We, humans, are victims of our own success.  Our species was not built for abundance, but instead, for scarcity.  The history of humanity on earth has been characterized by deprivation and the resulting population die offs.  Those individuals and family lines that endured passed the traits that helped them survive on to their offspring.  In a time of famine the ability to store energy as fat is an asset.

In more recent times only the very wealthy were fat.  Generous body size was a sign of prosperity and success.  Only the poor and those who labored for a living were lean.  Traditional foods from around the world are those that carry the most bang for the caloric buck: easily portable, preservable without refrigeration, and energy sustaining…e.g. sausage!  As recently as the turn of the 19th century, most Americans struggled to take in enough calories to sustain themselves through a days work.  Long hours of manual labor combined with the lack of climate control meant that the average American was still functioning in an environment of relative scarcity, metabolically speaking.

So, here we stand (or lean)…Americans at the beginning of the 21st century.  Why the stroll down memory lane?  Without that context, obesity becomes a personal problem rather than a societal problem.  We live in a time of unprecedented plenitude.  Advances in technology ensure that we do not have to walk across the street to visit a neighbor, instead we call.  No need to use bi-pedal locomotion to go to our mother’s house, we drive.  We needn’t even regulate our own body temperatures in the heat and cold: we have central air!  Every convenience of modern life in America keeps us sedentary.  Our work is at a desk, in front of a computer.  Our leisure is on a couch, in front of a television or computer or game console.  We exercise for fun (some of us), not for our daily bread.

And we wonder why we are fat?

We struggle to find enough activity in our daily lives to burn the 2000 calories we should be taking in, let alone a more realistic 2000+ calories we actually ingest.  So what do we, as a society, about the monster our success has created?  The human species is evolutionarily predisposed to rapid weight gain.  There is not a looming cataclysm on the horizon that will help switch our collective metabolisms into ketosis.  And one hundred years of national abundance is not going to supplant millions of years of evolution.

We educate ourselves as to our own nature as homo sapiens.  We do what we can to be healthy and long lived.  For those who are losing the battle with bounty, we offer accommodation and encouragement rather than derision and scorn.  There are many things we can control, but the nature of our species?  That we cannot.

And as I consider that piece of candy or eye my couch on the way to the gym, I will try to be grateful for my own efficient energy storage system.  I say instead, Huzzah!  Evolution has equipped me well for the coming zombie apocalypse!

Written in honor of the hilarious Kevin Smith.  Keep on keepin’ on.