June 7, 2004
That was the condition of pretty much the entire human race when
anatomically modern humans first arose, between 150,000 and
100,000 years ago, and things stayed that way until what some
anthropologists have called humanity's worst mistake: the
invention of agriculture. We now had a steady source of food, but
there were downsides as well. For one thing, our ancestors began
gathering in much larger population centers, where bacteria and
viruses could fester. Small bands of hunter-gatherers can spread
disease only so far, but the birth of cities made epidemics
possible for the first time.
Nutritionally, the shift away from wild meat, fruits and
vegetables to a diet mostly of cultivated grain robbed humans of
many of the essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals they had
thrived on. Average life span increased, thanks to the greater
abundance of food, but average height diminished. Skeletons also
began to show a jump in calcium deficiency, anemia, bad teeth and
bacterial infections. Most meat that people ate came from
domesticated animals, which have more fat than wild game.
Livestock also supplied early pastoralists with milk products,
which are full of artery-clogging butterfat. But obesity still
wasn't a problem, because even with animals to help, physical
exertion was built into just about everyone's life.
That remained the case practically up to the present. It's really
only in the past 100 years that cars and other machinery have
dramatically reduced the need for physical labor. And as exercise
has vanished from everyday life, the technology of food
production has become much more sophisticated. In the year 1700
Britain consumed 23,000 tons of sugar. That was about 7.5 lbs. of
sugar per capita. The U.S. currently consumes more than 150 lbs.
of sweetener per capita, nearly 50% of which is high-fructose
corn syrup that is increasingly used as a sugar substitute.
Farmers armed with powerful fertilizers and high-tech equipment
are growing enormous quantities of corn and wheat, most of which
is processed and refined to be tastier and more convenient but is
less nutritious. They are raising vast herds of cattle whose meat
is laden with the fat that makes it taste so good. They are
producing milk, butter and cheese by the tankerload, again full
of the fat that humans crave.
And thanks to mass production, all that food is relatively cheap.
It's also absurdly convenient. In many areas of the U.S., if you
had a craving for cookies a century ago, you had to fire up the
woodstove and make the dough from scratch. If you wanted butter,
you had to churn it. If you wanted a steak, you had to butcher
the cow. Now you jump into the car and head for the nearest
convenience store—or if that's too much effort, you pick up a
phone or log on to the Internet and have the stuff delivered to
your door.
Unless you make a determined effort, you'll probably choose the
path of least resistance. Evolving during a time of scarcity,
humans developed an instinctive desire for basic tastes—sweet,
fat, salt—that they could never fully satisfy. As a result, says
Rutgers University anthropologist Lionel Tiger, "we don't have a
cut-off mechanism for eating. Our bodies tell us, 'Fat is good to
eat but hard to get.'" The second half of that equation is no
longer true, but the first remains a powerful drive.
This doesn't necessarily mean we're doomed. There's no doubt that
the obesity epidemic is real and our collective health has been
getting progressively worse. Indeed, says Yale public-health
expert Dr. David Katz, "today's kids may be the first generation
in history whose life expectancy is projected to be less than
that of their parents."
But the following pages will make it clear that there's plenty of
reason for hope. Researchers are hard at work trying to
understand the basic biochemistry of hunger and fat metabolism;
policymakers are pushing for better labels and nutritional
information; school boards are giving their cafeteria menus a
closer look and reconsidering vending-machine contracts with
makers of sugary soft drinks; urban planners are rethinking our
cities and towns to get us out of the car and onto our feet;
Americans in record numbers are putting themselves on low-carb
and low-calorie diets; and more and more foodmakers are beginning
to see increased awareness of the obesity epidemic not as a
threat but as a business opportunity. It's too soon to tell if
it's working, but there's at least one hopeful sign. For the
first three quarters of 2003, there was no increase in obesity
among adult Americans, according to preliminary data from the
National Health Interview Survey.
Campaigns against smoking and drunk driving have raised the
national consciousness about these public-health issues
dramatically. There's no reason to think an anti-obesity campaign
can't do so as well—as long as everyone involved acknowledges
that the problem is real and that solving it will be as hard as
anything we've ever done. After all, it's not easy to fight
millions of years of evolution.
— Reported by David Bjerklie/New York
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His life and death recalled in images
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