Immunity Health News

It’s not just that they didn’t eat Twinkies and Cheetos.

Hunter-gatherers ate a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, roots, beans, nuts, tubers, pollen and even flowers rich in antioxidants, phytochemicals, vitamins, minerals and dietary fibre. Some researchers believe that the early humans ate up to 100 different varieties of plants and it’s estimated that their vitamin C intake was about 600mg per day (about 10 times more than the present-day recommended intake). Also, the meat that formed part of the palaeontological diet differed from modern meat because it was low in fat and cholesterol.

In contrast, The everyday diets we follow are much more monotonous and restricted than those of our forefathers. Modern diets are high in energy, low in micronutrients, high in fat and sugar, have a high GI and a low fibre content.

Considering our genetic makeup hasn’t changed much in that time, it’s no wonder so many of us are sick!

Read more.

Interleukin-18 is a protein which plays an active part of the immune system.

A team led by Eric Zorrilla, an assistant professor at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego was studying the protein when they noticed that something unusual occurred in mice genetically engineered to lack the protein.

The mice got fat.

Mice without the protein overate and became fatter than the other mice, the researchers found.

Read the whole article.

Surprise, surprise: too much food is bad for you. Okay, but what about too much healthy food? Can we have too much of a good thing? Apparently.

STAMP2 is the name of a protein that prevents the body’s immune system from treating your dinner as a foreign invader and launching a heavy-duty attack. Overwhelm this “flood-control” protein with too many nutrients over a long period of time and it may just give out, leading to a host of metabolic disorders, including insulin resistance, fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Read the article.