Scholars Find a Link Between Obesity and Other Diseases and Mismatch Between Meals

Many wonders if obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other illnesses are the results of the so-called "mismatch" between the meals they eat and the foods their bodies are set to receive.

Reports on this curiosity indicate that the "mismatch hypothesis" contends that each of the human bodies has developed and adjusted for the digestion of the foods their ancestors ate and that these bodies are likely to struggle and greatly fail to absorb an entirely new set of foods.

According to Amanda Lea, a Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics or LSI postdoctoral research fellow, humans developed in quite a different setting compared to the "ones they are presently living in."

In addition, Lea, also the first author on a study featured in Science Advances journal's current issue said, no particular diet is generally bad. "It is about the mismatch," she explained, between a human's evolutionary history and what he is currently eating.

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The 'Mismatch' Notion

The 'mismatch' notion has been around for many years already. However, it is difficult to test it directly. Most studies concentrate on the comparison between Westerners and members of the hunter-gatherer societies, although that unavoidably conflates any impact of a diet with other hereditary or lifestyle differences.

Then came the Turkana, described as "a subsistence-level, pastoralist populace" from a northwest Kenyan desert.

In the 80s decade, a life-threatening drought paired with an oil discovery nearby resulted in the region's rapid transformation.  

Large parts of the population gave up their nomadic lifestyle, with some people living in the village while others in the cities.

To date, traditional Turkana still depends on livestock, including zebu cattle, goats, donkeys, and fat-tailed sheep, among others, to survive.

Meanwhile, Turkana residing in cities have changed their diets to ones richer in carbohydrates and processed foods. This trend, the study investigators reported, is greatly observed all over the world, an outcome of rising globalization, even in remote neighborhoods.

According to ecology and evolutionary biology and LSI assistant professor Julien Ayroles, they realized that they had the opportunity to investigate the impact of "transitioning away from a traditional lifestyle," depending on nearly 80-percent animal products, a diet that's tremendously rich in protein and fats, with very small to totally no carbohydrates-to an almost all-carb diet.

Ayroles, who is also the senior researcher on this new study, added, their results presented an extraordinary opportunity-inherently homogenous populaces whose diet stretch throughout a lifestyle gradient from comparatively 'matched' to extremely 'mismatch' with their "recent evolutionary history."

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An Important Initial Paper

The study investigators interviewed and collected health data from over 1200 adult Turkana in more than 40 locations to answer the question.

The interviewers also involved Lea and Ayroles, and the research team based at the Kenya-based Mpala Research Center, led by Dino Martins.

Mpala is the most popularly known as a "site for world-class ecological studies, although with its research into the Turkana," it is breaking new ground as well, on anthropology and sociology, as well as genetics and genomics with the use of a new genomics lab funded by the NSF.

In connection to this, Martins said, this project is quite an important initial paper "from the Turkana genomics work and the Mpala NSF Genomics and Stable Isotopes Lab."

It originated when Ayroles came to visit Martins, a friend from their Harvard University, at Turkana Basin Institute, where Martins was based.

On a severely hot Christmas Day in the desert, miles away from any village there, Aryoles had been shocked to see a group of women carrying waters in jars over their heads.

For his part, Martins explained that the women carried water back to share with others I Turkana. He also said these few water vessels would be all they would consume for one week or more.

Recalling his friend's remark, Martins explained, Ayroles said, that was not possible as no one could survive on that small amount of water.

Research Finding

The research project progressed from there, taking shape to investigate health profiles across Turkana's 10 biomarkers in cities, rural areas, and villages.

The study authors found that all 10 were excellent among Turkana continuing their traditional lifestyle and among the Turkana leading in villages, making and selling charcoal, or raising livestock to sell.

However, Turkana, who had moved to the cities, presented "poor cardiometabolic health," with much higher levels of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.

Furthermore, the health metrics also exhibited that the longer Turkana had spent living in the city and villages, the less healthy they tended to be, with life-long city residents who experience a higher CVD risk.

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