Yet another book that I had to read a second time to get the full import. It is a great book if you are interested in how we have evolved as human beings. Daniel does a great job of taking the reader thru history of time with the evolutionary lenses on to see how human body parts become how they are today.

This book might come as a surprise to folks who believe in a particular diet (or have believed in different diets at different times). The author explains the complexity of the evolutionary journey that we have taken and establishes that humans are not adapted for any single diet or social environment or even one exercise regime.

During that journey, the author takes us thru the Agricultural Revolution which solved a lot of problems but created many more (all infectious diseases started at that time since we started living close to each other and around one location) – to the Industrial Revolution which solved a lot of medical problems but created a lot more (sugar became copiously available, meat started having carcinogenic chemicals and consumption of fiber started vanishing) and then to his predictions of the future.

One point he stresses on multiple times is that Darwinian evolution as it existed (natural selection retains those who can have many offsprings in diverse, challenging conditions) has been overtaken by cultural evolution when it comes to homo sapiens. (We wear shoes, drink coke and drive cars not because they help us have more healthy offsprings – to the contrary, they endanger our lives – but we do it for cultural reasons like comfort, lack of immediate pain etc).

A few other things I personally learnt:
(*) All fruit juices are junk food (because the fiber is taken out)
(*) Not all LDL is bad for you (only the small ones are)
(*) It is not fat per se that is the problem – it is the visceral fat (fat in your belly) that gives rise to almost all obesity related issues.
(*) “What does your gut say?” – that comes from the fact that our gut (intestines) are actually our “second brains”. Consuming the same energy as our brains in a day, our gut has over 100 million nerve endings and controls an incredible number of our activities.

If you find these kind of things interesting, I would recommend this book whole heartedly.