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“The epidemiological evidence for sexual dimorphism in humans is extensive. Sexual dimorphism in body composition is already evident in infancy: males tend to be heavier than females at birth and have longer bodies and larger head circumferences. By early adulthood, sexual dimorphism in fat distribution is highly evident. These are the evolutionary roots of male sensitivity to visual cues of female physical attractiveness and also of women's motivation to display, preserve and improve their physical attractiveness and thus increase their perceived mate value. The extreme end of this adaptation gives rise to the risk of EDs in the modern environment.”

“To understand mismatch, we should note that yhe human lineage lived for 99% of its evolutionary history in relatively small, mobile, foraging, kin-based groups. It is under these conditions that human psychological mechanisms were shaped by selection. The seeds for mismatch were sown with the advent of agriculture, which resulted in permanently settled living around 10,000 - 20,000 years ago, and this radically altered the human physical and social environment with major implications for eating disorders EDs.”

“To understand mismatch, we should note that the human lineage lived for 99% of its evolutionary history in relatively small, mobile, foraging, kin-based groups. It is under these conditions that human psychological mechanisms were shaped by selection. The seeds for mismatch were sown with the advent of agriculture, which resulted in permanently settled living around 10,000 - 20,000 years ago, and this radically altered the human physical and social environment with major implications for eating disorders EDs.”

“The Sexual Competition Hypothesis is based on the fact that throughout human evolutionary history the female shape has been a reliable indicator of the female's reproductive history and reproductive potential. The same is not true for men, where physical appearance, while relevant, is much less useful in assessing a man's reproductive potential. The visual signal for a female's peak reproductive potential in ancestral environments was the female's nubile shape, which was generally short-lived and declined with the repeated cycles of gestation and lactation.”

“Female reproductive life history is linked to cardiovascular, metabolic, inflammatory and endocrine alterations to physiology in ways that have not only short-term but also long-term and, in some cases, permanent effects.”

“When an organism can react in a protective way for little cost but potentially huge benefit (e.g. avoiding death), the optimal system expresses many false alarms. Vomiting may only cost only a few hundred calories and a few minutes, whereas not vomiting risks death from poisoning.”