I don’t agree. Most pseudoscience is created by and for people who don’t understand science.
It has to look sufficiently “sciency” to the target audience. Different target audiences have different expectations on what a proper scientific theory within a certain domain should look like.
From what I understand, hunter-gatherers eating traditional diets have very low rates of cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and obesity—the so-called diseases of civilization.
How do you know the rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. of paleolithic humans? Anyway, many paleolithic humans died in their childhoods, and those who did make to their adulthood rarely lived past their forties, therefore it seems pretty natural that they had lower rates of diseases that correlate with old age.
The rapid growth of obesity in the modern world shows that something is seriously wrong with modern diets and going to a paleo diet, which evolution conditioned us to for millions of years, seems like a safe alternative.
Considering different target lifespans, paleo diets don’t strike me as particularly safe. For instance, eating a lot of meat could have given a paleolithic man an evolutionary edge, even if such diet clogged his arteries and would eventually have killed him by heart attack at the age of 60, because he probably never got to reach the age of 60 anyway.
hunter-gatherers...have very low rates of...the so-called diseases of civilization.
How do you know the rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. of paleolithic humans?
James said HG, not paleolithic. We can look to modern HG and observe their causes of death. This does become a problem when he wants to make evolutionary arguments. Do they eat the same as in the paleolithic? Do we even know what people ate then? If we can’t compare modern HG to ancient, the causes of death of ancient ones are irrelevant, but we can still consider adopting the diet of modern HG (with less justification).
paleolithic humans...who did make to their adulthood rarely lived past their forties
Where do you get this figure? According to wikipedia, modern HG live about 40 years from age 15. Numbers I’ve seen from the paleolithic are similar, but much less precise. I think Caspari-Lee and Trinkhaus both expect the median paleolithic adult to reach 45.
Where do you get this figure? According to wikipedia, modern HG live about 40 years from age 15. Numbers I’ve seen from the paleolithic are similar, but much less precise. I think Caspari-Lee and Trinkhaus both expect the median paleolithic adult to reach 45.
I went by memory. But anyway, if the total life expectancy at 15 was about 55, it would still be the case that they would have been disproportionally less subject to old-age diseases than we are.
(and anyway, modern hunter-gatherers are generally at least neolithic, not paleolithic)
It has to look sufficiently “sciency” to the target audience. Different target audiences have different expectations on what a proper scientific theory within a certain domain should look like.
How do you know the rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. of paleolithic humans?
Anyway, many paleolithic humans died in their childhoods, and those who did make to their adulthood rarely lived past their forties, therefore it seems pretty natural that they had lower rates of diseases that correlate with old age.
Considering different target lifespans, paleo diets don’t strike me as particularly safe. For instance, eating a lot of meat could have given a paleolithic man an evolutionary edge, even if such diet clogged his arteries and would eventually have killed him by heart attack at the age of 60, because he probably never got to reach the age of 60 anyway.
James said HG, not paleolithic. We can look to modern HG and observe their causes of death. This does become a problem when he wants to make evolutionary arguments. Do they eat the same as in the paleolithic? Do we even know what people ate then? If we can’t compare modern HG to ancient, the causes of death of ancient ones are irrelevant, but we can still consider adopting the diet of modern HG (with less justification).
Where do you get this figure? According to wikipedia, modern HG live about 40 years from age 15. Numbers I’ve seen from the paleolithic are similar, but much less precise. I think Caspari-Lee and Trinkhaus both expect the median paleolithic adult to reach 45.
I went by memory. But anyway, if the total life expectancy at 15 was about 55, it would still be the case that they would have been disproportionally less subject to old-age diseases than we are.
(and anyway, modern hunter-gatherers are generally at least neolithic, not paleolithic)
How would that happen in practice?
Even that would screen out most diseases relevant to modern humans.