eli5 why we have such complex dietary requirements. Did our ancestors thousands of years ago have extremely well balanced diets?
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Our ancestors ate basic food, basic cooking, and only what was local. Food these days is ultra processed, and sugary, both of which fuck up our hormones and biology because we aren’t evolved for such things (our amcestors access to sugar was limited to fruit and berries only available seasonally and rarely). Consider a standard first world diet of cereal with milk, a ham sandwich, a burger, a bag of crisps/chips, a drink of coke, a pack of noodles, a pizza. Standard modern foods, but not a single part of it would even be thinkable to a hunter gatherer.
Eating a basic, “palaeolithic/caveman” diet (only raw, local foods) would give us what we need to function in terms of nutrition. Processed foods take a lot of nutrition out to make it more palatable and addictive so people buy it. Think of eating an apple versus drinking apple juice. The juice has all the tasty part, the whole apple gives vitamins and fibre in the skin and flesh, and fibre is essential for digestive health. Were meant to get 100-300g a day but most of us only get about 20g. Modern human has to struggle to find enough nutrition that an ancestor wouldn’t even think about.
Also, our ancestors would die if they ate something they’re allergic to. Allergy sufferers these days can live quite easily, hence higher percentage of the population has a dietary allergy.
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