Professor, Department of Anthropology

Emory University 

 

In 1985 S. Boyd Eaton and Konner published an article in The New England Journal of Medicine called "Paleolithic Nutrition: A Consideration of It's Nature and Current Implications," considered to be among the first contributions to evolutionary medicine.  Along with other papers and a book, it proposed a discordance or mismatch between current environments and those our genomes evolved in, to account for epidemic chronic degenerative disease. Today, so-called "Paleo" diets, based on  dubious evidence, are a widespread fad. Did Eaton and Konner spawn a Frankenstein monster? What if anything in their model remains true? Konner will address the "Paleo" fad as well as these more serious challenges: 1) that we mischaracterized the hunter-gatherer diet; 2) that research has undermined our claims about the causes of disease; 3) that we underestimated post-Paleolithic genetic evolution; 4) that paleopathogy reveals atherosclerosis in ancient populations; and 5) that hunter-gatherers do not differ from "sedentary" Westerners in energy throughput. The fad leaves much to be desired, but the death of the mismatch model has been greatly exaggerated.