Yet, yesterday afternoon, when I felt like snacking, I picked up a banana from the fruit basket!
For years, I have been suggesting to students that the challenge in these modern times is to stay away from inexpensive calories. As animals, we want to spend the least amount of work in order to obtain the calories that we need. As economic agents, we want to spend as little as possible for the calories that we need. In this world of food abundance, it is, therefore, easy to get into our systems a whole lot of calories at very low prices. And that is where the problem begins.
Across the world, more people are now obese than underweight. At the same time, scientists say, the growing availability of high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods is generating a new type of malnutrition, one in which a growing number of people are both overweight and undernourished.
“The prevailing story is that this is the best of all possible worlds — cheap food, widely available. If you don’t think about it too hard, it makes sense,” said Anthony Winson, who studies the political economics of nutrition at the University of Guelph in Ontario. A closer look, however, reveals a much different story, he said. “To put it in stark terms: The diet is killing us.”
We can blame the manipulative practices of the food industry for all we want, and they deserve to be blamed. But, at some point, we need to look at our fat selves in the mirror and realize that we have met the enemy.
Brazil, which we associate with the fantastic beaches and skimpily attired shapely women, is no exception to this diet crisis:
The rising obesity rates are largely associated with improved economics, as families with increasing incomes embrace the convenience, status and flavors offered by packaged foods.
Busy parents ply their toddlers with instant noodles and frozen chicken nuggets, meals that are often accompanied by soda. Rice, beans, salad and grilled meats — building blocks of the traditional Brazilian diet — are falling by the wayside, studies have found.
Compounding the problem is the rampant street violence that keeps young children cooped up indoors.
All these are modern day problems that the hunter-gatherers did not have to worry about. As I have noted before, these are all the results of a historic turn of events about 12,000 years ago: Settled agriculture.
For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"
From this perspective, “Civilization” was not good for our health.
Archaeologists have proved this. If we examine two female skeletal remains from, say, 8,000 years ago, one from within a “grain” civilization and the other from mobile foraging and hunting peoples outside that civilization, the difference is clear. The bones and teeth of “civilized” woman are far more likely to have left a signature of malnutrition and iron-deficiency anemia while the bones of those outside these centers (the “barbarians!”) rarely bear such signs. What’s more, the barbarians are taller, less likely to be stunted. The difference is most striking among women due to the loss of blood during menses combined with a diet often lacking in the protein that would replace the red blood cells quickly.
We invented chocolate and ice cream, and that is our go-to-food for our kids because we parents work an insane number of hours. Who is the smarter one: The Bushmen or us? ;)
ps: The title is from neologisms via The Washington Post:
Abdicate: To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach
Flabbergasted: Appalled at how much weight you have gained
