Generally when you think about what separates humans from other species, features like upright walking, large brains and language come to mind.
But diet has actually played an enormous role in human evolution. Today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a panel of anthropologists, geneticists and paleontologists got together [...]

Tags: AAAS, American Association for the Advancement of Science, diet, evolution, lactose, Lactose Intolerance

Last week in the Spittoon we reported on a new study that identified an interesting genetic trade-off — a genetic variant known that has one effect on a person’s vulnerability to malaria, and the opposite on susceptibility to HIV infection. The “Duffy negative” version of the gene, which is common among Africans and African Americans, [...]

Tags: diet, hemochromatosis, human evolution, Malaria, sickle-cell anemia