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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> 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.

You’re assuming the body has logic. It doesn’t have any logic. It just “is” and it does what it does.

In theory, if this became a huge problem to the survival of the species, then one of two things would happen: either (a) some random mutation in a few thousand or millions years would “let the calories pass” or (b) we’d die out.

Fortunately, I don’t think that the number of obese people is enough to kill off the species, and as far as evolution goes, obesity would have to kill them (or enough of us) *before* we procreate. All biology “requires” of us is that we live long enough to make more humans.

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