The obesity epidemic is fuelled by biology, not lack of willpower

 By Megha Poddar, and Sean Wharton Since the time a human first used a tool to make life easier, increased weight has been inevitable. From that day the amazing and rapid progress of human achievement has been on a parallel trajectory with the growing availability of calories and the health and social consequences, initially positive, that have come with it. Through most of human history, our species has had to cope with food scarcity. Scrounging enough calories to stay alive was a struggle, and our ability to compete and survive sometimes meant enduring long breaks between scarce meals. When food was abundant, our bodies stored excess energy in the form of fat to draw upon when food was not available.  Ancient metabolism in a modern world Human ingenuity allowed our…

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