Why do humans have a preference to over eat or over indulge and not just be satisfied with what is needed to sustain their life and health?
In: Biology
The way the vast majority of animals die is through getting eaten or starving with the remainder succumbing to disease (although often the disease just makes them more vulnerable to getting eaten or starving). Food security is not something that exists in the natural world so our brains are wired to indulge as much as possible when we can since the next meal might be a week away. Obesity isn’t really something that exists in nature.
The problem is we have utterly broken the calories in – calories out equation. We’re definitely more sedentary which doesn’t help, but being able to easily eat 5000 calories every day with no more effort than going to the store means the “calories in” portion has skyrocketed. There’s a big difference between eating a bunch of fruit/nuts/meat every few weeks while roaming the Savannah vs eating a package of Oreos everyday for a year while sitting at your computer. Even until relatively recently, famine was still a regular occurrence for societies which had time appropriate mastery of agriculture.
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