Human Nutrition from an Evolutionary Perspective

Should we eat like our ancestors? What did they eat? What nutritional problems may have accompanied the dietary shift from a hunting and gathering to agricultural and modern sedentary modes of existence. We will discuss possible answers to these and other questions and approach human nutrition from an evolutionary perspective, derived in part from Wrangham’s How Cooking Made Us Human, Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, and the fossil and archeological records. We will also examine the diets of “modern” primitive societies and of our primate relatives. Using these perspectives and our current understanding of nutrition and human biology, we will critically examine the ways we eat, how we possibly ought to eat, and why different diets seem to work (or not). We will also discuss the effect of exercise on gene activity and, possibly, such topics as the dietary origins of vitamin B12, the role of fats and lipoproteins in heart disease, and the genetic origin of various human populations. Emphasis will be placed on a critical approach to both written and virtual forms of scientific and popular resource material. Students will write several short papers, a term paper, and will make oral presentations of nutritional topics. This course satisfies the Biology elective credit. Students who have taken FYSE 1095 are not eligible to register for this course. (BIOL 0140 and 0145; or by approval).