The
latest news may be good, at least for optimists. Well, maybe not in general,
but good news for couch potatoes. You see as we originated from
hunter-gatherers, we have a metabolism that harkens back to our roots.
A large group with Pontzer et al in the current issue of PLoS ONE has
made a study of current girth problems and compared our every day energy
consumption to that of a regular hunter-gather group. They had to go to
Tanzania for their hunter-gathers and chose 30 members of the Hazda. These were
compared to US data from 68 people and published Western world stats.
The
experimental program got pretty intense with GPS trackers strapped onto the
Hazda and breathing analysis carried out with portable system to give accurate
measurement of energy consumption. Meta data were available for comparison for
almost 5,000 people worldwide.
The
results of all these people were compared for the classifications of
hunter-gatherer, farmers, and market economy exploiters. After all the
necessary statistical juggling went on to give a level playing field, the
result for the total energy expenditure per day was remarkably similar amongst
all the groups.
This
result seems to indicate that the difference in daily exercise is not controlling
our growing obesity problem.
So
what do we need to ‘Live Long And Prosper’? The authors decide that we in the
Western world should eat less. So even hiding the fast food places and having
to fetch our own pizzas isn’t the answer; we’re back to the hunger games.
- http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0040503
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18985141
