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Tubers as fallback foods and their impact on Hadza hunter-gatherers.
Abstract
The Hadza are hunter‐gatherers in Tanzania. Their diet can be conveniently categorized into five main categories: tubers, berries, meat, baobab, and honey. We showed the Hadza photos of these foods and asked them to rank them in order of preference. Honey was ranked the highest. Tubers, as expected from their low caloric value, were ranked lowest. Given that tubers are least preferred, we used kilograms of tubers arriving in camp across the year as a minimum estimate of their availability. Tubers fit the definition of fallback foods because they are the most continuously available but least preferred foods. Tubers are more often taken when berries are least available. We examined the impact of all foods by assessing variation in adult body mass index (BMI) and percent body fat (%BF) in relation to amount of foods arriving in camp. We found, controlling for region and season, women of reproductive age had a higher %BF in camps where more meat was acquired and a lower %BF where more tubers were taken. We discuss the implications of these results for the Hadza. We also discuss the importance of tubers in human evolution. Am J Phys Anthropol, 140:751–758, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
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“For example, while Western diets are certainly more sugar-rich and energy-dense than more “traditional” diets and wild foods [4], [8], [9], many hunter-gatherers seasonally consume a large portion of their daily calories as honey [10], [11] (Fig. S2), which has high concentrations of glucose and fructose [12].”
From Hunter-gatherer energetics and human obesity (2012) · cites this paper as [11]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Marlowe, F. W., & Berbesque, J. C.
- Affiliations
- Florida State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Marlowe, Frank W.
- ORCID
- Berbesque, Julia C.
- Venue
- American Journal of Physical Anthropology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2009-04-06
- Volume
- 140
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 751-758
- ISSN
- 0002-9483 (ISSN-L)
- 1096-8644
- OpenAlex
- W2016896745
- Cited by
- 149
- References
- 43
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 14 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 9.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- American Journal of Physical Anthropology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Indigenous Health and Education
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Keywords
- tubers, fallback foods, Hadza, hunter-gatherers, food preferences, body fat percentage, body mass index, diet, meat consumption, human evolution, food availability, women of reproductive age
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Age Factors, Body Composition, Diet, Ethnicity, Female, Food Preferences, Humans, Male, Seasons, Sex Factors, Tanzania, Body Mass Index, Statistics, Nonparametric, Plant Tubers
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