{"id":438,"date":"2019-12-10T13:25:52","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T17:25:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/cara-ocobock\/?page_id=438"},"modified":"2021-12-02T16:59:26","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T20:59:26","slug":"evolution-of-the-human-diet-activity","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/cara-ocobock\/evolution-of-the-human-diet-activity\/","title":{"rendered":"Evolution of the Human Diet Activity"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the end of the semester, my students are fairly stressed out about everything. I thought I would try to have some fun with the evolution of the human diet in the final week of class. Before class, I had them read Ungar et al. 2006<\/a> review on diet in early Homo<\/em> and I had them read Fenton & Eaton 2016<\/a> review on Paleolithic nutrition.<\/p>\n

I purchased a bunch of different foods to represent varied hominin diets throughout time (see list below), gave them a chart to fill out (see link), had them work in groups to both fill out the chart and eat the foods, and then we had a discussion (see discussion questions below).<\/p>\n

Foods Used<\/strong>
\n1. Edible insects – purchased on Amazon<\/a>
\n2. Wheatgrass = to represent consumable grasses and sedges, and they really had a tough time chewing on this!
\n3. Sunflower seeds in the shell – I couldn’t do nuts because of several nut allergies in my class
\n4. Apples
\n5. Carrots – underground storage organs
\n6. Turkey Jerky – Meat
\n7. Goldfish crackers – this was meant to represent marine food resources, I just couldn’t stomach the idea of fresh or canned fish at 9:30 in the morning. You may be hardier than me!
\n8. Wheaties style of cereal = grains
\n9. Cheese cubes = dairy<\/p>\n

\"Evolution
The various foods students got to assess and enjoy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here is the guiding chart for students to work on:<\/p>\n

Evolution of Human Diet Activity<\/a><\/p>\n

Discussion Questions<\/strong>
\n1. I brought some representative hominin skulls (robust australopithecines, gracile australopithecines, H. erectus<\/em>, etc.) so they could look at cranial and dental morphology. Can you match the skull with the diet?<\/p>\n

2. Rank the different food from most to least nutritional? How are you basing this ranking? Protein? Total calories? Vitamins?<\/p>\n

3. What benefits would hominins experienced with some of the more nutritional foods?<\/p>\n

4. What role has culture played in making different foods more available (both physically and nutritionally)?<\/p>\n

5. What is the modern day take on the Paleodiet? What are the pros and cons of this diet? What is the backing\/lacking evidence for it?<\/p>\n

Please enjoy these pictures of my students eating insects for the first time!<\/p>\n

\"Lucie
Lucie Moore getting ready to eat a bacon and cheese cricket<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Lucie
Down the hatch!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Lucie
Lucie seems unsure of this…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Cailey\"
Cailey enjoying a chocolate covered cricket<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sadly, I do not think this one will translate to online!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By the end of the semester, my students are fairly stressed out about everything. I thought I would try to have some fun with the evolution of the human diet in the final week of class. Before class, I had them read Ungar et al. 2006 review on diet in early Homo and I had … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Evolution of the Human Diet Activity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3542,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-438","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/cara-ocobock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/cara-ocobock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/cara-ocobock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/cara-ocobock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3542"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/cara-ocobock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/cara-ocobock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":941,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/cara-ocobock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/438\/revisions\/941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/cara-ocobock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}