One theory I have about why people in America are disproportionately fat, is that they’re disportionately displaced from their evolved habitat. Like lizards. Apparently if you own a pet lizard, you’re supposed to figure out where it would live in the wild, and try to find bugs from that area to feed it. The lizard evolved over thousands of years to digest its local fauna, so it’ll probably be unhealthy to replace that diet with something foreign.
I could imagine something similar being true of human diets. Some humans evolved in a habitat filled with spices and certain kinds of fruit and lots of legums. Other humans evolved in island places with lots of fish and seaweed. Still others had bison and corn.
So perhaps to keep a human healthy, you should figure out what that human’s stomach was adapted to process, and feed the human that.
Filed under: musings | Tagged: food, globalization, USA
Yes, but hardly any people are from one background, especially in the U.S.. I could see it in somewhere isolated, where the gene pool stays relatively the same.
A lot of Asians are lactose intolerant, which does prove what you’re saying. However, I don’t know if America’s weight problem has so much to do with their metabolic response to food…. I think it’s more of the fact that the majority of it is high fat, heavily processed food. Anybody would get fat on it. Not to mention, a lot of people just aren’t learning from a young age how to eat properly. And then you’ve got a lack of exercise…does not bode well.
Doesn’t always make a difference in the long run. I’ve known people who ate well and exercised their entire lives and still died of heart attacks at fifty. Then I’ve known others who smoked and drank and ate until bursting point, yet lived to be ninety. Sometimes diet and exercise can be everything, other times…it doesn’t make much of a difference. Quite unfair, really.
Brian, hi!
I have to agree with chance.
America’s overweight problem is mostly related to consumption of MSG and animals products that were fed grownth hormones.
Just like the the TV monguls and corporations want.
Of course, more exercise would help.
fitday.com helps more than the govt’s new pyramid site…..for your friends who find weight a challenge.
BTW, a mom of four was just on TV in the bikini contest. It’s easy!