Houston Book Talk – Fed Up: What Evolution Reveals about Food, Diet, Health, and Eating Well
How many times a day do you ask the question, “What should I eat?” In this talk and his new book, Fed Up, best-selling author and Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman untangles the confusion around this question we never evolved to ask.
How fruit foraging shaped primate evolution
Allegra DePasquale is a Leakey Foundation grantee who studies how interactions between primates, fruiting plants, and other fruit-eating animals have shaped the evolution of key primate traits.
The role of cooking in human evolution and survival
Early humans survived on raw foods. They foraged and hunted whatever was available, consuming it in its natural state. While raw food provides energy, it can be challenging to consume and digest efficiently. That changed when our ancestors learned to control fire.
Grantee Spotlight: Mareike Janiak
What makes humans such "adaptable" and flexible creatures, especially when it comes to what we eat? Primates, in general, can survive on a wide variety of foods, but there are also a lot of species with a range of really specialized diets, like those focused on insects, leaves, or fruit, and all of these foods have different challenges when it comes to digesting them. Mareike Janiak's research is focused on understanding how the species in these different dietary niches have adapted to digesting their foods.
Bonobo Diet of Aquatic Greens May Hold Clues to Human Evolution
With support from The Leakey Foundation, scientists have observed bonobos in the Congo basin foraging in swamps for aquatic herbs rich in iodine. Iodine is a critical nutrient for brain development and higher cognitive abilities, and this new research may explain how the nutritional needs of prehistoric humans in the region were met.