The modern obesity epidemic has its roots in the dramatic growth of the human brain and body over two million years ago, misguided scientists claim.

AAAS: Modern obesity epidemic can be traced back two million years
article in the Telegraph

Yes, folks. - It's the usual dangerously misleading claptrap about calories, this time with the emphasis on modern sedentary lifestyles compared with the more active lives of the hunter-gatherers long ago.

Extracts:

"Higher calorie, nutritionally dense diets became necessary to fuel the energy demands of the exceptionally large human brain and help switch from a foraging to "hunter-gatherer" existence.

But the transition from an extremely active subsistence to a modern, sedentary, lifestyle has created energy imbalances that have played a major role in obesity.

According to Professor William Leonard, an anthropologist at Northwestern University, activity patterns must get every bit as much attention as consumption of unhealthy foods in any attempt to reverse the modern-day obesity malaise.

Professor Leonard, who discussed his work during the 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) science meeting, said two million years ago diets had to become richer to provide the nutrition to support the rapid evolutionary increases in both the brain and body sizes of our ancestors."

"The imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure today, Professor Leonard concludes, is the root cause of obesity in the industrialized world."

No, Professor Leonard, the roots of the modern obesity epidemic are much more recent than 2,000,000 years ago. - More like round about 1950, say, which I believe is roughly when doctors started prescribing steroids despite not knowing or understanding that they caused massive weight gain, caused in turn by fluid retention, caused in turn by sodium retention, all of which resulted from the effect of the prescribed steroids on the blood vessels. I don't know when tricyclic antidepressants were first prescribed, but I'd guess it was round about the same time - maybe about a decade later. They had the same damaging effect on the veins and were - and still are - very widely prescribed. Nor do I know exactly when the anti-psychotics started to be prescribed - the anti-psychotics that also caused morbid obesity. And likewise the oestrogen-containing hormone replacement drugs - but I guess that that too was in the second half of the twentieth century, the period in which doctors, hand in hand with the baleful pharmaceutical industry, came to destroy the health of far more patients than they have ever helped. All of these factors were compounded by an unprincipled food industry that ladled vast amounts of salt into inferior processed foods which were bought by consumers who looked for convenience food as more and more women were going out to work and so looking to save time in meal preparation. - To cap it all, the dieting industry started to drop its insidious poison of the need to eat less, exercise more, message that has harmed so many millions of innocent victims.

Obesity is not caused by eating fat or sugar or too many calories. Nor is it caused by inactivity/laziness. It is caused by weakened veins leading to fluid retention in the bloodstream, i.e. sodium retention and water/fluid retention, and thereby to excess weight/obesity.

The way to reduce/prevent obesity is to avoid salt and salty food, and to avoid prescription drugs as far as possible because these are a major cause of the the blood vessel damage that precedes the salt sensitivity/fluid retention.

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free.