On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 21:38:49 +0900, Tom Bridgeland
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>some good articles on ananova:
>
>http://www.ananova.com/news/
>index.html?keywords=Science+and+discovery,Health,Food

I'm not sure which article you are referring to, but here's on (filed 22
October 2003) that starts out looking promising, but heads off in a non-
Paleo way:

"Calorie-packed fast food encourages over-eating and weight gain because
it is out of step with human evolution, scientists have said.  They
pointed out that humans are designed for conditions in which food is
relatively scarce and low in energy.  But fast food from take-aways and
convenience stores is typically energy dense."

[Low in energy?  I thought we were looking at high fat diets, dense in
energy]

"...Nutrition expert Professor Andrew Prentice ... head of the Medical
Research Council's International Nutrition Group at the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: "We all possess a weak innate ability
to recognise foods with a high energy density. We tend to assess food
intake by the size of the portion, yet a fast food meal contains many more
calories than a similar-sized portion of a healthy meal.
"Since the dawn of agriculture, the systems regulating human appetite have
evolved for the low energy diet still being consumed in rural areas of the
developing world where obesity is almost non-existent.
"Our bodies were never designed to cope with the very energy dense foods
consumed in the West and this is contributing to a major rise in obesity."

[This seems to draw the opposite conclusion I would draw from the same
evidence!  'Rural areas of the developing world' sounds to me like an
agricultural environment based on grains and tubers, probably over-
populated with humans, not an environment rich in game animals and wholly
sustainable.]

Keith