eli5: Why will the body continue to store excess fat to the point where it jeopardizes the person’s health?

1.46K views

I understand food wasn’t always so abundant, and humans were well served to store excess consumed energy as fat for later use. What I don’t understand is why the body keeps storing fat to the point where a person becomes morbidly obese and it puts their entire health at risk. Why isn’t there a point where the body just let’s the extra calories pass through without saving for later?

In: 1194

48 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Humans didn’t evolve in an environment where abundant food was a threat to reproduction. So long as humans are able to reproduce before the storage of excess fat becomes a problem, there isn’t really any evolutionary advantage to not storing fat. Even after the rise of agriculture, famine and nutritional scarcity have been relatively common until about 200 years ago.

You are viewing 1 out of 48 answers, click here to view all answers.