If you’re a fan of “paleo”
diets, you might be in for some bad news: eating
starchy foods was part of the reason human brains are so large. Meat-heavy
diets have been around for years, but a recent trend has been to tie them to
early human evolution, and argue that they are, therefore, better for us. The
trend is largely based on science that suggests that eating meat, specifically
cooked meat, was the key to developing larger brains, which in turn allowed us
to develop language, civilization, and, my personal favorite, the internet.
However, according to a new
study, while eating meat may have spurred brain development, eating carbohydrates
is what allowed us to keep it going. The brain requires about 60% of the blood
glucose that your body produces, and it’s much more efficient to give the brain
what it wants by eating carbohydrates. Furthermore, low blood glucose levels
during pregnancy and lactation can threaten the health of both mother and child.
Starches, which are the principle source of carbohydrates, were readily
available to early humans, and the development of cooking made digesting them
much easier. And to top it all off, we developed salivary amylase genes to
break down those carbohydrates. Our bodies, as they currently exist, evolved to
eat both meat and carbohydrates, not one or the other. So why choose?
This new study gives us some
important insight into the development of early humans. Since about 800,000
years ago, human brain size has been increasing, though obviously the most
significant growth was earlier in the process. But that growth was facilitated
by eating carbohydrates, which allowed for earlier brain development in
fetuses, which in turn led to larger brains overall. The research also has
implications for modern dieters as removing entire food groups from your diet,
or even just severely reducing them, can have negative effects on your health. It’s
important to think carefully about what we’re putting in our bodies—how it’s
going to affect us, both in the short-term and the long-term.
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