Among the great unsolvable issues out there – eggs first
or chickens? Vanilla or chocolate? White meat or dark? – one of the most
contentious (and incredibly important) is this: are we getting so fat so
quickly because we don’t work as hard as we used to? Or are we getting so fat
so quickly because we eat way more than we used to?
It’s probably both but my bias has long been that if we
had to pin our huge public health programs on one side of that ledger – and if
it were me and I wanted to reduce my weight with the highest probability that I
could keep those lost pounds off - it would be to get reduce calorie intake, whether
by eating less (fat chance) or by eating better (slim chance) or preferably by
doing both.
And according to a recent study, that is the best way to
go – eat less first, do more second – because by comparing vastly different
cultures, this study argues that “modern, lazy people” are actually burning as
many calories as people who are still mostly hunter-gatherers.
And when you consider energy expenditure, this should
come as no surprise surprising since – after they’ve taken care of finding
dinner by chasing down some animal - hunter-gatherers (and no, I don’t speak
from experience) probably spend most of
their time sitting around and – if they’re men – bragging about their hunting
prowess.
In other words, whether you work in an office or you still
chase meat in the wild, your energy expenditure in a day is not that wildly
different.
What is hugely different is our access to food, especially
crap, and that – more than not working out enough – is what is most likely
making us fat so quickly.
