Food and Western Disease

Author: Staffan Lindeberg
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405197714
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
Nutrition science is a highly fractionated, contentious field with rapidly changing viewpoints on both minor and major issues impacting on public health. With an evolutionary perspective as its basis, this exciting book provides a framework by which the discipline can finally be coherently explored. By looking at what we know of human evolution and disease in relation to the diets that humans enjoy now and prehistorically, the book allows the reader to begin to truly understand the link between diet and disease in the Western world and move towards a greater knowledge of what can be defined as the optimal human diet. Written by a leading expert Covers all major diseases, including cancer, heart disease, obesity, stroke and dementia Details the benefits and risks associated with the Palaeolithic diet Draws conclusions on key topics including sustainable nutrition and the question of healthy eating This important book provides an exciting and useful insight into this fascinating subject area and will be of great interest to nutritionists, dietitians and other members of the health professions. Evolutionary biologists and anthropologists will also find much of interest within the book. All university and research establishments where nutritional sciences, medicine, food science and biological sciences are studied and taught should have copies of this title.

Food Safety

Author: Richard J. Marshall
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387339574
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
Food Safety: A Practical and Case Study Approach, the first volume of the ISEKI-Food book series, discusses how food quality and safety are connected and how they play a significant role in the quality of our daily lives. Topics include methods of food preservation, food packaging, benefits and risks of microorganisms and process safety.

Evolving Human Nutrition

Author: Stanley J. Ulijaszek
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521869161
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 415

Book Description
Exploration of changing human nutrition from evolutionary and social perspectives and its influence on health and disease, past and present.

Western Diseases

Author: Tessa M. Pollard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521617376
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Book Description
As a group, western diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, allergies and mental health problems constitute one of the major problems facing humans at the beginning of the 21st century, particularly as they extend into poorer countries. An evolutionary perspective has much to offer standard biomedical understandings of western diseases. At the heart of this approach is the notion that human evolution occurred in circumstances very different from the modern affluent western environment and that, as a consequence, human biology is not adapted to the contemporary western environment. Written with an anthropological perspective and aimed at advanced undergraduates and graduates taking courses in the ecology and evolution of disease, Tessa Pollard applies and extends this evolutionary perspective by analysing trends in rates of western diseases and providing a new synthesis of current understandings of evolutionary processes, and of the biology and epidemiology of disease.

Evolutionary Aspects of Nutrition and Health

Author: Artemis P. Simopoulos
Publisher: Karger Medical and Scientific Publishers
ISBN: 3805568274
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

Book Description
The issues treated in this publication are brought together in this way for the first time. For many of the chronic diseases, familial predispositions are well established, and there is good evidence for true genetic predisposition. When Homo erectus emerged 1.7 million years ago, humans existed as non-cereal-eating hunter-gatherers. It is on this basis that, according to the hypothesis of the 'carnivore connection', an insulin-resistant genotype evolved to provide survival and reproductive advantages to populations adapted to a high meat, low plant food (low carbohydrate) nutritional environment. Cereal became the major source of calories and protein in the human diet only about 10,000 years ago. Humankind has thus had little evolutionary experience to adapt to this new food type, maladaption being the consequence. Moreover, studies comparing energy expenditure in Western societies and during the Paleolithic period indicate a low level of physical activity not previously encountered in human history, a state to which humans are not genetically adapted. Together with the dietary changes, this has led to a modern environment in which a number of individuals are prone to chronic diseases, causing increases in non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, hypertension, coronary artery disease, cancer and obesity. As a consequence, the lifestyle approach for the prevention and management of these diseases is essential, varying with national dietary patterns and national economy. This publication will be of special interest to physicians, geneticists, nutritionists, dieticians, anthropologists, food technologists, food-policy-makers and individuals interested in personal and family health.

Nutrition and Evolution

Author: Michael Crawford
Publisher: Keats Publishing
ISBN: 9780879836573
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description

The Changing Body

Author: Roderick Floud
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139500805
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 459

Book Description
Humans have become much taller and heavier, and experience healthier and longer lives than ever before in human history. However it is only recently that historians, economists, human biologists and demographers have linked the changing size, shape and capability of the human body to economic and demographic change. This fascinating and groundbreaking book presents an accessible introduction to the field of anthropometric history, surveying the causes and consequences of changes in health and mortality, diet and the disease environment in Europe and the United States since 1700. It examines how we define and measure health and nutrition as well as key issues such as whether increased longevity contributes to greater productivity or, instead, imposes burdens on society through the higher costs of healthcare and pensions. The result is a major contribution to economic and social history with important implications for today's developing world and the health trends of the future.

Human Diet and Nutrition in Biocultural Perspective

Author: Tina Moffat
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1845459814
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
There are not many areas that are more rooted in both the biological and social-cultural aspects of humankind than diet and nutrition. Throughout human history nutrition has been shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces, and in turn, access to food and nutrition has altered the course and direction of human societies. Using a biocultural approach, the contributors to this volume investigate the ways in which food is both an essential resource fundamental to human health and an expression of human culture and society. The chapters deal with aspects of diet and human nutrition through space and time and span prehistoric, historic, and contemporary societies spread over various geographical regions, including Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia to highlight how biology and culture are inextricably linked.

The Metabolic Ghetto

Author: Jonathan C. K. Wells
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107009472
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 625

Book Description
A multidisciplinary analysis of the role of nutrition in generating hierarchical societies and cultivating a global epidemic of chronic diseases.

The Story of the Human Body

Author: Daniel Lieberman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 030774180X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Book Description
A landmark book of popular science that gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years—with charts and line drawings throughout. “Fascinating.... A readable introduction to the whole field and great on the making of our physicality.”—Nature In this book, Daniel E. Lieberman illuminates the major transformations that contributed to key adaptations to the body: the rise of bipedalism; the shift to a non-fruit-based diet; the advent of hunting and gathering; and how cultural changes like the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions have impacted us physically. He shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning a paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease. And finally—provocatively—he advocates the use of evolutionary information to help nudge, push, and sometimes even compel us to create a more salubrious environment and pursue better lifestyles.