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20/08/2015

BBC Inside Science

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The Effects of Glycemic Carbohydrates on Brain Size

Brain size started increasing relative to our body size about two and a half million years ago. But around 800,000 years ago, that size increased accelerated even more. And so what we are arguing is that that acceleration in brain size increase was driven by an increase or a sustained consumption of glycemic carbohydrate. We need amylase to digest the starch to turn it into glucose. Most primates have two copies of their salivary amylase gene. The more copies we've got, the more amylase we produce.

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