Ancestral diets and modern diseases

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Sudano, Maurizio^a | Gregorio, Franco^b

Affiliations: [a] Servizio di Diabetologia e Malattie metaboliche, ASUR Marche Z.2 Urbino, Urbino, Italy. e-mail: [email protected] | [b] Unità Operativa Semplice di Malattie Metaboliche e Diabetologia, Ospedale Civile “E. Profili”, Fabriano, Italy

Abstract: Diet has had a deep and wide-ranging impact on human evolution. Contemporary genome was originally selected for the lifestyle of ancestral humans. Since human genome has little changed since the emergence of behaviourally modern humans, the study of prehistoric hunter–gatherer diet could be regarded as a paradigm for modern humans. The discordance between our ancestral, genetically determined biology and the nutritional and activity patterns of contemporary western populations could be the common soil for the emergence and wide spreading of metabolic disease, such as obesity and T2 diabetes.

Keywords: Evolutionary medicine, Paleo-diet, Nutrition, Insulin-resistance

DOI: 10.3233/s12349-011-0067-6

Journal: Mediterranean Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 181-189, 2011