Arthur De Vany, of the University of California, Irvine, and creator of Evolutionary Fitness, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about performance-enhancing drugs in baseball and Evolutionary Fitness, De Vany’s ideas about diet and fitness. In the first part of the conversation, De Vany argues that there is little physiological or statistical evidence that steroid use increases home run totals in baseball. The second part of the conversation turns to De Vany’s theories of diet and exercise. De Vany argues that our diet and exercise regime should take account of our evolutionary origins, an earlier time when we ate no grains and our exercise was a mix of intense activity punctuated by much milder activity. He argues that jogging is unhealthy and that we would live longer and feel better if we followed a different exercise routine than most Americans do today.
EconTalk – De Vany on Evolutionary Fitness
MARCH 29, 2010
I suppose my experiments into the De Vany approach will be to add sprints to my mix of exercise. I know I’ll have a very hard time dropping cereals and pasta from my diet. Perhaps the affects of regular sprints will incline me to eat less carbs.
But I can’t help but wonder, (and maybe the answer is in his book or blog) what he thinks about showering. Certainly our ancestors didn’t, and we know that a lot of bacteria is beneficial.