Food and People: a Review of the Western Diet and Implications for Human Health
The need for food is something that all humans have in common and is something that has not changed since we have started walking the Earth. What has shifted, however, is the way that we obtain food. Immense change has occurred at various levels of the food chain, from the crops grown, to raising meat, all the way to how we eat. Known as the “western diet” our way of eating today looks far different from our hunter-gatherer days, with highly processed foods full of refined sugar, fat, and grains comprising over half of our energy intake. With the emergence of the western diet phenomenon, so have “western diseases”, which are understood to be noninfectious chronic diseases common to developed societies, including type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, and various types of cancer, not to mention obesity. Wherever people have shifted towards a westernized way of eating, western diseases have seemed to follow. As eating and food becomes more simplified, it seems that our health continues to get more complicated.
BIOL 499, Capstone
Paul Allee
P103
11 – 11:30 AM