A ​táplálkozás százmillió éves története

by Stephen Le, Zsuzsa Varró (Translator)

Életünknek manapság kevés olyan területe van, amelyet annyi ellentmondásos információ terhel, mint az étrendünk: együnk sok húst, ne együnk sok húst, a teljes kiőrlésű gabonák egészségesek, a teljes kiőrlésű gabonák katasztrofálisak, csak bizonyos élelmiszereket szabad fogyasztanunk, mindent ehetünk, de mértékkel, és így tovább. A különböző kultúrák évszázados konyhái a bonyolult biológiai igények és a környezet által finomhangolt evolúció eredményei. Mit tehetünk az egészségünkért a tömegélelmiszerek korában? Stephen Le kanadai biológiai antropológus könyve elődeink táplálkozási stratégiáit feltáró nagy ívű történeti áttekintés, a világ különböző földrészein élő embereket és az ottani ételfogyasztási szokásokat bemutató szórakoztató útirajz, aktuális tudományos kutatás és meggyőző életmód-tanácsadó egyszerre.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food, History, Health, Science, Anthropology, Nutrition

300 pages

First published February 2, 2016

About the author

Stephen Le is currently a Visiting Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Ottawa. He received a Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2010 where he was a recipient of a UCLA Chancellor's Fellowship and a National Science Foundation grant for his fieldwork in Vietnam.

Reviews

[Shelby *trains flying monkeys* · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is just jammed packed with information. Don't worry though it doesn't read "heavy." The author is one of the better ones about not droning on and ending up sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher.
Stephen Le takes you with him on his quest for foodie knowledge, you feel like you are globe-hopping on the most ultimate trip of a lifetime. Because...food.


He tackles so many topics that I found interesting that I read this slowly so that it all could sink in. From the theory that eating a lot of meats and fats may make you more fertile and robust in your younger years to causing your life to end sooner than someone who eats a more low fat diet, to the sad fact that all these fad diets do not work. We know that deep down but everyone always jumps on the bandwagon of the latest fad. Including the doctor I work for..who is educated and should know better but alas.
We get to go with Le as he takes you into the worlds of the quest for true fish sauce (I totally was drooling here), a trip through commercial salmon hatcheries (I was not drooling here).

So much info. I LOVE stuff like this:
Castor oil is widely employed as a highly effective laxative, but the seed contain ricin, one of the most potent poisons know.
(and will make you sick as hell if you want to try an old wives tale and drink some hoping for your labor to start in late pregnancy..yes I was stupid.)

Christopher McCandless, the young American itinerant whose life was recounted in the popular book and movie Into the Wild, may have died from lathyrism incurred by eating wild-potato seeds while attempting to live off the land in the Alaskan woods. (He kinda was stupid too)

Stephen Le gives you things to think about without coming across as preachy.
As I discovered after moments of humilation like this, food in Japan is expensive, due to a confluence of high transportation and labor costs, limited growing season, shortage of arable land, and import barriers. At the other end of the cost spectrum, Americans enjoy access to the cheapest food in the world relative to income.

Don't think it's all just about food though, Le also takes looks at bacteria and parasite that our bodies may do better to just leave alone and let share our space. (totally gross) and something I had heard about but haven't given much thought. Squat toilets. I don't know if I want to be in the same country though if my husband has had Taco Bell and attempts one of these.


Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review.



This review is totally great for this book and describes it perfectly. Which is why you should always look through the reviews on here instead of just those top ones.

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This author tackles a variety of interesting topics, each one feeling like it could be the basis for its own book. He plunges right in, pointing out that many primates are insectivorous and that many traditional cuisines include insects on the menu. Fortunately or unfortunately (whichever way you choose to look at it), most of us have lost our taste for the chitinous creatures and our prejudices have rubbed off on those who earlier in history did enjoy this high protein foodstuff. (But just for the record, I am NOT joining this movement!)

Wherever you look nowadays, there is someone who is willing to tell you what you should be eating and why. Should we give up meat? If so, should we eat dairy products or should we go vegan? Should we be eating fish? How about agricultural staples like wheat or legumes? You can find opinions on all of these questions, just hunt around on the internet for a little while.

As Stephen Le points out, some of these issues are going to boil down to sustainability issues. We are rapidly depleting the ocean’s fish and clearing the oxygen-generating forests to create grazing land for cattle, which are quite inefficient at converting vegetation into flesh.

What I really liked was his sensible suggestion that we quit looking at food in terms of specific nutrients and instead consider it in whole cuisines. So a person should consider their genetic heritage and try eating more foods consistent with what their own specific ancestors ate. As a descendant of Danish immigrants, I am probably fine eating dairy products (while many Asian and Native Canadians lack the digestive enzymes to deal effectively with lactose). I should also consider including more fish in my meal planning (pickled herring, anyone?) to mimic the ancestral condition. However, I am a devoted maker of curries and stir fries, not very Scandinavian!

Lots to think about, but nothing startling. Yes, we should exercise more (going walking this evening), eat more like our ancestors (without worrying about going all Paleo), worry less about vitamin pills (as my doctor says, they just produce expensive urine), and eat real food (shades of Michael Pollen).

A nice summary for those who aren’t sure about all of the food wars raging in cyberspace.

[7jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating between 3.5 and 4.

This book is about how humans' relationship with food developed, and how we could benefit from choosing at least partly to follow the diets of our ancestors in the part of world we are (or are from, if ancestors immigrated). The author travels various parts of the world to see different ways of food, sometimes risking his health. He also talks about how our prehistoric ancestors developed their taste of food, from insects to fruits, to hunter-gatherer, to agriculture.

On chapters:
* insects: best as a side dish, has risks to eating it
* fruits: the danger of eating too much fruit; how ancestors came to need fruit and how our teeth changed to less sharp; use of acorns, breadfruit, coconut; the chili experience - chasing the pleasure after pain; uric acid
* meat (plus fat & oil): early ancestors' preferences, development, and tool use; paleo diet; cannibalism
* fish: fish sause; being taboo in certain places; fermented soybean sauce; glutamate & MSG
* starches (vegs): food experience in China; from hunter-gatherer to agriculture; plant use based on their effects (types from never-eaten to long-term-use) + preparation methods; wheat & celiac disease; FODMAP
* liquids (water, alcohol, milk): alcohol making history; milk drinking; dairy & acne; calcium; milk promotion in US; milk & height (plus risks)
* health issues: food deficiencies (beriberi, pellagra, rickets); nearsighteness; sunlight; allergies, eczema & asthma; vitamin D; mosquitos & parasites; diseases from animals (not just the plague)
* calories: restriction - human & animal; agricultural knowledge history; searching for reasons of rising obesity; physical inactivity; diet changes in Greece - city & islands; influences of Americans in Okinawa; squat toilets
* future: diet choices - low fat & -meat, traditional American farm type, paleo again; why knowing evolution and traditional diets matter; food fairness & sustainability; Australian traditional (meaning Aboriginal) food; food traditions in Canada (where the author has lived); salmons; GMOs; the Amish

In the afterword the author writes down the 10 things he considers important, which can ultimately be said in two: keep moving a lot, search and use your ancertors' traditional diet(s) along with the healthiest of today's.

I don't think I will touch the insects, or eat much game, and I think the author was a bit dismissive of "superfoods" (just because it's a current word, don't knock it completely), but in the end this book was informative and flowed easily, and made me think of what foods on my country I could include more in my diet. And I think this is the point of a good food-information book: you find knowledge that you can use in your life.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

One thought that kept recurring while reading 100 Million Years of Food was how thoroughly this all seems to put paid to the idea of "Intelligent Design". Because my overall conclusion from all of this is, lord, these bodies are not well put together. We are, apparently, evolved to seek out food that is sweet, but because of this we not only develop our crops for sweetness at the expense of other, more healthful, attributes, but the sweetness really does go straight to our hips. And hearts. And teeth. The diet of Western civilization leads to the the "diseases of Western civilization": "obesity, type 2 diabetes, gout, hypertension, breast cancer, food allergies, acne, and myopia"… Diet contributes to myopia? That's still something I need to research. Must remember to ask my ophthalmologist. I saved this: "children who play outside more frequently were found to be less nearsighted" – because THAT explains a lot. (Vitamin D deficiency? The activities that take the place of playing outdoors? I was doomed from the start.)

What kept startling me throughout the book was the assertion that – kind of as Susan Cain revealed that introversion is inborn and can't be easily ignored – there is just nothing you can do about some things, because one's dna has a lot to do with how well one does (or doesn't) thrive in a given environment. Stephen Le uses himself as the exemplar: the area of the globe his ancestors evolved to adapt to, Vietnam, supports a diet which is wildly different from what he grew up with in 20th century Ottawa, and perhaps there is a connection to the fact that his mother only survived her mother by a couple of years. Traditional cuisines adapt to the ecology native to a place, and the people of the area adapt to the traditional cuisine. The book slanted a different light on emigration for me: perhaps there is a bone-deep reason why some people don't thrive when transplanted… which, given the human urge to explore and wander, leads me back to amazement at the human body's fallibility. (Aha, there it is: "when Europeans started to populate sunny colonies in the Americas and Oceania beginning a few hundred years ago, and people from the tropics, like my parents, moved in the opposite direction, to frigid climes, the wonderfully adapted skin color suddenly became a liability.")

Oh, and then there's the little fact of multiple cases of "such-and-such is good for you, but if you succumb to the usual human thinking that 'if some is good more is better!" you will suffer or perhaps die"… Like: "Animals that browse too much on isoflavone-rich plants, such as ewes feeding on clover, can become sterile". And "Others worry about vitamin D deficiency and pop vitamin D pills, but the problem is that no one knows exactly how much vitamin D is a healthy dosage or how vitamin D supplements influence our immune system and increase our risk for diseases like cancer." Or the fact that eating animal products make you grow taller and stronger and all sorts of other good things, but will kill you earlier in the end. Or "In 1966, researchers in Israel observed that the incidence of multiple sclerosis increased with better sanitation, such as cleaner drinking water, less crowding, and the availability of flush toilets." Or "For middle-aged people, consumption of cholesterol and fat is likely to improve mood and sex drive, while there is not much evidence for long-term weight loss”.

Counterintuitive much? No wonder we're all so messed up.

The writing is a lot of fun. ("She brought a bottle of her home-brewed fermented soybean sauce to our house. It smelled like old shoes and tasted like tofu would if it went to a bar, got drunk, was mugged on the way home, and woke up with a hangover.") This is pop science at its best – mass quantities of excellent (if often depressing) information presented in a compulsively readable manner, and carried along by the author's own background and experience. One place this, hilariously, shows up is in the brief quotes that head each chapter:

The supreme irony is that all over the world monies worth billions of rupees are spent every year to save crops . . . by killing a food source (insects) that may contain up to 75% of high quality animal protein. — M. Premalatha et al., "Energ y- Efficient Food Production to Reduce Global Warming and Ecodegradation: The Use of Edible Insects"

If you eat that ant, I'll never kiss you again. — Ex- girlfriend during camping trip

I finished the book with a handful of nascent crusades roiling around in my heart – Save the red squirrels! Get everyone (except perhaps me) eating insects! Exercise (after one more chapter…)! Stamp out MSG (also known as autolyzed yeast, sodium caseinate, hydrolyzed vegetable protein)! Make sure all hospitals and nursing homes have only sunny and south-facing windows! Find whipworm eggs online - ! Wait. No. Not that one.

I received this book from Netgalley for review.

[Laura Leane · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book was terrible from the beginning, but not terrible enough to keep me from wanting to know what our ancestors ate and why it matters today, so i kept on... until i got to this gem of a line: "Like most other foods, plants have no nutritional significance on their own..." i couldn't infer from context what was meant, really, but it can't be worth my time, regardless.

[Rossdavidh · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a lot of books out about how we should eat. There are even a lot of books out about how we should eat things more like what our ancestors ate. So what does Stephen Le tell us that those other books don't? In some sense, his basic message is no different: you're eating junk, this isn't natural, eat more traditional foods and while you're at it get up and move more often.

However, as part of what one might call the "second generation of food naturalists", Le does give us a significantly different perspective. For example, he grew up in North America, and currently lives in Canada, but his ancestors came from Vietnam. This brings up an interesting, and in some ways disquieting, question. How important is it that he eat traditional Vietnamese food, as opposed to for example the traditional Mediterranean diet? We don't like to think of different ethnicities as having substantively different genes, but it's almost certainly not just our tolerance for milk, alcohol, and wheat gluten that differ from one ethnicity to another. Le is clearly a mainstream academic, politically (which is to say, far to the left of the rest of society), but he does not completely shy away from looking at the evolutionary implications of our having ancestors who, for millenia, lived radically different lives.

He is also willing to examine forthrightly questions like, why don't we eat insects? When Michael Pollan was trying to convince people to eat better food in "Omnivore's Dilemma", he (perhaps wisely) didn't try to convince us that insects are what we should be eating. However, they are high protein, take fewer resources to raise than birds or mammals, and almost certainly have less consciousness than birds or mammals and therefore slaughtering them raises fewer moral questions about suffering. Le, spends an entire chapter discussing his experiments with eating insects, and he does in in the very first chapter, when the reading audience is most likely to put the book down and say, "no thanks". The man has no (authorial) fear.

He then moves on, to look at fruits, meat, starches, and every other major food group, as well as a chapter on the curious fact that eating less and exercising more is guaranteed by the laws of physics to reduce your weight, but is not necessarily all that good of advice for someone wanting to lose weight. In every topic, he moves easily between the science, the history of the science, the history of the food group in question, and his own travels to every corner of the world to find more exotic foods to eat. He seems like a likeable and modest person, knowledgeable without sounding pretentious, adventurous without sounding full of himself.

In the end, the reason it is worth reading Le's book even if you have already read others on the same basic thesis, is that he spends relatively less time on the basic thesis of "eat more like your ancestors did", and more time on, "what exactly would that look like?" The experience of reading it was much like having a long, free-ranging discussion with a new friend over dinner one evening, the sort that does not only say things you already believe but also says things that point out interesting implications which you hadn't thought about before. I would love to have such a dinner conversation with the author someday. But not over insects.

[Shawn Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I normally enjoy these anthropolgy/evolution-based books on human eating habits and lifestyles but this one didn't quite deliver for me. The author attempts to go chapter by chapter through the various types of foods we eat and lifestyle habits and presents the arguement that we should be eating more in line with the way our ancestors (arbitrarily 500 years ago) ate. Specifically, if your ancestors are Vietnamese, you should eat like the Vietnamese 500 years ago, or if your ancestors are Peruvian, eat like pre-Columbian Peruvians (or Inka).

Okay this argument makes some sense, but agricultural societies have struggled with tooth decay, malnutrition and other issues for many thousands of years. Farming is notoriously hard on the human body and shifting from hunter/gatherer to farmer would have shortened a person's life. I don't think we need to adopt a hunter/gatherer lifestyle to achieve better health today, but I also don't think all traditional cuisines can be treated equally. Making unhealthy food choices is not something necessarily relegated to modern humans.

The advice he gives is also somewhat confusing. He talks about the benefits of fruit but then warns against too much. He discusses the risks associated with meat and dairy, but then tells the reader that there is nothing inherently unhealthy about meat. By the way, Americans don't exercise enough, but exercise doesn't correlate to better health outcomes anyway. This is the type of advice the reader can expect.

It's a good thing the author simplifies his premises in the afterward, otherwise I would have no way of determining them based on the ambiguity of the information from the book. That being said, I don't even understand how he came to the conclusions in the afterward based on the scientific research he presents because there doesn't seem to be any agreement.

I believe there are better books that tackle some of the things he discusses. If you are interested in improving health based on anthropological and evolutionary research, check out "The Story of the Human Body" by Daniel Lieberman. "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari is a good book to learn about the agricultural revolution and other ways we have constructed societies.

[Jonathan Morrow · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book and definitely made me think about my eating habits, both my actual behavior and what I aspire to. The writing is good enough that it is actually enjoyable to read. Most of the recommendations are pretty solid. My main complaint is that several of the findings presented as fact have little evidence supporting them, some have a preponderance of evidence against them, and a few are even downright preposterous. The little diatribe against GMOs near the end is a prime example of this. Overall, though, this is probably the least ridiculous of the diet-related books I've encountered.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

A misleading title. Anyway, with the power of 'grandma's stories' the author is building a fantasy case about nutrition. Some of the arguments are 'for decades cardiologists/orthopedists/cooks have said this', others are from the popular culture. A book made for the impressionable with openings like 'Most people today agree that something is wrong with...'

[Kristine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author is an engaging writer and I’m definitely jealous of his travels around the world in search of answers to the questions he posits. I really enjoyed reading this book. He questions some of our standard ideals of health and the pathway to reach that. The idea that the diet should be variable through the lifetime is an interesting one and not one that I have seen many other books on the subject tout. I like the idea of eating for your ancestry, but I think that in melting pot countries (like the US) the further you are separate from the immigrant generation of your family the more you tend to lose the connection to said ancestry and cultural traditions. The tradition becomes fast food and excess. I feel Dan Barber’s discussions of eating within your local ecosystem may be a more achievable goal for many of these populations.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just to get this out of the way, this book despite its title is not a paleo book.
And now on with the actual review.

I feel like this book is in the same vein as a Michael Pollan book.
I feel that the author of this book did more research than Michael Pollan and that he has more to say. However, I feel that two things make it hard for him to communicate his opinions well.

First, this book is not concise at all. It has a great deal of travel journalism scattered about. If you don't particularly care about a story line in a non-fiction book (I don't care for it) you may end up flipping through most of the book missing important points (as I probably did).

Secondly, although the author does cite studies (and has copious end-notes), he rarely makes convincing points. For example, he discusses the conflict between opinions on high carb/low fat conventional nutrition versus low carb/high fat/high protein paleo camps. He cites studies and comes up with an interesting conclusion but doesn't spend much time describing the thinking behind it and doesn't leave me thinking much differently on the topic. He also talks about how we lost the ability to digest insects well. Then later in the book he seems to be pro insect eating. He never seems to reconcile these opposing viewpoints.

All this being said, the author writes very well (better than Michael Pollan in my opinion). I also learned a couple of things from this book which is far better than average. This is enough to make me feel like I didn't waste my time (which is more than I can say for most similar books), but not enough to want to buy the book.

[مشاعل مجرشي · Rating 2 out of 5]

كتاب جيد لكن لا أظنه مناسبًا ليكون مدخلًا إلى قراءة مواضيع الطعام، وكما قلت سابقًا يسهب في أفكار التطور حد إقحامها في كل تفصيلة.

[Hutanu Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pentru că uit ce citesc dacă nu iau notițe, iată câteva dintre parafrazările din cea mai interesantă carte pe care am citit-o în ultimul timp (deși ar fi trebuit să pun vreo jumătate de carte) - 100 de milioane de ani de mâncare - Ce mâncau strămoșii noștri și de ce contează astăzi, scrisă de un antropolog-biolog, Stephen Le:
- Cea mai veche dovadă a fabricării alcoolului o avem de acum 7000 de ani, în China (alcool din orez).
- În țările cu mai mult calciu în nutriție se înregistrează mai multe fracturi de șold.
- Consumul ridicat de lactate în copilărie și adolescență duce la o creștere a înălțimii (din cauza hormonilor care se regăsesc în lapte).
- Lumina soarelui poate proteja împotriva miopiei (posibile explicații fiind: ajută la o mai bună focusare a imaginii și la formarea unei imagini mai clare pe retină, stimulează dopamina din retină). De exemplu, ochii albaștri au mai puțină melanină în iris decât au ochii negri, permițând astfel pătrunderea mai intensă a luminii. Astfel, s-ar putea explica de ce rata miopiei în Europa, unde sunt mai multe persoane cu ochi albaștri, e mai mică decât în Asia de est.
- Pentru că strămoșii noștri au trăit dintotdeauna cu paraziții, au creat un fel de pact cu ei - oamenii le sunt gazde, iar paraziții (majoritatea acestora) nu îi omoară. Numărul tot mai mare al persoanelor care au alergii se poate datora și igienei excesive la care am fost expuși în ultimii zeci de ani. Acum se fac chiar terapii cu paraziți pentru vindecarea bolilor autoimune, un exemplu bun fiind boala Crohn. Mai mult, evreii, care au ritualuri de curățare, nu mănâncă porc și tind să trăiască în orașe, departe de animale și deșeuri animale, au un număr mai mare de bolnavi Crohn.
- Câteva sfaturi pentru părinții care vor să-și ferească copiii de alergii: să îi expună mai mult la soare (pentru vitamina D), să evite folosirea săpunurilor antibacteriene și a antibioticelor, să obțină un echilibru mai bun între acizii grași omega 3 și omega 6 (prin creșterea consumului de grăsimi animale și diminuarea consumului de uleiuri vegetale).
- Deși se crede că strămoșii noștri vânători-culegători consumau mult mai puține calorii și făceau mult mai multă activitate fizică decât o facem noi acum, dovezile arată că nu este așa: avem aproape același consum de calorii și consumăm la fel de multă energie. Diferența este că strămoșii noștri se mișcau mai mereu, în timp ce noi avem perioade lungi de inactivitate (stat la birou, la TV, folosirea mijloacelor de transport etc.).
- În US și Canada nu există legi care impun etichetarea alimentelor care sunt obținute prin modificare genetică, deși peste 90% din porumb și 95% din trestia de zahăr este modificat genetic etc. (astfel, aproape mai toată populația consumă alimente modificate genetic, acestea reprezentând ingrediente în foarte multe alimente).
- Consumul moderat de alcool este benefic pentru sănătate, dar în cazul persoanelor de peste 40 de ani din țările dezvoltate, pentru că acesta reduce posibilitatea apariției bolilor de inimă (pentru persoane sub 40 de ani nu există acest pericol, iar în țările în dezvoltare, bolile infecțioase reprezintă o problemă mai mare decât cele cardiace).
- Se recomandă consumul moderat de carne și lactate în tinerețe, dar ridicat după vârsta de 60 de ani.
- În loc să ne axăm pe nutrienți, se recomandă să consumăm ce consumau și strămoșii noștri și să ne axăm pe bucătăria tradițională (cel puțin de acum 500 de ani), pentru că genele noastre s-au adaptat la acest tip de nutriție, pentru că bucătăria tradițională a fost obținută prin încercări și erori și au rămas mâncărurile care aduc cele mai mult beneficii și pentru că se susțin mâncărurile sustenabile, din ingrediente locale.

[Sajith Kumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it is undeniable that human health is in its most marvelous phase ever in its history, it is really hard to come across a person entirely satisfied about his state of health. Awareness and the tons of information on ailments reaching the common man has helped to ward off diseases, but the apprehensions about newer and stranger diseases keep the society on tenterhooks. As I write these words, the South Indian state of Kerala is in the throes of a battle against a previously unheard of viral disease caused by a kind of deadly pathogen known as the Nipah virus. Sometimes, the food we eat also forms the channel through which harmful bacteria and viruses reach our body. Even if we lay aside the menace of microbes for the time being, it is arguable whether we keep a healthy diet. With the changes in habitat and lifestyles, most people follow a diet that is greatly at odds with that of their ancestors. Also, the cherished notions about food and nutrition often turn out to be wrong when viewed in a broad context. This book is a valiant effort to reach an understanding of what our ancestors – not all of them humans, of course – ate in the last 100 million years of evolutionary history. It explains what we should eat and how we should lead our lives by combining the latest in scientific studies with a dose of evolutionary biology and a review of how people past and present ate and lived. It offers practical suggestions for tweaking the ancestral habits and inserting them into our daily lives to avoid or delay the onset of major chronic diseases. Stephen Le is currently a visiting professor of biology at the University of Ottawa. He received Ph.D in biological anthropology in 2010 and is an ethnic Vietnamese settled in Canada.

The eating habits of our primate ancestors underwent dramatic changes as a result of minor upsets in the genomic roadmap. Around 60 million years ago, our primate forebears lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C due to a genetic mutation in a single gene called GLO. They tided over this handicap by taking to fruits rich in the vitamin and were abundantly available in the surroundings. Similarly, between 40 and 16 million years ago, our ancestors progressively lost the genes for building uricase, the enzyme helping to dispose of uric acid from the body. As a result, uric acid levels in primates rose 3-10 times higher than other mammals, which however helped them to store fat, particularly after eating fruit.

The book repeatedly handles the pros and cons of eating liberal quantities of meat and dairy products. Meat is the greatest source of protein and in the long history of food, our affection for fruit pales in comparison to our affinity for meat. However, choosing an unusually large slice of meat comes with its own problems. Humans can’t consume more than 35-40% of calories in the form of protein due to the accumulation of toxic levels of ammonia and urea as byproducts of digesting and metabolizing protein. Fat and carbohydrates thus provide the bulk of calories needed by us. Stephen Le’s assertion that vegetables are not our original food source may surprise ardent Vegs, but he explains it why. Humans don’t have the specialized digestive systems or teeth that herbivores like guerillas or cows possess to grind and digest large quantities of unprocessed plant foods. The author shocks dairy enthusiasts as well with his prescient remark that compared to milk, alcohol is child’s play. In fact, milk is the most complex substance people consume.

Over the eons, our diet shifted from insects to fruits, meat, agricultural products like wheat, rice, potatoes and corn and then to milk and alcohol. Modern societies consume all these different genera of foods, but we are still unsure about what constitutes an optimal diet. Le asks rhetorically whether a healthy man in a great mood and being fertile and stronger at a younger age is to be emulated than another healthy old man delaying cancer for a couple of years and hanging out with his great-grandchildren. The book contains many good chapters on the tinkering required in diet for a healthy life. Calorie restriction is a good method for longer life, but studies point out that the calorie intake of modern people is much the same as primitive hunter gatherers. But the latter were slim and fit while the former fights a losing battle with obesity. The fraction of obese people as a proportion of the whole goes steadily up in every society. Le surmises that our voluntary inactivity may be the key to our expanding waistlines. Watching TV and indiscriminate usage of automobiles to cover even short distances are killing us slowly. To make his point, Le visits Ikaria in Greece and Okinawa in Japan to showcase the efficacy of long walks which are mandated by the geography of these islands. Anyhow, the traditional diets are fast receding into oblivion in these places too.

The book’s moral is easily evident as it is reiterated many times in the text. To lead a healthy and longer life, we need to practice exercises of moderate physical activity, adhere to traditional cuisines, and eat more animal foods when older. Going after traditional diets forces the author to hunt for restaurants that serve such bizarre fare as insects and crickets in Southeast Asia.

What is disappointing in the book is its painfully evident bias towards unscientific fads of modern society such as organic farming and mindless opposition to genetically modified (GM) foods. Of course, this is not the place for a full discussion of the pros and cons of organic farming and avoidance of chemical pesticides, but it is fairly obvious that the organic movement is not going to be good for the food security of the world in the longer term. Having lower crop yields, organic farming is a wasteful exercise that squanders precious resources such as land, seeds, water, manure and manpower. This is especially significant when the supposed ill-effects of scientific agriculture using chemical fertilizers and judicious use of pesticides are nowhere to be found. Le advocates ban on the use of genetically modified foods till more tests on its long-term safety are conducted. This is a self-defeating argument. How can you test them if you ban it outright and continue to arraign it in the media and every available forum? Europe keeps them at arm’s length while America continues to enjoy its varied flavours. So, a definitive answer to this puzzle might not be long in coming after all, when we learn that 93 per cent of soy, 90 per cent of corn, 95 per cent of sugar beet, 93 per cent of rape seed and 30 per cent of alfalfa crops in US and Canada are already GM. In order not to scare away customers, the manufacturers prefer not to indicate this fact on the product package. The book’s unsubstantiated attack on MSG (monosodium glutamate) is unscientific as the perceived after effects of consuming it is both fanciful and unproven. Le claims that German researchers have found that MSG can cause headaches (!) when ingested in large quantities! Is it such a big deal? Le admits that scientists and mainstream media discuss MSG concerns as uninformed public hysteria.

The first part of the book is very witty when we follow the author travelling to many remote parts of the globe in search of novel foods and read about pleasing adventures. After the first few chapters, the narrative loses focus and degenerates to the level of a dietary and health handbook. This book is not a record of the varied culinary stages through which human societies reached where they are today, but rather on what they should eat for better health. It impels the readers to follow sustainable farming practices that do not snatch food away from the plates of future generations.

The book is recommended.

[joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most books about food tend to bore me or make me never want to eat again for fear of eating the wrong thing. This one was very well written with some fun yet graphic descriptions of some specific "foods." I still am not sure what to eat, but it all sort of boils down to how bodies have evolved to handle different types of nutrients. Once I got into this book I could not put it down!

[Donna Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This book was fascinating. I really loved the first half. Instead of a boring text on food history, the author takes us along on his world travels to obscure places to eat bizarre traditional foods (eg bugs). It read like a novel! Or a travel show! I learned so much from this book, but it was so interesting that it whetted my appetite for more.

[Thai · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had a strong start but after awhile it kept going on random tangents. There was an inordinate amount of unnecessary information. If you like to torture yourself I highly recommend this book.

[Khan Ashraf Alif · Rating 1 out of 5]

It appeared as Super dragging to me

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intriguing and indepth study of world-wide history to modern era eating trends.

[Kati · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written, thought provoking, friendly and conversational..... Only once or twice did the author even verge onto using too much science-talk, but pulled it back to layman's terms before that became an issue. This reads as part travel-diary, part science (in layman's terms) breakdown of our evolutionary food-map. The author touches on some of the popular fad diets right now - Paleo/Primal, low-fat, traditional whole-foods, mediterranean..... Provides their place in our dietary evolution, and the pros & cons of each. He gives pointers with each chapter (yes, including the one on eating bugs) for how we might best make use of the knowledge, but then provides an 8-point break-down at the end in super-simple, easy to understand terminology. Ultimately it comes down to "move more, eat good food, let your body handle the rest."

My ONLY issue (and, this is more with my own background than his suggestions) would be discovering which ancestral food-traditions best suit me. I could say that I'm of a Northern European background, and be accurate, but I also know that I'm one of the rare Northern Europeans who does not digest dairy well (Thanks Mom! LOL). So, eating the un-processed dairy product common to my ancestry would be a disaster for me, personally. There's also the fact that my British, Scottish, & Irish ancestors (and those fewer Scandinavian and German ancestors) 500 years back ate a diet that it'd be difficult to discover with any real accuracy. So, this leaves me in a bit of a quandary as to what direction to go. It also leaves one (based on his suggestions for eating what our own ancestors ate) missing out on a lot of my favorite cuisines because by the author's estimates, my body hasn't "evolved" to eat the corn products of somebody with North American ancestors, or the varied asian ingredients of somebody with Asian ancestry.

Over all, recommending this book to anybody who finds discussion of our ancestors to be of interest.

[Coleen (The Book Ramblings) · Rating 3 out of 5]

100 Million Years of Food is a fascinating look into the human diet as it evolved throughout the years, and gives insight into understanding the history with food. While this has an abundance of information on a variety of topics, it isn’t overwhelming like some would possibly expect. It reads as a travel and food memoir with some ground covered that other similar books lack. It was interesting learn about the ethnic backgrounds and traditional diets found within cultures, and the outcome when it came to seeing any health changes or benefits. I enjoyed Le’s writing, and that he included bits from his travels and life because it gave the book more of a personal feel. This book covered so much information, but never really got in-depth on many of the topics discussed, so that was the only downfall I found while reading this. It did take me quite a while to get through this because I read little at a time, but it is one that I would recommend to anyone interested in nutrition or history.

I received a copy in exchange for an unbiased review from the publisher. All opinions are my own.

[Sam Gor · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Eat good food, keep moving, and let your body take care of the rest." is the last line of this book. SPOILER!

His message is clear and I liked it. Granted I found out about this book in an article online (Vice...i think?) and found his story about his mom and his grandma intriguing so I picked it up.

He goes through a lot. 100 million years is a lot of years.
The topics he covers are: insects, fruits, meats, fishes, starches, drinks, bacteria, calories, and the future of food.

I really enjoyed his narrative as he travels to places as he talks about each topics and makes things much more interesting compare to this sections of straight info dumping of history, people, and foods.

I would have prefer if he stuck with that narrative more compare to have breaks with the style. Some chapters would start with a story and I would preferred that for all the chapters. At least the context and his involvement would be first and then history and opinions.

[Tree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating! I really enjoyed this book. It was quite educational for me and I've taken a lot away from it.

Three points I found most enlightening:

- Two kinds of healthy: being strong and fertile is different to living longer
- Meat and dairy: Nutritionally dense but so much so that it impacts growth hormones which then lead to cancer. A diet high in calcium is proportional to height but tallest populations in the world also have the highest cases of hip fracture.
- Myopia: More and more people are becoming short sighted due to inadequate sunlight/VitD (stay indoors too much) and focusing on objects too close too often. Asians and blacks are especially at risk as their darker skin requires more sun exposure and so do the EYES! Message: get kids to play more outdoor sports. Ball sports would be even better for eye development.

[Kirsten · Rating 1 out of 5]

HOW👏IN👏THE👏WORLD does this book have such a high average rating?

I am honestly beyond flabbergasted. This book is by far one of the worst books I've ever read and I've read all 4 of the After books, so you KNOW this was bad.

Honestly from top to bottom it is a horrific mess. This book doesn't know what it is: science, history, anthropology, memoir, or opinion, and as a result Le just shoved as many random memories and boring stories that he could into the bubbling cauldron of suck that was this book. The pointless rambling about the science of food was not needed in the context of what his thesis apparently was, and if what he wanted to do was subtle brag about all the places he's visited he would have been much better off just writing a cultural/travel memoir.

To give you an idea of what I mean, let me refer to the section where he spends forever giving me a science lesson on the breakdown of plants and then goes "but people didn't really eat these plants back then." Ok, so then WHY SHOULD I CARE? Not only that, but Le spent a huge portion of this book talking about animals - not how humans have evolved to eat or not eat them, but just their general science and studies that have been done on how they digest foods. The best part? HE NEVER RELATES IT BACK TO HUMANS. Instead, he actually admits that these "studies were conducted on animals and showed this result, but there's no conclusive evidence that this applies to humans."

WHY👏SHOULD👏I👏CARE👏GIVE👏ME👏STRENGTH

As if that wasn't bad enough, he also tries way to hard to "be an author." The way he describes situations and stories is way too wordy and sounds like he's trying way too hard (which, let's be real, he probably is).

Here's one of my personal favourite (read: most hated) examples:

The interior of the tofu is milk white, fresh and flavorful, with a consistency of Jell-O, set off perfectly by its honey-hued deep-fried skin. When dipped into musky tuong jacked up with chilies, it's like a tango between an angel and the Devil, quivering white innocence wrapped in a lustful embrace.

TOFU AS AN ANGEL? I CAN'T HANDLE IT.

I don't think I can overstate what a hot pile of trash this book was. He keeps going back to countries and stories that are unrelated to what he's currently talking about (ex: ending the chapter on plants with a discussion of meat) BUT THE BEST was him adding a needless description of constipation and the benefits of squatting to poop, with a warning not to try it if you're not used to it. CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHAT IS HAPPENING? I'M PRETTY SURE YOU CAN'T!

Honestly this whole book just reads and feels like the papers I wrote in middle school. You know, those papers where you're really excited about the topic and do all this research and then can't bear to part with any information you learned so you just cram it all in to make a point - almost like you're saying "look, I learned stuff" even though it doesn't help prove your thesis. Le did this OVER AND OVER AGAIN, with one of the worst examples being the chapter on allergies. This section starts off relatively interesting and then quickly devolves into a general discussion on allergies and, for some reason, NEAR SIGHTEDNESS, with little to no references to the role diet plays in the allergy epidemic. Why are we TALKING 👏ABOUT👏THIS when your book is supposed to be on the evolution and effects of DI👏ET?! WHO LET THIS TRAIN GET SO FAR OFF THE RAILS?!

Le constantly contradicts himself, too, by referencing studies that show one thing and then immediately admitting that another study showed the exact opposite, so who really knows which was is up anymore? THANKS A BUNCH, DUDE, I FEEL LIKE I LEARNED SO MUCH.

Even the parts that were genuinely interesting ended up ruined. The calorie chapter had some interesting notes on the difference between our lifestyles and the traditional hunter gatherers but he still managed to turn it into more garbage by spending most of the time talking about animals and their diets in roundabout ways of proving a point, with even more research that doesn't contribute anything. He even added the year a book was published in brackets when he referenced it AS IF IT MATTERS TO HIS POINT.

And he then ends the book with a chapter on the future of food which is, you guessed it - a hot mess. Without subheadings these ideas all blend together and it takes me EVEN LONGER THAN USUAL to figure out what the heck he's talking about. Like one minute we're talking about the debate around the "best" diet and then we're talking about restaurants with no prices in Australia run by immigrants who might go to jail for tax evasion ??? He also seems to think that it’s necessary to include a woman’s whole career history. He literally spends two pages telling us how she started a restaurant with her ex-husband, got divorced, went back to school, and then still couldn’t find success with restaurants. What was the point of including this if it doesn’t educate me about what he’s trying to tell me?

(Although let’s be real this chapter isn’t about anything anyway so, who cares? Anything seems to go here.)

The reviews on the back of this trash heap say that the travel memoir and biology bits support his thesis, but I'm still left wondering WHAT IS THE THESIS? The other reviewer seems to think that it's that you shouldn't stray from your ancestral diet but that is not clear AT👏ALL.

I will finish this review with the wise words of my best friend who, upon hearing me read a selection of this terrible dumpster fire out loud, responded with a disgusted expression:

"Ugh, just shut up. He's just trying to fill a book by adding words where they don't need to be."

If that doesn't give you everything you need to know about this, I don't know what will.

[Giselle Odessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

يشرح لي ما الذي يجب علينا تناوله، وكيفية العيش مع مزج الدراسات العلمية في الطب والتغذية البشرية، مع الاحياء التطورية، كما يقارن حياة الناس وطعامهم سابقاً وحالياً.

يوضح لي كذلك كيف أن مطابخ الثقافات المختلفة هي نتيجة قرون من التطور لتلائم المحيط مع تركيبنا الاحيائي، وكيف أن الطعام المنتج تجارياً وبوفرة يؤدي إلى الأمراض الغربية مثل السرطان وأمراض القلب والبدانة.

الكتاب مفيد ومسلي ويحتوي على الكثير من المعلومات المفيدة.

[Mho Plal · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب فاشل اخذته توصية من تويتر وربع الكتاب كان يتكلم عن طعم الحشرات والباقي كان عربدة عالم انثروبولوجي وبديهيات تمرن وكل زين ولاتكثر طعام وترا المقالي والكمكلز كخه
قراءة غير موفقه الا شوي معلومات وحالات
صحية مثيره للاهتمام ثلاث نجوم عشان قصر المتاب وسهولة الفهم والي مات من التفاح بالصفحة ٤٠ كنت وقتها اقرا الفصل وانا اكل تفاح اخضر

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Based on the title I thought that would be more focus on prehistoric eating habits. I felt that's at times the author went off on certain overly scientific tangents.

[Mustafa Hasson]

❞ الطعام ليس مجرد وقود لأجسامنا،بل هو جزء من تراثنا الثقافي والتطور البشري ❝

[Dhuha Sadiq · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب رائع عن الطعام يطرح العديد من الاراء ويحاول ان يصل إلى إجابات مقنعة بالسفر بين شرق الارض وغربها وتجربة العديد من الاطعمة التقليدية.

[Shurouq · Rating 4 out of 5]

تجربة ممتعة ومثيرة للاهتمام خليط من الحديث عن الصحة والتاريخ والبيولوجيا والسياسة وغيره .