If a regular weight person and an obese person were left on a desert island with no food, would the obese person live a lot longer bc they have stored up energy as fat? Or does it not work like that?
In: 9490
Basically yes, the ability to store fat as a food reserve is a huge evolutionary advantage for exactly this scenario. Assuming similar levels of activity the fat person will outlive the skinny one and then eat him to live even longer.
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The fat person would have the advantage, but with *no* food you’d expect some deficiency of a vitamin, mineral, or amino acid to still kill them, so that could mitgate how much longer they live.
The more that they can avoid a deficiency in one of those vital nutrients, the longer the life-span gap would be once it is more about just chemical energy. (e.g. if they can eat a small amount of food, or are given a ‘multivitamin’ or similar supplement).
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You could argue for some 2ndary effects, like maybe the obese person will have a harder time constructing a shelter or treking to find water. So it is possible that due to circumstances like that the regular weight person might live longer, but that is sort of not answering the spirit of your question.
If calories are the problem, then the fat person can go longer without them.
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Absolutely, the obese person would live longer all things being equal. You can see a real-life example of this on season 5 of Alone. Alone has contestants see who can survive the longest in a primitive setting.
Contestants receive regular health exams. Getting dangerously skinny is a reason for getting kicked off the show for safety reasons. Sam Larson, who started the contest quite heavy, won. His win was controversial and irritated many fans as he won despite not successfully hunting (and thus not eating) a single thing besides a few mice. Despite not eating anything he outlasted everyone else.
Having watched his season, other contestants were impressive in their hunting and fishing skills and were eating lots of fish especially. Sam ate a few mice. He lasted 60 days and lost 50lbs.
There are about 3,500 calories per lb of fat. He burned about 2,900 calories per day. He was able to provide himself more calories than his fellow competitors without having to lift a finger…without having to spend calories cleaning game, cooking it, or chewing it. Having excess fat is definitely a survival advantage when food is scarce. That’s the intended purpose of it after all. We’re able to carry spare calories inside our bodies.
If there’s even a little bit of water then the fat person would survive a lot longer. With no water at all both would die basically the same.
Biko on Season 8 of Alone made it 73 days on very little food. Just a fat guy and a lot of determination.
Funnily enough it was the husky lads that managed the fucking long marches in the army best. When we had to walk for miles without any food, only water.
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Yeah, obviously it’s not like your body stores fat just to make you feel bad about yourself
The fat on your body is literally a cushion to get you through lean hunting seasons
Yes. When asking a question like this, always ask the question in the case of absolute extremes. If someone who was 400 pounds and someone who was anorexic were both on an island, who’d starve first? The person with no stored energy and is functionally starving already.
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