Discuss man's transition in diets as this country has progressed from from an

agricultural economy to a technological economy.

The industrial economy replaced the agricultural economy, leading the population to
move from rural locations into urban centers. At the same time, motorization was causing
cities to expand because motorized transportation could not support the population
density that the existing mass transit systems could. Suburbs provided a reasonable
compromise between population density and access to a wide variety of employment,
goods, and services that were available in the more densely populated urban centers.
Further, suburban infrastructure could be built quickly, supporting a rapid transition from
a rural/agricultural economy to an industrial/urban economy.American Indians of central
Brazil, called, the Kayapo are a modern version of hunter gatherer people. With chickens,
crops such as corn, sweet potatoes, sweet manioc and yams and a hunting lifestyle they
represent a transition from a hunter-gathering lifestyle to an agricultural lifestyle. What
they caught by hunting, be it a tortoise, deer, fish or a wild pig, they had to share and they
discouraged selfishness. Women worked in groups to gather fruit, nuts and plants from
the same forest where the men hunt. Ironically, on finding a high fruit tree, they cut it
down with a metal axe to harvest the ripe fruit. This behaviour shows both ignorance and
little reverence for the forest they protect and own. Not long ago these people would not
have possessed metal tools, so this destruction of their own forest is the result of a
technological advance that has not been properly or rationally incorporated into their
culture. The result of this introduction of a simple technological innovation reflects much
on human nature and how we adapt
Discuss why a high fat diet worked for prehistoric man since grains were not availabe.
When grains did become available, what was the dietary change and was it good or bad.
But the truth is that among prehistoric human cultures, both the fat and high cholesterol
liver were highly prized parts of animals they hunted. They ate the liver raw soon after
the kill. And they removed every last bit of fat from the animal and rationed it, adding it
to all meals, even meals of vegetable origin. Unlike most people in modern America, they
knew the value of animal fat and the important role it played in human nutrition. The
leanest cuts of meat became food for their dogs.
Scientific interest in the evolution of human nutritional requirements has a long history.
But relevant investigations started gaining momentum after 1985, when S. Boyd Eaton
and Melvin J. Konner of Emory University published a seminal paper in the New
England Journal of Medicine entitled "Paleolithic Nutrition." They argued that the
prevalence in modern societies of many chronic diseases--obesity, hypertension, coronary
heart disease and diabetes, among them--is the consequence of a mismatch between
modern dietary patterns and the type of diet that our species evolved to eat as prehistoric
hunter-gatherers. Since then, however, understanding of the evolution of human
nutritional needs has advanced considerably-- thanks in large part to new comparative
analyses of traditionally living human populations and other primates--and a more
nuanced picture has emerged. We now know that humans have evolved not to subsist on a
single, Paleolithic diet but to be flexible eaters, an insight that has important implications
for the current debate over what people today should eat in order to be healthy.

Tanny McNamara