This is Christmas and I think it’s a good time to switch to some lighter topic than our usual fare of social science and history. Although history is still going to be a part of today’s post, as you will see. Today is one of few days in a year when we are supposed to gorge ourse

It’s been a while since my last update on the Paleo diet (perhaps a better name for it is ‘Post-Neolithic diet’). Here are the links to previous blogs on this theme: http://socialevolutionforum.com/2012/08/23/an-update-on-my-so-called-paleo-diet/ http://socialevolutionforum.com/

The very first time I ever heard about the paleo diet was one and half years ago. Now it’s all over the traditional media, blogosphere, and twitter. I just finished reading a long article in the Atlantic magazine, This Is Your Brain on Gluten. The author, James Hamblin, builds the art

Readers who have been following this blog for a while know that in addition to being a professor at the University of Connecticut, I wear a second hat as the Vice-President of the Evolution Institute (EI). The chief goal of the Evolution Institute is to connect the evolutionary scienc

In my previous blog on War Before Civilization I used the paintings by a French artist Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues. Although there was some controversy on the authenticity of his depictions of life in Southeastern North America in sixteenth century, I believe that at this point the ve

A few weeks ago my wife and I were examining a menu of a Tampa restaurant, when we were startled to see a new kind of appetizer – roast marrow bones! Naturally, we had to try it. It turned out to be totally delicious: (photograph by the author) This whole topic of marrow bones is abso

Every year the humanity consumes an enormous amount of wheat. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), around 700 million tons of wheat are produced every year, and most of it is eaten as bread and pasta* (with the rest fed to livestock). That’s 100 kg per person per

As I was growing up in boreal Russia, I remember reading many children books about travel and adventures in exotic countries. One book was about a tropical island where bread grew on trees… it all sounded like a fairy tale. But later I learned it was true! There is a real plant that i

I recently finished reading Perfect Health Diet:  Four Steps to Renewed Health, Youthful Vitality, and Long Life by Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminets. It’s a great book and I recommend it to all, who are not afraid of delving into the rather technical issues of health and diet. What I part

This morning a colleague sent to the department, with a snide comment, an article that just came out in Biology Letters, Wet-induced finger wrinkles improve handling of wet objects. At first glance it looked like a joke or a hoax, but I opened the text anyway. On the second glance, af