There's a reasonable amount of evidence that following (generally) a diet as outlined in the article would be beneficial to one's health across the spectrum. Google 'paleolithic diet' (alternative spelling, 'palaeolithic') for further information.
who is a professor of zoology specializing in Paleolithic fauna and an accomplished artist and bow hunter. He cites all the best primary research literature on Paleolithic life in the notes in his book. One fact Guthrie points out is that the lifespan for Paleolithic Homo sapiens was only forty years.
The main cause of early death was injuries and infections following injury. Disease was relatively low because the population was dispersed. Contrary to much belief, startvation was also rare, it was an anthropologist who coined the term "the original leisure society" for hunter-gatherers; Google the term in quotes for many references.
Lifespan at birth or at adulthood? I thought it was accepted that lifespan at adulthood for hunter-gatherer types was often essentially of modern length, and it was agriculture that lowered it (while increasing number of children) until modern times?
Wikipedia agrees with you, for values of "not very long" that are about 60 at mid-life. Since that includes essentially no medical care, however, I'm not sure how much of it is attributable to diet.
> lifespan for Paleolithic Homo sapiens was only forty years.
That is 10 years longer that people in Swaziland.
40 is not that bad if you think that most hunter gatherer societies abandon old people (since food is a scarcity). So the life expectancy in those times was basically the modern day retirement age.
Actually average life expectancy has consistently been inaccurate. If half our species died at birth, and the rest lived until 80 years old, our average life expectancy is only 40 years. Anyone notice a problem?
The length of a human life has usually rested around 70 years, which is actually seen in nomadic people today. Their life expectancy can be appallingly low due to their environment, it doesn't mean everyone's dropped dead by the time they're 40, it means lots were lost at a ridiculously young age.
During the industrial revolution 75% of children in London died before 5 years old. This meant that life expectancy was only around 30 years, despite the fact that poor houses were predominantly old people. The UK instituted the Old Age Pension Act in 1909 to deal with this problem and the claiming age was 70 years, which means people were expected to work until this age. If people were really only living until 30, why would people have invented a pension for 70 year olds?
IIRC the breakdown for the Paleolithic was, at birth life expectancy was ~33 years. If you lived to 15, your life expectancy was, on average, actually between 39-55 and I wouldn't doubt that if you lived to 55 you had a solid chance of making it to 70.
During the Bronze Age life expectancy at birth was 18, this was due partly to wars, population densities and essentially the plagues caused by such (this is the essential reason why Europeans had diseases that wiped out 70-80% of Native Americans). At about 1000 BC we hit our average of 30 years again, although for Greece and Rome it actually ended up being 20-30 years because again of wars and some diseases (although by this time we were more disease resistant).
Another example of this is the USA. People in the US have a lower life expectancy than many other countries, which aside from my problem with privatized health care (which is primarily a quality of life, not a quantity of life issue), is mainly due to the US having an appalling infant mortality rate... however if you actually survive infancy you're good to go.
IMO stating life expectancies is very misleading, due to the fact that it creates the impression of a Logan's Run environment where you're dead at 21. Only in modern society has life expectancy surpassed 40 years, but Genghis Khan died at age 72 (IIRC) due to an infection after his horse bucked returning from war. Apparently this was no mean feat in the Mongol armies as many of his generals were as old, if not older, than him as they'd been with him since the beginning.
"the US having an appalling infant mortality rate" do you have any sources? or more specifically articles or papers researching the cause of this high infant mortality rate?
I'll say this here: Sorry, I stated the US had an appalling infant mortality rate, and in fact it actually has a very good one. I was thinking of the Per Capita Infant Mortality rate, which IIRC the formula goes Per Capita GDP / 1,000 x IMR. This places the US rate as almost double of the UK's rate (IIRC), due to the fact that the US economy should be capable of providing better health care to infants than the UK. This test is only really good for developed nations as poor countries can end up looking the best, due to the fact that they can have Per Capitas below $1000.
Iceland IMR (the lowest) is 2.9, and the US is 6.3. Wow! That means twice as many kids in the US die as Iceland! That's appalling! But we're in the noise floor here. 0.03% vs 0.06% is noise floor, It's certainly not appalling.
> People in the US have a lower life expectancy than many other countries,
The USA's life expectancy is 78.06 years – this is not far from the European Union average of 78.7 years and it is higher than some Scandinavian countries (such as Denmark) .
> is mainly due to the US having an appalling infant mortality rate
The infancy mortality rate (under five) of the USA is 7.8 per 1000 life births. This again is not that much worse than European countries (UK is at 6.0).
Now for my defence of the USA health system. Firstly, what are the leading causes of death in developed countries? They are listed below (with the number of people who died per year):
Ischaemic heart disease 3,512,000
Stroke 3,346,000
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease 1,829,000
Lower respiratory infections 1,180,000
Lung cancer 938,000
Car accident 669,000
Stomach cancer 657,000
High blood pressure 635,000
Tuberculosis 571,000
What are some causes of Ischaemic heart disease ? Here are some:
There is limited evidence for population screening, but prevention (with a healthy diet and sometimes medication for diabetes, cholesterol and high blood pressure) is used both to prevent IHD and to decrease the risk of complications. “
For the second leading cause of death high cholesterol and cigarette smoking is also a contributing factor (you can see where I am going with this).
You can see that the average health of an American is therefore far worse off due to his/her lifestyle (diet, etc...). How can you compare the health system in the USA with one in Norway (8.3%), Denmark (9.5%) or Canada (14.3%) that does not have to contend with this obesity rate?
The health system in the USA is amazing for bringing the average life expectancy of the USA close to European levels with such a high rate of obesity.
We have just talked about obesity – there are quite a few other things that contribute to a larger death rate. A few examples is smoking (which is much more regulated in the EU, car safety (which is stricter in the EU) and AIDS prevalence. The AIDS prevalence for the USA is 0.6% which is higher than all the Western European countries.
Is that the diet about not eating bread or pasta or rice because the hunter gathers did not eat those foods?
See, if evolution is about the survival of the fittest, then would have not those hunter-gathers who got unhealthy because of eating pasta not pass on their genes?
What I mean is: have we stopped evolving since hunter- gathering times?
It might well be this article for those interested in reading it themselves: -
"Effects of Acute Smoked Marijuana on Complex Cognitive Performance" - Neuropsychopharmacology section of the medical journal Nature
This is great, works very simply and the results look fantastic! I've just created a few to buttons to use on my latest project and they're perfect for my needs - all in less time than it would take to open up PS and create just one button! An awesome app and I wish you every success with it, I second the call for a PayPal link/contribute link, I think many a time-starved designer would happily drop a few $ your way in gratitude.
That's not, imho, a fair comparison - the user agent has the right to alter their perception of the content (strip ads, enlarge font size, have a screen-reader read it) - nowhere in that did the poster suggest that they are then free to re-distribute that content on to other users as your post suggests. I (humbly) put it that your logic is flawed.
Well sorry, it simply isn't. It's a very basic logical flaw, a fallacy of extension (it's extremely common, oft referred to as the straw man argument) - instead of arguing against the issue, namely the right of the user to alter their perception of received content to better suit their person, you are suggesting that the poster (and their argument) inherently supports the redistribution of that altered content to third parties without the content producer's permission - nowhere in the the post was that assertion made - you made it up all by yourself and then attacked that. So Yes, your logic is flawed, awfully sorry, I know, it's so annoying when that truth thing gets in the way.
