Game, set and mismatch

Mismatch: Why Our World No Longer Fits Our Bodies by Peter Gluckman & Mark Hanson Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK 272 pp, $30/£17 ISBN 9780192806833 ![][1] In recent years, studies of evolution and development have flourished, providing new insights into the mechanisms of evolution. One area that remains relatively unexplored, however, is the impact of evolution and development on human health. In Mismatch: Why Our World No Longer Fits Our Bodies , Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson grapple with this idea to provide an ‘evo–devo’ model of many of the problems currently stalking the populations of the developed and developing worlds. Gluckman and Hanson both have distinguished research careers focusing on ‘predictive adaptive response’—the idea that the mammalian fetus uses information from the maternal environment to predict its postnatal environment and then changes its phenotype in response. The ‘mismatch’ of the book title refers to the idea that a mismatch between these predictions and the postnatal environment can lead to disease and other problems. The authors extend this idea and discuss more generally the idea of mismatch between humans and their environment as a … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif