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More Graphs of Calorie Intake vs. BMI
In the last post, a reader commented that the correlation would be more convincing if I graphed calories vs. average BMI rather than the prevalence of obesity. It was a valid point, so I went searching for average BMI values from NHANES surveys. I dug up a CDC document that contains data from surveys between 1960 and 2002 ( 1 ). Because these data only cover five survey periods, we only get five data points to analyze, as opposed to the eight used in the last post. The document contains BMI values for men and women separately, so I averaged the two to approximate average BMI in the general adult population. It's also worth noting that I use the approximate midpoint of the survey period as the year. First, a graph of average BMI over time. It went up: Now, let's see how well average BMI correlates with calorie intake: The correlation between calorie intake and obesity prevalence was remarkable, but this correlation is simply incredible. An R-squa...
Is Meat Unhealthy? Part II
Over time, animals adapt to the foods they regularly consume. This is how archaeologists can, for example, determine that Triceratops was an herbivore and Tyrannosaurus was a carnivore just by looking at the structure of the skeleton. Adaptations to diet extend beyond skeletal structure, into digestion, metabolism, the brain, musculature, and other aspects of physical function. What is our evolutionary history with meat? Human Evolutionary History with Meat: 200 to 2.6 Million Years Ago Mammals evolved from ancestral "mammal-like reptiles" ( therapsids , then cynodonts) approximately 220 million years ago (Richard Klein. The Human Career. 2009). Roughly 100 million years ago, placental mammals emerged. The earliest placental mammals are thought to have been nocturnal shrew-like beasts that subsisted primarily on insects, similar to modern shrews and moles. Mammalian teeth continued to show features specialized for insect consumption until the rise of the primates. 65 ...

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