Science News Review

Mom was Right! You Are What You Eat

Feb 4 at 5:05pm by Aileen

The scary take-home lesson from the 2004 documentary Super Size Me has some new scientific confirmation from recent research at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, though evidence that a fast food diet leads to liver problems and obesity wasn’t what the researchers set out to find.

You Are What You Eat is about research that found – using mice instead of chimpanzees or humans – that some of the obvious differences between humans and chimpanzees can be attributed to the differences in our diets.

The research was published in PLoS One 3(1): e1504 entitled “Somel M., Franz H., Mueller U., Lachmann M., et al (2008) Human and Chimpanzee Gene Expression Differences Replicated in Mice Fed Different Diets.

They fed lab mice one of three different diets for two weeks – raw fruits and vegetables, Institute cafeteria food, and straight McDonalds junk. The fresh fruit and veggies diet differed very significantly on liver effects of the other two diets, which caused thousands of gene expression changes. The McDonalds mice also got fat. The conclusion?

“A significant fraction of the genes that changed in the mouse livers had previously been observed as different between humans and chimpanzees. This indicates that the differences observed in these particular genes might be caused by the difference in human and chimpanzee diets.”

The researchers also noted that these genes appear to have evolved faster than other genes, possibly because of adaptation to new diets. I could not find any indication in the article that humans who go raw vegan become chimpanzees, or that chimpanzees fed cafeteria food or fries and shakes become human. But it is quite interesting that diet alone can significantly affect gene expression (and evolution). Seems that evolutionary biology may have to include diet-caused gene changes as yet another mechanism for generating biodiversity.