Reddit mentions of Mismatch: The Lifestyle Diseases Timebomb

Sorry, I thought I replied to this already. It’s absolutely fascinating. Your risk of type 2 diabetes is increased at both ends of the spectrum: low birth weight and high birth weight. The reason why small babies have higher risk is because a large proportion of babies are not naturally small, they are small because there was something wrong with their placenta meaning they were underfed in the womb (note: this is different from premature babies, although there’s often overlap). If you are underfed in the womb, your body assumes that you’re being underfed because your mother isn’t eating enough, and therefore in about 9 months time you will be born into a world in which food is scarce. So your body prepares for this world: you turn on genes associated with fat storage, turn off genes associated with needlessly burning energy. Plus your brain chemistry is changed. These individuals are more likely to seek out high calorie foods and less likely to exercise (proven in animal studies). Maybe 200 years ago this would have been an advantage, but instead now you’re born into the current climate, where food and laziness is everywhere. This is thought to affect around 10% of people (because problems with the placenta are common).

Now on the other end of the spectrum there are babies born big. Most babies born big are so because of the exact opposite: they were overfed in the womb. This can be a result of gestational diabetes in the mother, which again is common (17% pregnancies worldwide. Almost 25% pregnancies in countries like Singapore and India). The high blood sugar goes straight through the placenta and to the baby, so that the baby essentially eats sugar all day for nine months, and then is born already overweight. And we know that once you’re born overweight, it can be difficult to shed that weight, and you’re more likely to be an overweight adult. Again, this accounts for 10% of babies. However if you’re naturally born large rather than overfed, this isn’t a problem.

But of course the two extremes of 10% are arbitrary cut-offs. My personal opinion is that microenvironments in the womb are responsible for a lot of the obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease crises we have today.

I’ve done a few talks on the topic, if you want to learn more:

Short: https://youtu.be/NMm6wdJMvNQ

Longer: https://media.auckland.ac.nz/fms/alumni/Emails/2017/podcasts/jasmine-plows.mp3

Also this book is great: https://www.amazon.com/Mismatch-Lifestyle-Diseases-Peter-Gluckman/dp/0199228388/ref=nodl_

I'm not pro-soy or anti-soy. I'm pro-eating-the-whole food, because I believe our bodies are designed to eat whole foods.

When you isolate a single part of a food (like the fruit from a juice) you will take in an artificially large portion of it. That's why you must eat processed food in moderation, because the portion size isn't automatically moderated for you by nature anymore. Our bodies co-evolved to digest the foods in our environment... none of the food that most people eat today is in it's original (or close to original) form, or in the ratios given by nature.

For more info, read Mismatch, and In Defense of Food.