Â鶹Éç

summery

Can eating like an ape improve your health?

The prominence of diseases connected to high cholesterol and blood pressure in the world’s population raises the issue of whether our current western diet is a major factor in the development of cardiovascular illness, hypertension, stroke and diabetes.

Are we paying the price for eating processed foods?

We took ten volunteers back in time to take a leaf out of the book of our ancestors in order to investigate what impact our short, sharp, shock would have on reducing the risk of fatal illnesses.

At the end of the period we tested the biological markers cholesterol and hypertension as the measures of our success. In just twelve days our group’s total cholesterol fell by 23% and we also saw a sharp decrease in sodium levels.

So, what does this show? That simply by introducing changes into our diet, by aping our ancestors, we can dramatically improve our health.

See an example of what our Evo dieters ate.

The study dietician was Lynne Garton, a registered dietician and nutritionist.

Suggested recipes from Â鶹Éç Food

A healthy salad recipe

Fruit salad recipe

Elsewhere on Science & Nature

Â鶹Éç Science

How our ancestors ate

Elsewhere on the web

Information from the British Heart Foundation

Facts on blood pressure

Human diet timeline

Improve diet, minimise statins

Fun with fungi

Wild food foraging

Foraging for your food

The Â鶹Éç is not responsible for the content of external sites.