Research done by Laura Weyrich, a microbiologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, has shown that plaque found in fossilized teeth proves that Neanderthal diets were a wide range of things. DNA was recovered from calcified plaque on teeth from four Neanderthal individuals. Two groups were found, one from the grasslands and one in the forests. The DNA from the individuals around the grasslands proved to eat woolly rhinoceros and wild sheep and the DNA from forests showed to eat moss, mushrooms and pine nuts. This shows that Neanderthals were neither vegetarian or herbivores. Also found in the DNA were materials from trees that act as aspirin. Any information found in fossils is truly amazing. To further our knowledge on the cavemen, helps us understand evolution and how we are today. This article shows that the Neanderthals were very smart, and knew about medicine way before we thought they did. This is a major break through for us.
Article: https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/science-ticker/ancient-dental-plaque-tells-tales-neandertal-diet-and-disease
Related article: http://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/486.full.pdf
People who consumed daily handfuls of nuts were 20% less
likely to die from any cause over a 30- yr period than people who didn’t
consume nuts found in the largest study of its kind. The study showed that regular nut eaters were
more slender disproving eating a lot of nuts will lead to obesity. The most obvious benefit was a 29% reduction
in deaths from heart disease and a reduction of 11% in the risk of dying from
cancer. It could not determine if a
specific type of nut was more beneficial than another kind; however the
reduction in mortality was the same in peanuts and tree nuts. Sophisticated data analysis was used to rule
out other factors that could account for mortality benefits. In the analysis
the more nuts people ate the less likely they were to die over 30-year follow
up period. Nuts consumed less than once
a week had a 7% reduction in mortality, once a week 11% reduction in mortality,
two-four times a week 13% reduction, five
to six weeks 15% reduction and seven or more times a week 20% reduction. The authors cannot defiantly prove cause and
effect, but data is strongly consistent with the statistics of existing clinical
and observational trials to support health benefits of consumption of nuts on
many chronic diseases.
