Here is an interesting read on chimp diet:
I could give up a lot, but never would I give up eggs. Love love love them.
Of course both genetics and diet are important. One has preset tendencies of fat deposition and metabolic tendencies. Of course, within those genetic guidelines, you have some control. For example, I cannot gain weight in the hips, it all goes to the abdomen. Because of this and my small frame, I am overweight in the middle of the BMI chart. I have to reduce carbs in order to halt metabolic processes that encourage fat deposition in the abdomen. Others can eat more carbs. I have to keep my weight at the lower end of the BMI chart while others are healthy above the BMI “normals.” But I do have some control with exercise and diet that is specific for my genetics and body type.
Anyone who says there is one way to eat for everyone is very wrong and aren’t worth reading.
I really think that waist to hip ratios are our best measures of healthy weight. Unfortunately, men think their pant size equals their waist size and are frequently way off.
I never looked at the BMI chart, completely rubbish in my opinion.
Gtalum
the BMI is 100% certified nonsense.
it is a joke(that is putting it nicely)
We… we didn’t evolve from apes… that’s not how this works. Isn’t that something you learn in like basic high school science?
Humans are part of the Great Ape (Hominid) family and each of the 4 family branches (Gorillas, Chimps, Orangutans, and humans) has a pretty different diet. This isn’t unusual. Think about how different the diets are between wolves and domesticated dogs.
“we didn’t evolve from apes” are you saying that humans did not evolve from apes and continue to evolve over million of years and and as they advanced moved out of Africa to eventually spread around the world? you do not believe in evolutionary theory?
@zobroward, The accepted current science is that humans and apes evolved from a common, now extinct ancestor.
zobroward, unfortunately we have a lot of people in this country who make that claim, and will use arguments like “man eats meat, apes don’t, so therefore they aren’t related” and we have people trying to stop that being taught as science. Apes and Chimps are omnivores, they will eat what they can get in the wild, apes have both grinding and cutting teeth, which are needed by omnivores. Not to mention that between the great apes and human beings there is about 1% difference in our genes, significant, but also proof of a common ancestor. Current findings, based on dna evidence, is that human beings branched from chimps and the other apes about 6 million years ago, but stayed pretty close for a while, even interbreeding, but then there was a final branch.
I agree with others, anyone who says that one size fits all is wrong, human beings differ. High protein, low carb diets work for some people, high carb, low fat/protein work for others, it all depends. The reason I kind of made fun of the Paleo diet is people using ‘scientific’ justification to ‘prove’ how human beings shouldn’t eat grain, that is absolute, utter bs, and is trying to justify something that doesn’t need justifying, and worse, the Paleo people who turn this into religion, rather than being pragmatic (it is why I love my favorite nutrition site, precision nutrition, they look at diet and fitness scientifically and recognize one size doesn’t fit all). Paleo is basically way of eating that emphasizes complex carbs (differentiating it from the horrible Atkins diet) like green vegetables, protein (lean protein), then sparingly of simple carbs like fruit (because of the sugar), and most importantly, to stay the hell away from processed food. It is stupid to me, for example, not to eat olives because “Paleo man didn’t eat them”, paleo man ate what he could, and quite frankly, were not all that healthy, they often died young, they faced many years of famine before seeing a good year, and would gladly eat grain or beans or whatnot they could get their hands on. The uber Paleo people have romanticized a time when people were fighting for survival and as a result, take it to extremes I don’t think they should. It is a fact that without agriculture they didn’t eat a lot of grains or tubers or beans, but they did eat them when they could. I think that the grain based diet that the USDA promotes is not healthy for many people and is more about promoting the farm industry and grain farmers, the way that the huge subsidies for soy and corn is not necessarily a good thing.
Of course, then the question is, is that common ancestor an “ape”, however that is defined?
If “ape” refers to modern day chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons, then humans did not evolve from such apes.
However, if “ape” refers to the biological superfamily Hominoidea, then humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons (which are all within this superfamily) are apes, as is their last common ancestor.
@ucbalumnus:
The ancestors were also considered primates/apes, human beings split from a common ancestor with the chimpanzee. Among other things, the DNA of all primates are very close to one another, which means our common ancestor probably was not all that much different as well, the lack of variance would indicate that.
One the other hand, the way human beings often behave, the rest of the primates should protest and say “they didn’t evolve from my line, that is an insult!”
“I believe your genetics have your fate sealed at conception minus things like war, natural disasters, accidents etc…”
For a medical or biological professional, this statement would not be only unprofessional, but also irresponsible, but for a layperson it’s merely bizarre… And for someone interested in real information, here is one of the many articles that just begin to describe the complexity of genetic, epigenetic, and environmental networks and their interactions affecting our disease outcomes
http://www.nature.com/pr/journal/v61/n5-2/full/pr2007129a.html
Because some people go overboard on food fads or predictably use them as a marketing tool it doesn’t mean that eating a relatively “clean” diet composed of a balanced range of unprocessed foods isn’t a healthier choice than the typical American diet. Some people are lactose intolerant, have honest to goodness celiac disease, a tendency towards type II diabetes or genetically unfavorable cholesterol. If you have genetic leanings of course it makes sense for you to modify your diet to best accommodate that. Because we are sensationalists we seem to take every possible harmful or beneficial finding and jump on that particular bandwagon. There ARE people who are sensitive to dietary cholesterol and sodium. There ARE people who can’t tolerate much or any gluten for real reasons separate from food fads. I happen to have genetically fortunate lipid numbers (with an average build). I have a friend who is lean, eats a healthy diet and exercises regularly yet has unfortunate cholesterol numbers. That doesn’t cause her to throw in the towel and stop taking care of herself. What is does is to make her glad that she DOES take care of herself of it could be worse.
At any rate, in a nation of people who eat Fruit Loops, fast food hamburgers and go out to all our can eat buffets I don’t think we have to worry about people eating too healthily any time soon. At times while traveling I have resorted to getting a Subway sandwich with all the vegetables just to work some “fresh” veggies into the diet.