24hr Gut Change

"However, it seems likely that changes in our gut microbiota and their metabolic products are important in explaining the influence of diet on many aspects of health, says Harry Flintat the University of Aberdeen, UK. For example, butyrate is thought to reduce colorectal cancer risk by boosting the health of cells lining the intestines and prompting cancerous cells to self-destruct."

Check out @newscientist's Tweet:

https://twitter.com/newscientist/status/410835219282132992

Sat Fat: BMJ Letter

Saturated fat is not the major issue | BMJ

http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f6340/rr/675595

Are Parasites Paleo?

Is Modern Hygiene Making Us Sick? One Man's Experiment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6HH5H36kl0

Natural Law

DC On Nutrition Research

DC hits the back of the Internet in 'We know little about the effect of diet on health. That’s why so much is written about it':

More than in any other field it is hard to do the RCTs that could, in principle, sort out the problem. It’s hard to allocate people at random to different diets, and even harder to make people stick to those diets for the many years that are needed.

We can probably say by now that no individual food carries a large risk, or affords very much protection. The fact that we are looking for quite small effects means that even when RCTs are possible huge samples will be needed to get clear answers. Most RCTs are too short, and too small (under-powered) and that leads to overestimation of the size of effects. That’s a problem that plagues experimental pyschology too, and has led to a much-discussed crisis in reproducibility.

Green Finger

This is an interesting piece and comes from an angle I have mentioned before. If you were in the wild and had to hunt/forage for food, what confidence would you have in sourcing non-toxic food?

Outside of some seasonal berries and fruit I think most of us would be wary of foraging. Even skilled foragers make mistakes when it comes to, for example, mushroom picking.

But hunting is altogether easier. Bar eating too much liver, pick a large mammal (especially a herbivore), eat pretty much all of it. Hack meat off and cook over a fire. Job done. You don't really need specialist skills bar the actual hunting bit.

Can’t get children to eat greens? Blame it on the survival instinct

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/10453749/Cant-get-children-to-eat-greens-Blame-it-on-the-survival-instinct.html

Do Indigenous Sports Make You Jacked?

The answer from these pictures and these, would appear to be an emphatic "Non!", although we cannot be sure of the participants' diet and general lifestyle. 

I still think there is merit in training around sports that involve the ability to strike (kick and punch), wrestle, swim and climb, along with activities that involve chopping, throwing, carrying, jumping and pulling.  Games/play that incorporate these themes are recommended doubly so!