Coverage of my recent paper @royalsociety. Many theories of obesity suggest humans are uniquely vulnerable due to our past diets / lifestyles etc. I tested that in 40 species of non-human primates, and found that we are not alone! 1/
science.org/content/articl… The paper is here, part of a special issue from a great workshop on obesity led by @JohnSpeakman4 @KevinH_PhD David Allison and Thorkild Sorenson. Other papers linked below.
2/royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…

Paper from the @IAEANA dlwdatabase.org group @NatMetabolism , this one led by @JohnSpeakman4 tracking changes in daily expenditure over the past 40 years. Some fun stuff to unpack! 1/
nature.com/articles/s4225… One possible reason for the #obesity pandemic is ⬇️expenditure. @WHO for example cites "physical inactivity due to the increasingly sedentary nature of many forms of work" as a major cause of obesity. But has Activity Expenditure really declined? 2/
who.int/news-room/fact…

1/ excited to share paper from our lab led by Chris Klasson (@DukeU undergrad during the project) and PhD student @srishti_sadhir @EvAnthDuke on the association of daily physical activity w immune biomarkers and thyroid hormones 🧵
journals.plos.org/plosone/articl… 2/ some background: we're intrigued by the body's metabolic response to exercise. ⬆️activity is great for health! but doesn't impact daily expenditure as much as we'd expect. Really activity folks often burn the same kcal/day as sedentary. How does the body do that??

1/ Just in time for 🎅 Our new paper @ScienceMagazine on the *real* origins of Christmas (& Hanukkah, Eid, Festivus… any gift & leisure holiday) A holiday 🧵!
w/ Tom Kraft @MGurven @vivek_vasi @briwood1 @DavidRaichlen & others
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… 2/ We start w a seemingly unrelated puzzle: We've got all these costly traits (big brains, big babies, long lives, high physical activity) at the core of what makes us human.
But how do we get all that energy?!
nature.com/articles/natur…

1. Great to see the interest in latest DLW Database paper w/ @JohnSpeakman4 & many others. Now that some of the dust has settled, some highlights:

open access links here: dlwdatabase.org

science.sciencemag.org/content/373/65… 2.We’ve known for over a century that larger people (& larger organisms in general) use more energy. Some evidence that age is important. But it was unclear just how size affected energy, or what those age effects are.

1. New paper @AnnualReviews Nutrition w @briwood1 on hunter-gatherer and Paleolithic diets. 🧵of highlights
TLDR “Paleo” diets probably aren’t. Variation is the point.
annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.114… 2.First, anat & phys: Humans often touted as having small GI tracts. Evidence says… sort of. We’re in the primate spectrum. Total length = primate. Large intestine= primate w high diet quality. Not carnivore.

⚫️=primates 🔺=human

Still wrong, even in less “humorous” form. This sort of poor evolutionary thinking is a big problem esp as medicine adopts a more evolutionary perspective (which is great when done well).

Hold my beer I’m writing a thread! 1/

https://twitter.com/ProfTimNoakes/status/1162283816842477571

Argument is: Species X needed to evolve trait Y, and so adopted behavior Z. Folks, doesn’t work that way.

First, for any “crucial” trait, there are 10000s of species that lack it. Theres always many solutions. Thinking the trait was inevitable / necessary is wrong. 2/

Great to see discussion generated by this. One common complaint: “yeah but living hunter gatherers aren’t good models of the past”. Often followed by some version of “Surely in the good old days we ate more meat”. Very flawed argument. Here’s why 1/

https://twitter.com/hermanpontzer/status/1069940315539292160

1. First, totally correct that *no* HG population is a perfect model for *all*. Tons of diversity across the HG world just as today.
2. Also true that no pop today is a time machine, stuck in amber as a model of the Paleolithic

BUT

2/