Exam #2

• Review Sessions:

– Wed., 2-4pm, Battelle Cubes (Joshua)

– Thurs., 5-6pm, Battelle T-30 (Josh)

• Kottak: 8, 10, & 18*

• P&B: 8, 9, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35

• Films: Mesopotamia & Tough Guise

Today’s Lecture

• Anthropology of Food (cont’d)

• Obesity, Modernization, and Human Plasticity

IV. Biology

A. What Foods Are We Adapted to Eat?

1. Very Little Genetic Change Since Development of Agriculture

2. Massive Cultural Change

-food production, industrialization, transport

3. Different Diet Than That of:

a. Industrialized Nations

b. Early Food Producers

4. Health & Disease (Gene-Environment Mismatch)

a. Early Food Producers

-malnutrition

-growth problems

-stress (arthritis, repet. strain)

-infectious disease

b. Industrialized Nations

-“Diseases of Civilization”

Heart Disease

Some Cancers

Diabetes (NIDDM/“Adult” Onset)

Hypertension

Obesity

5. What can we say about our diets of the past?

a. Lines of Evidence

-skeletons

-archaeological evidence

-living foragers

b. Living Foragers

-All over the world

-Today in marginal areas

-More mobile in past

-Work less than once assumed

-Variable and flexible diets

-examples:

Inuit: 10% plant food; 90% animal

!Kung: 67% plant food; 33% animal

The Four Basic Food Groups

Meat

Vegetables, Nuts, & Fruits

Milk & Milk Products

Breads & Cereals

Living Foragers & Preagricultural Humans Relied on Only TWO Groups

Meats

Vegetables, Nuts, & Fruits

???

c. Diet of the Past

Flexible & Variable

Lean Seasons / Food Shortages

-Evolved to store fat & use slowly

-True for foragers, pastoralists, horticulturalists, agriculturalists,

and some in industrialized nations

Early Human Diet (& Living Foragers)

3 times the protein

<20% the sodium

more calcium

more vitamin C

more fiber

half the fat (& not saturated)

very little sugar (fruits & honey)

Obesity virtually non-existent in foragers & pre-agricultural people

Obesity not a problem in pre-industrial food producers (except some elites)

Obesity a serious problem in industrialized nations—and growing!

Secular Trends in Obesity

• Increase in overweight & obese Americans

– 33% of adults obese; 66% of adults overweight

– Children too

– Change in past two decades

• 15% obesity rate in 1980

– Population differences

• Especially high in African-Americans (esp. women)

• High in low socioeconomic groups

Series of slides from the CDC on changes in prevalence of obesity in the U.S. since 1986

Why the rise in obesity rates?

• Cultural Changes

– Decreased Physical Activity

– Increased Food Portions

• Fast Food / Supersize

– Increased Total Food Consumption

• Esp. in Total Calories

– Increased Consumption of Certain Sugars

• Biological predisposition to obesity

Cultural standards of beauty variable

Most societies desire “plumpness” in women

American ideal of thinness

Obtain ideal by “investment of individual effort and economic resources…each in its context involves a display of wealth”

Cultural changes related to high rates of obesity in US

Example 1: Seats at stadiums

Example 2: Young women’s fashion

Economic “modernization” / “Westernization”:

Lifestyle transition in subsistence populations

Associated with increased prevalence of obesity & related diseases

-Biological & cultural predisposition to

obesity (periodic food shortages)

-Developmental plasticity

-Widespread

Should fast-food restaurants be held responsible for the rise in obesity and related health problems in US?

What about internationally where people may not have the same access to health information?

**In class we weren’t able to get through the last three slides. I have included them here and they may help you study for the exam (which will cover the ideas contained in them). They are drawn from Lee’s “Eating Christmas in the Kalahari” from P&B, Cooper’s “Chinese Table Manners” from P&B, and Kottak’s chapter on gender.**

V. Food & Culture

Cultural choices on what is acceptable to eat

Why not horses, dogs, bald eagles?

Why not certain parts of animals, such as brains or arteries?

What about plant foods and taboos?

Rituals and beliefs surrounding food can reinforce religious and ethnic

boundaries

A. Food and Social & Economic Systems

Example 1: Richard Lee: The !Kung (Eating Christmas in the Kalahari)

Maintenance of social relationships

Example 2: You Are How You Eat: Eugene Cooper (Chinese Table Manners)

How do you judge which culture’s table manners are better?

Why does it matter if only goal is to get food into your mouth?

Solidify group membership

Example 3: Food & Gender

Gender stratification varies with food acquisition strategy

Foragers: Not stratified (unless men contribute much more food than women)

Horticulturalists: Women as main food producers; more stratified than foragers

(trade; warfare)

Agriculturalists: Men as main food producers (more children; domestic / public

spheres split); more stratification