What do exercise and wild foods have to do with evolution? Watch this 13 min video

Lifestyle

Dan Pardi on 03/18/1974

What do exercise and wild foods have to do with evolution? Watch this 13 min video

Lifestyle

Dan Pardi on 03/18/1974

As part of the Harvard Thinks Big lecture series, Daniel Lieberman (Professor and Chair of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard) presents this talk on energy imbalance.

Here are a few take-aways:

Being overweight or obese is a symptom of long-term energy imbalance. Today’s energy intake is 300-900 calories higher than that of our great grandparents.
It was only about 600 generations ago that we started farming; it was only about 10 generations ago that we developed industrial manufacturing.
“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”
“All humans are obese from the perspective of a chimpanzee” (chimps have ~5% body fat).
Since we cannot change our biology (yet), we need to change our environments.
Drugs and medical procedures treat the symptoms of obesity, but not the underlying causes (energy imbalance). We have taken to treating the suffering without lessening the prevalence (which is an expensive path to take).
In pre-historic times, humans had to exercise and had to eat wild foods. Perhaps things are not so different these days…

Published by Dan Pardi

is passionate about food, movement, and sleep. Interested in developing low-cost, high value health solutions. Also interested in anthropology, evolutionary biology, exercise and inactivity physiology, cognition, neuroeconomics, decision making, circadian biology, epistemology, gastronomy, food culture and politics, agriculture, sustainable practices, and dogs. Activities include mountain biking, CrossFit, hiking, dancing, and long walks with my headphones. View more posts

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But some emerging evidence suggests that chocolate may also aid in exercise performance – weird as it may sound.

Here’s what the research says so far, and how it seems to work.

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One hour sounds like a small change, but it can make a big difference in how we function, at least in the short term. For example, data from the past two decades shows that there is a statistically significant spike in the number of car wrecks on the Monday immediately following the shift to Daylight Savings Time in the US.

As we all adjust to the time change, it’s worthwhile to consider how other aspects of our lives can sway our circadian rhythms. Circadian clocks govern the rhythms of sleep and activity in virtually all animals and are responsive to a variety of stimuli like light and stress. Research is starting to suggest that our eating patterns – specifically when we eat – can also have a pervasive impact.

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