Over two decades, two Sydney nutrition scientists and researchers have been exploring the diets of everything from insects to humans. Eat Like the Animals: What Nature Teaches Us about the Science of Healthy Eating is their immensely readable narrative of a revolutionary journey, for what they discovered is that of the five macro appetites—protein, carbohydrate, fat, salt and calcium—it is the first, protein, that evolution has fashioned animals to prioritize. Animals, including humans, are wired to eat protein, so that if, as is the case with modern humans, a diet is protein-slight, more food is consumed until the protein target is met, resulting in ingesting far too much fat and carbohydrates (the latter being mostly UHP, ultra-processed foods, these days), causing obesity and metabolic malfunctioning. A side discovery, itself important, is that maximizing protein (beyond what is absolutely needed) maximizes short-term vitality at the expense of longevity. The authors write in refreshingly bouncy and comprehensible prose, laced with modesty and humanity, and the book is structured to suit well the lay reader such as myself. Summing up, Eat Like the Animals is, blessedly, both a compulsive story and a brilliant, lay-person scientific exposition of high importance.
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