Summary Notes: Diet and Nutrition Workshop
Workshop Rapporteurs: Jay T Stock (U Cambridge) Claudia R Valeggia (U Pennsylvania)
Workshop Leader: William R Leonard (Northwestern)
One of five workshops in a conference on
“Evolution and Diseases of Modern Environments”
Organized by Randolph Nesse, at the Berlin Charité October 13-14, 2009
In conjunction with The World Health Summit
Sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation
The following provides a brief summary of the discussions of the Diet and Nutrition Workshop at the Symposium “Evolution and Diseases of Modern Environments”. Discussions were broadly based around two themes: (1) diet and nutrition in earlier human evolution, and (2) recent human evolution, dietary adaptation and the origins of “diseases of the modern world”. A summary of these is provided below, followed by a discussion of the relevance of dietary trends in human evolution to understanding the etiology of diseases of the modern world, some general points of agreement between the participants, and proposed areas of future research.
Theme I: Diet in Earlier Human Evolution (more…)