With their diets of rice and grain, our ancestors were starved of vitamins, iron, and protein. As societies switched from foraging to agriculture ten thousand years ago, the average height for both men and women shrank by about six inches, and there’s ample evidence of parasites, disease, and childhood malnutrition. Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, called the adoption of agriculture “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.”
