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

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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?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

If you look at the way the body is designed, it seems like **the system that signals hunger and feeding is the part that is broken here**.

The system that stores fat seems to be working correctly.

Your question is sort of like asking “why didn’t the car apply brakes when I was pushing on the gas?” We keep shoving an unhealthy volume of food into the system, and wonder why I am getting an unhealthy amount of fat.

We keep drinking fructose sweetened drinks (fructose mostly metabolizes to fat) even though we are not really hungry.

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