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Diet-related chronic diseases represent the single largest cause of death and sickness in the United States and most Western countries. Yet while these diseases are epidemic in contemporary Westernized populations and typically afflict two-thirds of the adult population, they are rare or nonexistent in hunter-gatherers and other less Westernized cultures.Why? There is an increasing awareness that the profound environmental changes, such as diet and other lifestyle conditions that began with the introduction of agriculture and animal husbandry (the care and breeding of domestic animals), occurred too recently for the human genome to adapt to.Thus, universal characteristics of preagricultural human diets...

Embarrassment, Health Issues Prompted Dieting Many people have struggled to drop a few pounds, but what happens when you need to lose several hundred pounds? Several years ago, Steve and Melissa Horstman of Boone County, Ky., decided that they didn't want to live with their weight problems anymore, and they used the emotional pain over being overweight to reach their goals. Melissa and Steve met on the Internet several years ago and soon learned of their common bond: obesity. "When you weigh 150 pounds over, you don't go out and socialize," Melissa said. The couple met, dated and married, but...