Genes that make you fat and alcoholic

Today's interesting fact has to do with fat and alcohol.

They have recently discovered that there chemicals that are produced in the hypothalamus that control your desire to eat fatty foods and/or drink alcoholic liquids.

The amount of these chemicals produced have been found to be controlled by specific genes, and they have shown that certain alleles of those genes produce more than others.

I've already discussed about how they found there are additional taste buds that identify different types of fats on your tongue, and that they've shown that we can suffer cravings for specific types of fat and oil in our food.

This suggests that we are less under control of what we desire to eat, than doctors thought.

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 iodine and the lack of it in the British Diet.

Countries that depend on the sea to produce a large portion of their diet usually don't seem to have problems with iodine deficiencies.

Britain historically was one of those countries.

Unfortunately eating habits have changed; people are eating less food sourced from the sea.

While fish have some iodine in them, the amount various tremendously, shell fish usually have more iodine in them but kelp or seaweed is the best source of iodine.

And until the early 1900's many foods produce in the UK had many foods that contained seaweed extracts.

More recently, the largest portion of iodine in the British diet came from milk, but fewer people drink milk in amounts required and are not meeting their dietary needs.

The World Health Organisation has recently put out a warning that many who live in Britain are deficient in Iodine and suffering from the effects.

This includes thyroid problems and weight gain.

When this was published, I went to every supermarket I could reach, including Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys and the only supermarket I've found so far that has iodized salt is Lidls.

Today's interesting fact has to do with diet. Mostly because I'm constantly told to diet, but partially because we have been told that our ancient ancestors ate mostly meat and vegetables, without foods that are high in carbohydrates. This impression seems to have come about because archaeologists in the past have been too diligent to clean and sterilise both the tools they used as well as the artefacts they have found, without checking the embedded plant materials within or on the surface.

When I was a child, the scout troop I belonged to used to go on survival hikes. Our scout masters had made arrangements with certain farmers for the use of their woods and fields in our search for food. We were required to only find wild forage, and not allowed to raid local crops. We spent our time, searching for wild food which consisted of, roots, berries, fungus, leaves and the like, then preparing it what we found, getting it ready for our three meals. While we were taught how to create snares and traps, except for catching fish, we were not allowed to use what we had learnt for getting meat. Instead, we would be provided with a certain amount of eggs and meat, which were kept refrigerated by our scout masters and doled out every morning and evening to have with what ever we had found in the surrounding forests and fields.

One of the foods we ate, on a limited basis was the root of bull rushes, which we called Cattails. When foraging, you must be careful to leave enough behind to feed wild animals as well as to continue successful survival of the food source. The American Indians supplemented their diet with Cattails, drying the roots, then grinding them to create a flour, before making bread which was baked in fires and small bread kilns. The flour produced is high in carbohydrates and makes a bread that tastes very good to a small boy who has spent the day making the flour.

Recently in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic archaeologists found grindstones, that by identifying the plant material embedded on them were used to create flour from the roots of rushes and ferns. From the remains, these grindstones have been dated to have been last used over 30,000 years ago. So our European ancient ancestors were making flour and as other fragments confirm, bread. Instead of having just mastodon burgers and veggies, they may have even put their meat between two slices of bread. Which could put the sandwich's invention many thousands of years before the Earl of Sandwich thought of it.