Today’s interesting fact has to do with the Brain.

The brain is the most engergy intensive organ in our body.

It uses 20% of the energy that we get from our food.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with what type of food our ancestors ate.

From studying bones and teeth, and the various isotopes found within them, they have found they can accurately determine the diet of the creature they are studying as well as where the animal grew up and if it moved from one area to another.

From their studies we know that before 10,000 BC, the average human ate average of probably 65% plant to 35% animal derived foods.

After 10,000 BC depending on where they were in the world, this changed to as high as 90% plant to 10% animal derived foods.

Before 10,000 BC humans got their animal protein from various sources.

In order of decreasing importance to the diet or if you prefer the amount they ate, we have insects or their grubs, small lizards, mammals and birds, fish, shellfish, and the occasional large animal.

It is also interesting to note that before 10,000 BC, the average human was taller, stronger and healthier than after 10,000 BC when they became weaker, shorter and had more infections.

There are multiple reasons for the decrease in health the ancients but one they have positively identified is the switch to a more vegetarian diet.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with raw food and diet.

A couple weeks ago, I heard a science podcast where a Palaeobiologist who is also an Archeologist was being interviewd about our ancestors and the food they ate.

He pointed out that our digestive system has been fine tuned to eating cooked foods.

During the interview this he pointed out that given the sources of foods our ancestors had access to, if one of us would slowly starve on a raw vegetable diet as we could not eat enough to provide the nutrients our bodies need.

This suggests that we have eaten cooked foods long enought for our digestive system to rely on it.

Today’s interesting fact has to do with dogs.

I wrote earlier about the new evidence that humans and dogs have co-existed for more than 32,000 years.

An article I read a little while ago asked why humans would have domesticated dogs, because as carnivores they would compete with humans, and that that competition would contraindicate the relationship.

However, another article suggested that as dogs are eaten over a large part of the world, and that dogs have been shown to been eaten everywhere in the world at one time or another, domesticating dogs would have made sense, especially if larger litters were selected for as well as breeding more than once a year.

A bitch that is nursing doesn't eat much more than they do when they are not, they tend to move about less and use less energy than they would normally.

As the owners of the litter would only want to keep one or two from a litter at most, and that they would be concentrating on selecting those in the litter that got on with humans best, the rest of the litter would be available for the common pot.

This would explain why dogs breed more than once in a year, unlike wolves, as well as the larger than normal wolf litter sizes most dogs have.

Today's interesting fact has to do with food prices.

Overall food prices have more than doubled over the past 20 years.

Items such as coffee and tea have risen much faster than many other food stuffs, but perhaps the greatest increase has been in bottled water.

But even stapes, such as wheat, rice and potatoes have also had massive increases.

A sack of rice which was purchased two years ago for £5.00, costs more that £10.00 this year.

Today's interesting fact is short and sweet and has to do with chemicals.

In response to all those individuals who have insisted they do not want food or drinks with chemicals in them, and in response to those companies that advertise their products as being chemical free, the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK, has a million pound prize for anyone who can produce a material or substance that does not have any chemicals in it.

I get so many thoughts during the day, I have to remember to type them out on here, even if no one else ever reads them, at least I get a release from the thoughts that invade my head.

I read a lot of scientific journals... for my enjoyment I hasten to add, no one says I have to read them, I just enjoy it. And sometimes I put things together on reading them.

Corn Syrup, and more importantly High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is used more and more in our foods and drinks.

Now in a study, that has just been released this week, it seems that animals that have a lot of fructose in their diet, (and no matter what others say, we are animals), are more likely to to become obese and to develop diabetes.

Before anyone says anything, they have also studied humans on diets high in fructose, and found that we humans are more likely to become obese on the diet and perhaps the diabetes is the same.

So why don't they use Corn Syrup for alcohol to run our cars, and leave it out of our foods?