the Inuit derive something like 98% of their calories from animal sources and are virtually untouched by Western disease, and concludes that very high consumption of (unprocessed) animals is perfectly fine
Just how genetically isolated are the Inuit?
I am thinking of things like the evolution of adult lactose tolerance, and wondering if what’s good for the Inuit might be different from what’s good for the rest of us. I’d expect the ability to consume large amounts of meat without ill effects would be pretty powerfully selected for, in an environment where nearly all calories come from meat.
The selective pressure on being able to digest lactose as an adult is stronger than the selective pressure to not develop heart disease from eating too much meat, since the former kills you before you can reproduce. Lindeberg claims that humans have sufficiently recent common ancestry that, in absence of the kill-you-before-you-reach-childbearing-age selective pressures, we’re able to generalize from group-to-group fairly well. Non-Inuit probably do worse than Inuit on Inuit diets, and bool is_Inuit is a useful input in a program to produce an optimal soylent blend for someone, but the selective pressure isn’t strong enough for the Inuit to be mostly devoid of heart disease [1] simply because it was selected for.
Also, many other hunter-gatherers from all over eat large amounts of meat (though as much as the Inuit) and are just as devoid of Western disease as are the Kitavans, who consume relatively little, which supports the hypothesis that Inuit aren’t mostly devoid of heart disease because they’re genetically unusual.
[1] IIRC Inuit do suffer from slightly more Western disease than Kitavans (most calories from plants), but not by a very impressive margin.
And also, where the Inuit live it’s frigging cold, and maybe a protein-rich diet like theirs is only healthy in cold weather (and a protein-poor diet like pre-WW2 Okinawans’ is only healthy in warm weather) for some reason or another. (Anecdotally I tend to eat much less meat during the summer, which may or may not have something to do with that.)
Just how genetically isolated are the Inuit?
I am thinking of things like the evolution of adult lactose tolerance, and wondering if what’s good for the Inuit might be different from what’s good for the rest of us. I’d expect the ability to consume large amounts of meat without ill effects would be pretty powerfully selected for, in an environment where nearly all calories come from meat.
The selective pressure on being able to digest lactose as an adult is stronger than the selective pressure to not develop heart disease from eating too much meat, since the former kills you before you can reproduce. Lindeberg claims that humans have sufficiently recent common ancestry that, in absence of the kill-you-before-you-reach-childbearing-age selective pressures, we’re able to generalize from group-to-group fairly well. Non-Inuit probably do worse than Inuit on Inuit diets, and bool is_Inuit is a useful input in a program to produce an optimal soylent blend for someone, but the selective pressure isn’t strong enough for the Inuit to be mostly devoid of heart disease [1] simply because it was selected for.
Also, many other hunter-gatherers from all over eat large amounts of meat (though as much as the Inuit) and are just as devoid of Western disease as are the Kitavans, who consume relatively little, which supports the hypothesis that Inuit aren’t mostly devoid of heart disease because they’re genetically unusual.
[1] IIRC Inuit do suffer from slightly more Western disease than Kitavans (most calories from plants), but not by a very impressive margin.
And also, where the Inuit live it’s frigging cold, and maybe a protein-rich diet like theirs is only healthy in cold weather (and a protein-poor diet like pre-WW2 Okinawans’ is only healthy in warm weather) for some reason or another. (Anecdotally I tend to eat much less meat during the summer, which may or may not have something to do with that.)