Youtube Account: Niklas Gustafson

Modern shoes doomed feet | Niklas Gustafson

The oldest leather shoe ever found is 5,500 years old: one piece of hide wrapped around the foot, worn into the exact shape of its owner. Protection, with almost nothing between the foot and the ground. Today we stand on centimeters of plastic foam. As a Harvard-led team put it in Nature, cushioned soles buy comfort at the cost of feeling the ground. The foot's own calluses never make that trade. And next to lifelong barefoot walkers, Western feet are narrower, with pressure piled onto the heel, the ball and the big toe. The old shoe took the shape of the foot. The modern one makes the foot take the shape of the shoe. Pinhasi et al., PLoS ONE (2010) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010984 Holowka et al., Nature (2019) DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1345-6 D'Août et al., Footwear Science (2009)…