stage without also increasing it in the 40-50 stage. Evolution works within existing constraints and optimises locally.
48, 53: Beans also bring with them a number of nutrients, cholesterol-lowering benefits, some protein ... the carbiness question is far outweighed by these countering benefits, as Blume says. Plus so much more versatility of menu!
54: I once watched some nature documentary where the aged matriarchal elephant led her herd to a hidden source of water during a drought, relying on memories years old. So that's my guess as to what old people are for too; it's why they're so insistent on telling stories about their childhood.
And yet since the book was invented, old people have continued to proliferate.
low-carb thing some, ... It would be great if I could add some beans back in
Low carb with beans essentially gets you to Tim Ferriss's Four-Hour Body diet. Personally, I vote for beans. Eating consciously (in any form) is difficult, so adding in a tasty, filling type of food is nice.
Well, it's not just wanting to add beans - it's wanting to know what other carbs are okay (in limited amounts, obviously) for the same reason. Each new allowance increases menu versatility.
68: it's wanting to know what other carbs are okay (in limited amounts, obviously) for the same reason
Anything with a non-trivial amount of fiber is okay.
Fresh apricots and cherries. Without which, no life is worth living.
Without which, no life is worth living.
Watch it Carp, Di is gonna cut you.
64: That's why I just tossed all the sciencey books I'd accumulated. You want water, you had better be nice to me.
I'd forgotten about that particularly tragic case. I'd support an unlimited NIH budget to work up a cure.
what other carbs are okay
Bulghur wheat. Anyone who objects to tabouli is a madman (or woman). Also quinoa. Also oats, for oatmeal and for homemade granola.
72: No, 65: Maybe I don't quite remember where the water is but I can get close.
My understanding is that Halford's 41.1 is more or less correct, but I don't have a whole lot of knowledge of the literature on this topic. It looks like today's probably going to be pretty slow at work, so maybe I'll try to dig up some papers on this.
I once watched some nature documentary where the aged matriarchal elephant led her herd to a hidden source of water during a drought, relying on memories years old. So that's my guess as to what old people are for too; it's why they're so insistent on telling stories about their childhood.
I know this has been proposed with regard to the Aleuts, who in pre-contact times had exceptionally long life expectancies for hunter-gatherers as well as a strikingly sophisticated knowledge of anatomy and medicine (mostly based on a form of acupuncture). These two characteristics may formed a virtuous circle, where increased anatomical knowledge led to better medical practice, which led to longer life expectancy, which in turn gave people more time to study anatomy. How this all started is a separate and difficult question, of course.
The Aleuts also had a highly specialized subsistence system and a very complex social structure in an area with a particularly productive marine ecosystem, so they're not necessarily a good analogue for paleolithic populations. Still, it's an interesting data point. I find complex hunter-gatherers pretty fascinating in general.
sure, if you assume that achieving one's desired/socially enforced weight is a proxy for good health, Taubes' results will be all OMG shocking and shit; but that particular assumption seems very much a peculiarity of contemporary America. just because it's fun to mock/judge fat people does not mean that weight is actually a reliable proxy for health in general.....
Some preliminary digging indicates that the literature on human paleodemography is (unsurprisingly) vast, but that very little of it seems to be grounded in the actual study of paleolithic human remains. I'll keep digging.
That study seems useful mostly to people who have just stringently dieted a lot of weight off -- for one thing, I don't believe their gut bacteria would be likely to have settled to a new norm.
You know what sometimes works in desperate cases?* Fecal transplants, e.g. from husband to wife. That shouldn't seem any grodier than mere possession of a lower gut does to start with, but it squicks me.
*Desperate inability to digest anything -- not weightloss, AFAIK.
teo, wouldn't paleolithic populations have been densest in particularly productive ecosystems?
teo, wouldn't paleolithic populations have been densest in particularly productive ecosystems?
Presumably, yeah, but there were also paleolithic populations occupying all sorts of other ecosystems, and many Pleistocene ecosystems were probably not directly comparable to any modern ones. In general I think the common practice of trying to understand paleolithic hunter-gatherers by studying modern ones is problematic.
What is it grounded in, then?
Mostly behavioral studies of modern hunter-gatherers and, increasingly, DNA studies.
A caveat to 84 is that most of the comparisons of modern to ancient hunter-gatherers have been based on "simpler" modern groups, so looking at complex modern groups like the Aleuts could potentially be a good counterweight. I still think the whole undertaking is problematic, though.
Here is an interesting overview, though it runs into the problems Teo identified, and feel free to discount the source heavily. Obviously it's problematic to use modern hunter gatherers as stand ins for the paleolithic population, but the science of getting lifespans from skeletal records isn't great and hasn't been improving, so there's not much choice besides looking at contemporary hunter gatherers or trying DNA studies.
http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/2010/02/paleo-life-expectancy.html?m=1
So, here's something that I bet there's probably a lot of literature about too, but I'm not sure how much has been popularized: How sure are we that the Neolithic Revolution was a "revolution". I.e. something that was more or less a discrete historical event or chain of events in specific locales? What proportion of the evidence is architectural, for instance, vs. actual tool, seeds, genetics, etc. etc.?
I guess what I'm trying to get at is, how clear can we make the distinction between horticultural and agricultural practices? Do we have any prehistoric physical evidence of that?
I'm no expert, but I'd guess that in this context revolutionary would be used to describe something that took several hundred years or more.
I can't *find* any of the articles, Natilo, but IIRC the replacement of everything else by settled agriculture (and satellite herd-nomadism) *in Europe* is taken as sudden (a few generations), they're stilll arguing over whether it involved replacing or retraining the indigenous population.
I'm pulling all that out of my big straw hat, though.
...The pre-Garcia civilizations along the east coast of the Pacific seem like a nice catenary from hunter-gatherer to cities-and-metallurgy, with enough contact between to rule out ignorance of other options. Surely there is an excellent work on this.
How does one get statistics like lifespan from DNA studies?
Can I assume some of the problems extrapolating from modern paleolithic societies is that these are by definition groups of people who have survived generations of being forced on to more and more marginal territories?
90: No, I know that, I just mean, would a "revolution" of a few generations to a few centuries be supported by all the evidence, to the exclusion of something much less linear and localized. E.g. what if there were people wandering around for 10,000 years doing small-scale horticultural stuff, dropping some cannabis seeds here, some grains there, not really building or plowing or any of those things? And what do we know about domestication of animals? How long did that take? I mean, it seems like it would be relatively easy to continually take and raise baby wild animals, without ever domesticating them, just have a semi-wild animal around for awhile that you fattened up, and then ate, and never bred or herded in more than a small way. (There's a description of this sort of de-feralizing as practiced by contemporary hippies in NoCal in a book that came out a couple of years ago, w/r/t wild piglets.)
modern paleolithic societies
What's one of them? A lot of South African hunter gatherers (for example) these days make their arrowheads out of extruded steel, which they acquire by chopping up lengths of wire fencing around farmland etc. You see the definitional problem...
Or building semi-permanent dwellings that would not have been preserved in the archaeological record, and doing maybe a little bit of basic digging-stick type agriculture in very small plots, with very low energy inputs, kinda hesitating on the border of the Neolithic if you will, for a long time?
How does one get statistics like lifespan from DNA studies?
One doesn't, which is why they're not useful for this purpose. I was talking about paleodemography in general, not longevity specifically. Getting stuff relevant to the latter requires sifting through vast amounts of irrelevant stuff on the former.
Can I assume some of the problems extrapolating from modern paleolithic societies is that these are by definition groups of people who have survived generations of being forced on to more and more marginal territories?
Yes, exactly. This is the main problem with using them as proxies for ancient groups.
So, here's something that I bet there's probably a lot of literature about too, but I'm not sure how much has been popularized: How sure are we that the Neolithic Revolution was a "revolution". I.e. something that was more or less a discrete historical event or chain of events in specific locales? What proportion of the evidence is architectural, for instance, vs. actual tool, seeds, genetics, etc. etc.?
Another topic on which there's a vast literature with which I am not very familiar! My general impression, though, is that the answer is "not very sure at all" and that there's a lot of debate about these exact issues. Most of the papers I've seen on this focus on the Levant, where there is apparently pretty solid evidence that the transition, whatever its nature, took place in situ rather than being imported from somewhere else.
The link in 87 is good on the general issue of longevity. I've also found two papers addressing this using what seems to be actual archaeological evidence, though I haven't read them yet. This one argues that living beyond menopause started with Homo erectus, while this one argues for a major increase in people living into old age during the Early Upper Paleolithic associated with the rise of what's known as "behavioral modernity."
94. in the immortal words of whoever it was, "I think you'll find it's more complicated than that." i. There's increasing evidence that H. sapiens has been consciously modifying landscapes to its own advantage for pretty much as long as it's been around, so where do you define "the beginning of agriculture"? ii. Agriculture/horticulture (not really differentiated) and pastoralism have arisen several times in various places under various pressures and the histories don't necessarily follow the same course. iii. In much of the world they didn't arise indigenously but were introduced either by colonisation or emulation; again, many different stories.
Current Anthropology had a recent special issue on the origins of agriculture that is open access and probably addresses a lot of the issue Natilo raises.
100 is basically right. OTOH the "neolithic revolution" generally refers to something more specific than anything that looks vaguely like putting seeds in the ground and getting a crop, or domestic use of an animal: the selective breeding of grains for intensive cultivation, a process that took (at least) several hundred years and resulted in a dramatic social shift in the ways in which humans lived, and the numbers of humans involved. There are lots of examples of things like proto-agriculture, but intensive and selective cultivation of seed grains for human consumption can be traced quite specifically to a few locations. Of course, once that process was underway it lead to a lot of other changes in things like domesticating different animal species, figuring out how to plausibly cultivate different kinds of fruits and horticultural products, etc. But the main question for the neolithic revolution is "do you live in a sedentary society primarily based around carbohydrate rich grains, or a nonsedentary society in which grains are not the basis of your diet"?
99. Actually the link you cite re longevity refers to the possibility of H. erectus surviving menopause, and then comments:
"This hypothesis is both controversial and difficult to test (see Antón 2003). Recent studies highlight the dearth of fossil evidence supporting it, suggesting instead greater paternal investment in the care of offspring (Krovitz, Thompson, and Nelson 2003)."
Colour me open minded at best. The paper seems to suggest a typical maximum age of around 40 for all "species" after erectus up to the emergence of behavioural modernity, which is later than morphological modernity.
103: Ah, okay. Like I said, I haven't read these yet.
43 Women commenters are great because they bring specific varied concrete anecdotal evidence to the discussions as opposed to the grand universal totalizing generalities of the patriarchy.
This cracked me up.
But the main question for the neolithic revolution is "do you live in a sedentary society primarily based around carbohydrate rich grains, or a nonsedentary society in which grains are not the basis of your diet"?
Except when you live in a sedentary society in which grains are not the basis of your diet... (Lepenski Vir cited as a ferinstance.)
But the main question for the neolithic revolution is "do you live in a sedentary society primarily based around carbohydrate rich grains, or a nonsedentary society in which grains are not the basis of your diet"?
Right, although it's important to note that sedentism is not limited to agricultural societies and is found among certain complex hunter-gatherers (such as the Aleuts). One way this is often framed in the anthropological literature is that agriculture is one form of subsistence intensification but that there are also others, mostly involving marine resources, that can lead to levels of societal complexity comparable to neolithic societies.
104. Actually further on it does suggest physical evidence for erectus surviving to 50 or 60 (presumably when not eaten by a Pachycrocuta first.)
We're still not dealing with the sort of age at which modern Americans typically seize up from arthritis.
Paging Sarah Wynde! Can you get your people onto this, please.
107 is totally right (same point as 106!).
This is a totally fascinating article Which introduces the idea of the "modal age of death" as the relevant concept: given survival to adulthood, what is the modal age of death. (It looks at modern hunter gatherers, though, not paleolithic bone remains). The conclusion is that the "adaptive" human lifespan is about 68-78 years:
We summarize our main findings to this point: Post-reproductive longevity is a robust feature of hunter-gatherers and of the life cycle of Homo sapiens. Survivorship to grandparental age is achieved by over two-thirds of people who reach sexual maturity and can last an average of 20 years. Adult mortality appears to be characterized by two stages. Mortality rates remain stable and fairly low at around 1 percent per year from the age of maturity until around age 40. After age 40, the rate of mortality increase is exponential (Gompertz) with a mortality rate doubling time of about 6-9 years. The two decades without detectable senescence in early and mid-adulthood appear to be an important component of human life span extension.
The average modal age of adult death for hunter-gatherers is 72 with a range of 68-78 years. This range appears to be the closest functional equivalent of an "adaptive" human lifespan. Departures from this general pattern in published estimates of life expectancy in past populations (e.g., low child and high adult mortality) are most likely due to a combination of high levels of contact-related infectious disease, excessive violence or homicide, and methodological problems that lead to poor age estimates of older individuals and inappropriate use of model life tables for deriving demographic estimates....
A fundamental conclusion we draw from this analysis is that extensive longevity appears to be a novel feature of Homo sapiens. Our results contradict Vallois's (1961: 222) claim that among early humans, "few individuals passed forty years, and it is only quite exceptionally that any passed fifty," and the more traditional Hobbesian view of a nasty, brutish, and short human life (see also King and Jukes 1969; Weiss 1981). The data show that modal adult life span is 68-78 years, and that it was not uncommon for individuals to reach these ages, suggesting that inferences based on paleodemographic reconstruction are unreliable.
The pre-Garcia civilizations along the east coast
As a little voice inside Don Henley's head put it, don't look back, you can never look back. Me, I'm willing to entertain the spectacle of Furthur.
I just read the second article I linked in 99. It's interesting, but not all that useful in this context since they don't provide numerical age estimates. The analysis is based on categorizing specimens as younger or older adults based on tooth wear, with the dividing line set at twice reproductive maturity (i.e., the youngest age at which it is possible to become a grandparent) and finding the ratio between the two within each species sample. They find that there's a huge shift between the earlier samples and the anatomically modern Early Upper Paleolithic sample, for which there are more older than younger specimens whereas the reverse was true for the others. The implication is that if the grandmother hypothesis or some other evolutionary explanation applies it probably took effect at this point, which also corresponds to the advent of behavioral modernity.
112 Pleasing to see that Weir and Lesh seem to have resolved their differences.
if the grandmother hypothesis or some other evolutionary explanation applies it probably took effect at this point, which also corresponds to the advent of behavioral modernity.
That would be what I'd expect, "if..."
E.g. what if there were people wandering around for 10,000 years doing small-scale horticultural stuff, dropping some cannabis seeds here, some grains there, not really building or plowing or any of those things?
This I think refers to the post-Garcia cultures of the West Coast.
115: Right, it's a very plausible conclusion. What's striking about the paper is how strong the empirical evidence seems to be.
114 -- Furthur was here last fall. It was a hoot.
And the people who confessed never having smoked marijuana in that other thread might want to avail themselves of an opportunity from the link in 112. Contact highs are much changed since the old days.
Yes I agree that there are some very interesting questions raised by the existence of old people
Old age requires no evolutionary explanation at all. If something is irrelevant to natural selection, it is (almost tautologically) invisible to natural selection, and can therefore continue to exist without requiring any particular evolution-oriented explanation.
No, the evolution of aging is a complicated and much-studied concept that requires a lot of evolutionary explanation. In addition, the fact is that humans evolved to live to an older age. Chimpanzees die automatically around 40; humans, for whatever reason, naturally live much longer and evolved the ability to do so at some point very recently in their evolutionary history (just when is controversial). While of course it's possible that the longer lifespan is a side effect of some other beneficial quality of humans (antagonistic pleiotropy theory) there's no empirical evidence of that.
Relevant link here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_ageing
There is also this, from the paleo diet crazies at USC:
We argue that this dietary shift to increased regular consumption of fatty animal tissues in the course of hominid evolution was mediated by selection for "meat-adaptive" genes. This selection conferred resistance to disease risks associated with meat eating also increased life expectancy. One candidate gene is apolipoprotein E (apoE), with the E3 allele evolved in the genus Homo that reduces the risks for Alzheimer's and vascular disease, as well as influencing inflammation, infection, and neuronal growth. Other evolved genes mediate lipid metabolism and host defense. The timing of the evolution of apoE and other candidates for meat-adaptive genes is discussed in relation to key events in human evolution.
We evolved to live longer because we eat lots of fatty meat.
Isn't there a lot of variety in the diets of post-agricultural human societies, especially with regard to the proportions of fat/protein/veggies/refined carbs, and almost everything but the standard American diet is sufficient to keep you healthy?
I'm inclined to think that the real problem is that we're evolved to be able to survive on almost anything, but none of us move around anywhere near enough to justify eating anything.
I'm getting really upset about this whole eating thing at the moment, because the post heart attack dietary advice is really to eat nothing you like and half quantities of everything boring or distasteful. Yet I know that the real secret is portion control: I actually saw the obesity "epidemic" cross the North Sea, in that when I first came to Sweden in 1970, no one was fat, and I rapidly slimmed down to 68-70 kilos on the local diet. Within thirty years, you could no longer tell working class Swedes from English people in the street by body size. It can't just have been processed food. There was also a huge retreat from physical exertion. But in retrospect, what really changed was that people came to enjoy the taste of food, and to expect to do so, whereas in 1977 we would eat boiled potatoes once a day all year round, and pasta was a really exotic treat.
There was also a huge retreat from physical exertion.
I really do think this is the biggest single problem. And I salute Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" campaign against it. But of course she's a socialist with a garden trying to tell you how to live your life. Because freedom.
Didn't we just have a thread all about how the biggest single problem was subsidized agriculture?
re: 125/126
Lots of articles I've read talk about the fact that our calorie intake hasn't actually massively increased during the 'obesity epidemic', but our calorie expenditure has gone down. Speaking purely for myself, I eat much much less [and definitely drink a lot less] than I did in my early to mid twenties, but the combination of a much more slothful lifestyle,* getting older, and only having part of a thyroid** clearly make a big difference.
* desk-job
** I take the drugs, but it's definitely much harder to keep the weight off.
126: I'm half Irish and half Italian. We had potatoes five days a week and pasta two or three.
And Cap'n Crunch for breakfast. My mom had a strict rule about breakfast cereal: no marshmallow bits.
122
... Chimpanzees die automatically around 40; ...
This isn't accurate. Chimpanzees in capitivity can live well past 40. According to wikipedia :
... Chimpanzees reach puberty at an age of between eight and 10 years, and rarely live past age 40 in the wild, but have been known to live more than 60 years in captivity.
Chimpanzees die automatically around 40
Carousel! Carousel! Carousel!
Logan's Run to the Planet of the Apes
+100
Logan's Knucklewalk.
Or, if written by Robert Ludlum, "The Logan Brachiation".
I'm becoming convinced that for a culture that has so fundamentally lost its way to appropriate eating as the United States, that my conceptualization* of food as a fundamentally harmful substance but one which you need to consume small amounts of to thrive is the way to go. Folks I have explained it to in RL have not taken it as a serious proposal but I'm sure the commentariat will prove to be limited in their imaginations.
*I will note that I have not completely internalized this view yet due to a regrettable lack of discipline and mental agility.
"The Logan Brachiation"
With the way this day is shaping up at work, I think reading that comment is likely to have been the high point of my day.
Folks I have explained it to in RL have not taken it as a serious proposal but I'm sure the commentariat will prove to be limited in their imaginations.
I bet the online pro-anorexia community will be receptive.
128/129: I thought the evidence in that last thread is almost the opposite (at least for the US) -- while caloric expenditure has trended down, caloric intake was flat until it started increasing in 1980, when Americans started gaining weight.
129: It's funny, on one level it seems plausible that the increase in obesity is about decreased calorie expenditure rather than increased eating. On the other hand, I also believe that people trying to lose weight are very unlikely to successfully do so through increasing exercise without also decreasing food intake.
I can reconcile this by believing that weight gain is a ratchet -- an active person can eat a lot without gaining weight, but once they put on any significant amount of excess fat, they're not going to lose it without starving themselves, almost regardless of activity level. But that's really depressing.
139 is correct. In fact, we've talked about this before, here. You can search for another thread that Heebie has posted. An increase in consumption since 1970 (which, if you look in detail, is almost entirely an increase in consumption of carbs --red meat consumption was flat or declined slightly) is sufficient to explain the entire obesity crisis in the US. Don't know about Sweeden. Physical exertion overall has remained similar over that period and is not responsible. Also, physical exercise, ie limited cardio, will not lose weight for most people.
Last Ash Wednesday, the priest said, "Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return. Really greasy dust, so maybe this year actually fast at bit."
At the local park on Wednesday, I saw some obese people doing a free workout class paid for by the City, doing some leg raises and jumping jacks the like. But the elote vendor was lurking right behind.
142: Also, physical exercise, ie limited cardio, will not lose weight for most people.
I know, our metabolisms are annoyingly efficient. Came up over the holiday; one of my kids pointed out the calories from just one plain M&M (~3-4) represent the above-basal calorie expenditure of walking several hundred yards.
145: a man from the East End of London forced to work as a slave in ancient Sparta.
I think he means the elite vendor. The one with 15 different types of sausage, 5 kinds of mustard, sun-dried tomato spread, diced cucumbers, giardiniera, flatbread buns, mango lime salsa, etc.
giardiniera
A Spanish woman who infects you with giardia.
Elote is Mexican corn on the cob. Presumably, it's delicious, so Halford hates it.
Just made elote for the Fourth of July.
I went to Schenley Park and lived. I had no idea so many people went there to see the fireworks.
the calories from just one plain M&M (~3-4) represent the above-basal calorie expenditure of walking several hundred yards.
But it seems historically unprecedented to *notice* walking several hundred yards. C. M. Yonge characters (I'm in the middle of Delavore Terrace) trot miles back and forth every day, in inefficent shoes, to carry messages in the most tactful way -- and these are gentry/aristocrats; the servants do this and carry goods and beat carpets (and go up and down more stairs).
re: 156 etc
When I started working out why I used to not get fat when I was in my early 20s, it occurred to me that I had a cleaning job in Shawlands (in Glasgow), and I lived in Maryhill (in Glasgow), and in order to save money, I used to walk to and fro between those two locations, at least three days out of five.*
* that's independent of the sport and other exercise I was also doing.
I can't get Terrain to turn on in that map -- is the river in a precipitous valley, or a merely tiring one?
"Eschew car, much dancing" still works for me, and I'm forty-odd and love baking and spend half my workdays in desultory typing.
It's hilly-ish, but not precipitous. You'd find it a hard cycle in one direction as it's consistently up hill for miles, but it's not steep enough that it'd be hard work walking. It's 5 miles each way, though. Which is a fairly hard slog if you are doing it both ways.
Cleaning is usually pretty tiring, too.
that my conceptualization* of food as a fundamentally harmful substance ... Folks I have explained it to in RL have not taken it as a serious proposal but I'm sure the commentariat
Stormcrow : food :: Emerson : relationships...
re: 160
Yeah, although it's one of those things that gets easier with repetition. I mentioned it more because there was a time when I unthinkingly walked huge amounts. e.g. aged 6 or 7, you could run home from school for lunch, save up the 5p per day bus money, and spend it on something at the end of the week, aged 16, you could get a bus home, or share a taxi, or you could walk the three miles back from the pub, and have money for an extra beer. At university, I could eat in the canteen, or walk 2 miles home and eat a tin of beans for 30p, and then walk the 2 miles back. Lots of people without much money do that, but these days, older and lazier, I might still walk a fair distance but it tends to be for leisure rather than routine.
The local bus is free for me. It goes by lots of bars.
161: Except that I somehow still eat a metric foot-ton of food...
164: Who knows what Emerson was getting up to offblog?
165: Well sure. But I'd be willing to make a bet (not confident there is a good verification mechanism, however).
I should reread this when I'm not at the point of the month when hormones make me feel like I'm an enormous slug, but it should probably be some sort of wake-up call for me that also helps me figure out how to plan family meals better. But it's so hot and I'm such a disgusting slug that I don't want to do it right now.
This book is pretty sweet:
It is pro paleo diet but doesnt hide countervaling data.
Interestingly, paleo diets keep you short. The rise in bmi over the twentieth century matches up with a rise in height. Mainly, increased leg length. People are about the same height sitting down as they were before.
Nice. Very nice. Since the book costs $80, you can read some of the research results here:
http://www.staffanlindeberg.com/OurResearch.html
OT: I hate being Facebook friends with extremely wealthy, attractive people who seem to do nothing but have fabulous parties at their summer homes and take photos of themselves.
That seems like a problem that's easily fixed.
I wouldn't call burning down a summer house easy.
Certainly easier than burning down a winter home, though.
The rise in bmi over the twentieth century matches up with a rise in height.
I thought that height in the US leveled off in the 90s, while height in Europe continued to rise.
BREAKING:
Oops, looks like the study was wrong.
"I thought that height in the US leveled off in the 90s, while height in Europe continued to rise."
the guy who wrote the book is from Sweden so he doesn't care so much about the US.
Maybe consumption of milk?
http://www.foodsci.uoguelph.ca/dairyedu/intro.html
Admittedly the irish are not that tall.
177: That article exactly fits someone's (Halford?) claim about the type of articles that Gina Kolata writes. I'm sure she knew exactly what Hirsch would say before she interviewed him.
I don't have a strong view on what kind of diets work, but this argument "Perhaps the most important illusion is the belief that a calorie is not a calorie but depends on how much carbohydrates a person eats. There is an inflexible law of physics -- energy taken in must exactly equal the number of calories leaving the system when fat storage is unchanged." is so clearly someone peddling a line of bullshit that I find the rest of it hard to believe. Someone who already thinks their theory about diets is an inflexible law of physics is unlikely to have much more informative to say on the subject.