Mixed
Cultural evolution, specifically the adoption of cooking and processed foods, provided the necessary energy surplus to drive human brain expansion and physiological reconditioning, establishing an evolutionary trajectory that predisposes modern humans to obesity in obesogenic environments.
Understand that your body's drive to store fat is an evolutionary adaptation to a high-energy niche created by cooking and tool use, not a moral failing. In a modern environment with unlimited processed food, this adaptation becomes maladaptive. The solution requires changing the environment (non-obesogenic) rather than just relying on willpower.
Some cultural innovations as the invention of tools, and the adoption of processed and cooked foods, have enabled greater energy intake and improved nutrient quality for human diets. These behavioral changes results in the expansion and growth of the human brain, while simultaneously reconditioning the digestive apparatus, leading to a shortening in the time dedicated to foraging and food digestion.
Why this rating
The paper is a theoretical review/hypothesis paper, not a primary clinical trial, relying on evolutionary biology arguments.
Source
Is obesity the next step in evolution through brain changes?
Wifredo Ricart et al. · Neuroscience Applied · 2023
DOI 10.1016/j.nsa.2023.103927
More from this paper
- The consumption of cooked and processed foods enhances nutrient bioavailability (e.g., glucose, DHA, antioxidants) and reduces foraging time, which was a prerequisite for the metabolic cost of maintaining a large human brain.Moderate
- Modern obesogenic environments (sedentary lifestyle, high-calorie processed food) exploit evolutionary adaptations (brain expansion, efficient fat storage) leading to a 'normalization' of obesity phenotypes and genotypes.Limited
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