EvoFitness

What is evolutionary fitness?

Evolutionary fitness is the insight that humans, like any animal, function best when exposed to the conditions for which they are best adapted. Those conditions are the diet, activity patterns, and other environmental stimuli that humans became genetically adapted to over the course of human evolution. Genetically speaking, humans have remained virtually unchanged for the last 40,000 years, but with the onset of the agricultural revolution (circa. 10,000 B.C.), and especially the industrial revolution, we have become exposed to a milieu far removed from our original circumstances. This includes a diet that consists heavily on consumption of grains, dairy, and the myriad of processed foods like donuts, cakes, and soft drinks. Furthermore, our ancestors had to hunt and gather their food, meaning they were very active. It's no coincidence then that as society becomes more mechanized and reliant on processed food stuffs, people are becoming more overweight, obese, and suffering from the so-called "diseases of civilization" (e.g. heart disease and cancer).

The prescription for what ails us then is to return to the diet and activity patterns for which we are adapted. Note that I say "patterns", not the actual lifestyle of our ancestors. These patterns consist of lots of low-intensity activity like walking, interspersed with bouts of high-intensity activity like sprinting and jumping. Very few advocates of evolutionary fitness are recommending that we actually return to the jungle! On the diet side of things, the food consumed during the paleolithic period by our ancestors basically included meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, little starch, and no sugar. The paleolithic diet is lower in carbohydrates, and higher in fat and protein than contemporary recommendations. Many studies have shown the efficacy of such diets in terms of weight loss and the markers for chronic disease.

In closing this introduction, this blog will serve to bring news and information about evolutionary fitness from around the web, and offer analysis of these concepts from my own research and personal experiences.