‘Mismatch’ Between the way Our Senses Evolved and Modern World Is Making Us Ill
February 21st, 2017Via: Independent:
The modern world is radically at odds with the way human senses have evolved, helping to make us short-sighted, obese and depressed, scientists have warned.
Spending large amounts of time indoors under artificial light and staring at computer screens has helped produce a “myopia epidemic” with as many as 90 per cent of people in some parts of the world needing glasses.
Industrial food production has also turned primates’ taste for sugar — which evolved to persuade us to gorge on healthy fruit when it was ripe — into one of the main causes of the soaring rates of obesity in the Western world.
And our sense of smell is under attack from air pollution, producing an array of different effects, including depression and anxiety.