Ancestral Diets and Nutrition

Ancestral Diets and Nutrition supplies dietary advice based on the study of prehuman and human populations worldwide over the last two million years. This thorough, accessible book uses prehistory and history as a laboratory for testing the health effects of various foods. It examines all food groups by drawing evidence from skeletons and their teeth, middens, and coprolites along with written records where they exist to determine peoples? health and diet.

Fully illustrated and grounded in extensive research, this book enhances knowledge about diet, nutrition, and health. It appeals to practitioners in medicine, nutrition, anthropology, biology, chemistry, economics, and history, and those seeking a clear explanation of what humans have eaten across the ages and what we should eat now.

Features:

• Sixteen chapters examine fat, sweeteners, grains, roots and tubers, fruits, vegetables, and animal and plant sources of protein.
• Integrates information about diet, nutrition, and health from ancient, medieval, modern and current sources, drawing from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
• Provides comprehensive coverage based on the study of several hundred sources and the provision of over 2,000 footnotes.
• Presents practical information to help shape readers? next meal through recommendations of what to eat and what to avoid.

Contents

List of Figures...................................................................................................................................xv

List of Tables....................................................................................................................................xxi

List of Graphs.................................................................................................................................xxv

Preface..........................................................................................................................................xxvii

Acknowledgments..........................................................................................................................xxix

Author............................................................................................................................................xxxi

Chapter 1 Introduction and Method...............................................................................................1

Chapter 2 Components of Nutrition: Calories, Carbohydrates, Fat, Protein, Minerals,

Vitamins, Phytochemicals, and Water........................................................................27

Chapter 3 Changing Circumstances and Diets............................................................................ 61

Chapter 4 Meat............................................................................................................................. 91

Chapter 5 Fish and Shellfish...................................................................................................... 121

Chapter 6 Poultry and Eggs....................................................................................................... 149

Chapter 7 Dairy.......................................................................................................................... 179

Chapter 8 Legumes....................................................................................................................207

Chapter 9 Nuts........................................................................................................................... 241

Chapter 10 Fat.............................................................................................................................. 267

Chapter 11 Sweeteners: Honey, Sucrose, and High Fructose Corn Syrup.................................. 295

Chapter 12 Grains........................................................................................................................ 323

Chapter 13 Roots and Tubers....................................................................................................... 355

Chapter 14 Fruits......................................................................................................................... 391

Chapter 15 Vegetables.................................................................................................................. 417

Chapter 16 Conclusion................................................................................................................. 439

Bibliography..................................................................................................................................447

Index...............................................................................................................................................483

Christopher Cumo is a historian with interests in the natural sciences and agriculture. He seeks

in some small way to illuminate how biology has shaped history. This is his ninth book and second

with CRC Press. Besides writing books, he has edited a three-volume encyclopedia and contributed

articles and reviews to journals, entries to encyclopedias, and articles and short fiction to magazines.