Inactivity is Not the Source of Modern Obesity
My colleagues and I recently measured daily energy expenditure among the Hadza people of Tanzania, one of the few remaining populations of traditional hunter-gatherers.
We found that despite all this physical activity, the number of calories that the Hadza burned per day was indistinguishable from that of typical adults in Europe and the United States. We ran a number of statistical tests, accounting for body mass, lean body mass, age, sex and fat mass, and still found no difference in daily energy expenditure between the Hadza and their Western counterparts.
See more of Herman Pontzer’s findings in the NYT.
Yep. Daily exercise is good for you, but what we’re eating matters far more in terms of weight loss.
Interesting finding! It also confirms what we know; exercise it important for health, but we must control our diet to combat obesity.
“All of this means that if we want to end obesity, we need to focus on our diet and reduce the number of calories we eat, particularly the sugars our primate brains have evolved to love. We’re getting fat because we eat too much, not because we’re sedentary. Physical activity is very important for maintaining physical and mental health, but we aren’t going to Jazzercise our way out of the obesity epidemic.”
Both diet AND excercise are essential in achieving optimal results.
Darn, so my plan to open a “hunter-gatherer” style weight loss boot camp just went bust.
Lose weight not by push ups but by push aways from the dinner table. Nothing new.
Many of the foods we eat today are calorie-dense compared to the norm in earlier times. For instance, table sugar was unheard of until the past few centuries; the only sweetener was honey, which few people could afford. Now, food is highly processed, and it’s cheap considering the number of hours people have to work to pay for a given number of calories. People can afford to indulge unlike past periods in history. As a result, the population has generally put on more weight since snacking and eating have become favored pastimes.
You can exercise all you want…but that means nothing if all you eat is junk food.
Loved the picture in the article. It portrays exactly how most Americans and Europeans are perceived by people in other nations. Pretty embarrassing if you asked me..