[LINK] "Meat may be the reason humans outlive apes"

[rfmcdonald]

I posted this MSNBC article, taken from 3 Quarks Daily, especially for schizmatic.

Chimpanzees and great apes are genetically similar to humans, yet they rarely live for more than 50 years. Although the average human lifespan has doubled in the last 200 years — due largely to decreased infant mortality related to advances in diet, environment and medicine — even without these improvements, people living in high mortality hunter-forager lifestyles still have twice the life expectancy at birth as wild chimpanzees do.

[. . .]

Over time, eating red meat, particularly raw flesh infected with parasites in the era before cooking, stimulates chronic inflammation, Finch explained. In response, humans apparently evolved unique variants in a cholesterol-transporting gene, apolipoprotein E, which regulates chronic inflammation as well as many aspects of aging in the brain and arteries.

One variant found in all modern human populations, known as ApoE3, emerged roughly 250,000 years ago, "just before the final stage of evolution of Homo sapiens in Africa," Finch explained.

ApoE3 lowers the risk of most aging diseases, specifically heart disease and Alzheimer's, and is linked with an increased lifespan.

"I suggest that it arose to lower the risk of degenerative disease from the high-fat meat diet they consumed," Finch told LiveScience. "Another benefit is that it promoted brain development."