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Evolution and High-Protein Diets
Article

Evolution and High-Protein Diets


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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Scientific
  • Well Structured

Recommendation

How much protein should you have in your diet? Colorado State University professor emeritus Loren Cordain offers persuasive arguments in favor of a higher percentage protein diet than is common in the United States today, but which is in keeping with the quantity enjoyed by humankind’s ancient ancestors. Cordain uses evolutionary science, anthropological and ethnographic evidence, as well as modern human health studies, to support his claims. While never providing health advice, getAbstract recommends this three-part article to nutritionists and everyone interested in health science.

Summary

Nutritional science advice can often seem contradictory; one study praises the benefits of vegetarianism, while another shows human health improves on a meat-heavy meal plan. These contradictions reveal the extent to which nutritional science suffers from not having, as its foundation, a “universally acknowledged unifying paradigm” – for example, as cosmology has with the “Big Bang” theory. If nutritionists rooted themselves in the “ancient environment” within which the human “genome arose,” however, nutritionists could potentially study...

About the Author

Loren Cordain, PhD, is a professor of health and exercise science at Colorado State University. His research focuses upon the evolutionary and anthropological basis for diet and health.


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