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Background to modern ideas about healthy living

We all want to be healthy, don't we? Trouble is it means not enjoying yourself doesn't it; eating nutritious but dull food; suffering endless hours of exercise; watching our calories so we always feel guilty about having a treat?

Rubbish! Scientists are sweeping away so much of the old-wives-tales school of diet and health. They are beginning to learn about what makes us truly healthy. Above all they are showing that at any age the human body has an enormous capacity to improve with relatively little pain. We are the end result of four thousand million years of successful development. As Mike Skinner of The Streets wrote in 'On The Edge Of A Cliff':

For billions of years
Since the outset of time
Every single one of your ancestors survived
Every single person on your mum's and dad's side
Successfully looked after and passed onto you life
What are the chances of that, like?

Our bodies evolved in a very different environment from that in which we have lived for the last few thousand years. It was very challenging. We needed to be able to go for days without food, to be able to run and throw to catch our prey and to store energy in our bodies as fat when food was plentiful. The only one of these three that many people now do is the last. Food in the western world is plentiful but we still respond to our ancient instincts and eat. So we get fat. We don't move or starve so our bodies decline. When stated simply like that, it is blindingly obvious.

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(C) Peter Scott 2021

Last edit 26 August 2021