Re: News: Evolution makes us fat.

On Sep 29, 1:37 am, "Steven J." <steve...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 28, 4:50 pm, Ye Old One <use...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:> Evolution makes us fat

Merciful heavens! Is it not enough that evolution is responsible for
fascism, communism, laissez-faire capitalism, feminism, sexism,
racism, sexual promiscuity, Islamic terrorism and, apparently, a
really lousy sitcom that debuts next week? Now it must cause obesity
as well? Will the madness never end? Is there nothing we can do
about the dangers posed to society by evolution?





Last Updated: 12:01am BST 27/09/2007

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/09/27/bobar...

William Leith reviews Waistland: the (R)evolutionary Science behind
our Weight and Fitness Crises by Deirdre Barrett

At the start of this sensible book about the "weight and fitness
crisis" in America, the Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett tells us
some shocking things. By 1995, she says, two-thirds of Americans were
overweight, hundreds of thousands were dying fat-related deaths, being
overweight was people's most common gripe and obesity was poised to
overtake smoking as the biggest cause of preventable death. All of
this, she says, accounted for $99 billion in medical costs.

What's more shocking is that, as she points out, in the decade since
then, things have got much worse - by 2004, people were eating 50 per
cent more fast food, and the annual medical bill had risen to $117
billion. The problem, in other words, is bad, and it's getting worse,
and we can't seem to stop it. So why does fattening food - sugar,
starch and fat itself - have such a grip on us?

The answer, says Barrett, lies in the study of evolution. As animals,
we are genetically almost identical to our Stone Age ancestors. We
live in advanced societies, with supermarkets and cars and lifts, but
we are built to be hunter-gatherers. We are programmed to seek out
fat, sugar, starch and salt, because, in the Stone Age, these things
were hard to come by. When they turn up in abundance, our bodies, for
the most part, can't say no.

She tells us lots of interesting things about our hunter-gatherer
ancestors, who immediately preceded the first farmers. The point about
farming, she says, is that, although it makes populations bigger and
tribes more powerful, it's not necessarily healthier for the
individual. On the contrary, hunter-gatherer skeletons tend to be
bigger and healthier than those of people from early farming
societies.

This might be because the crops that people raise tend to be the most
convenient ones, rather than the most nutritious. Wheat, rice and corn
- the foods that "provide the bulk of the calories consumed today" -
are "high in simple carbohydrates which promote weight gain", but each
lacks essential nutrients.

So you can see what's happening - to put it simply, human beings are
evolving much more slowly than the food we eat. And the food is
tricking us. We think it's what we need, but it's just what we want.
What can we do? Eat sensibly and exercise, of course. One thing we
have to do, though, is "not to listen to your body" - because it
craves food that, in abundance, is bad for it.

Barrett is big on exercise. We evolved to enjoy sitting around
because, in hunter-gatherer times, we had to walk and jog and climb so
much that sitting around was the right thing to do. Now we have to
earn it. The good news, she says, is that, if you make exercise a
habit, it stays with you.

This is a clear, well-written and thoughtful guide to the fat crisis.
The advice is simple. Eat healthy food. Then do a lot of exercise.
Then you'll be fine.

Let me rephrase the question: is there nothing ELSE we can do about
the dangers posed to society by evolution?



--
Bob.

-- Steven J.

With that I see yet another reason for the increasing "don't ask,
don't tell" approach in anti-evolution activism. If they say too much
about their alternative, sooner or later someone is bound to use it as
a cause for racism, obesity, warts, whatever. Long before Edwards v.
Aguillard at least some scammers learned "the more vacuous, the
better."

.

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