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
It isn’t just humans if you’ve ever owned a pet you’d know a lot of them will just eat until they can’t move if you let them. Some will just eat till they’re full but lots of cats and dogs I’ve had I had to only feed them certain amounts to maintain their weight else they’d just guts food all day.
Because food tastes so gooooood. If everything was bland and boring I’d just eat enough to stay alive but give me some amazing Indian or Italian or Thai food or a pint of chocolate ice cream and I’m GOING to overindulge.
And of course for most of us junk food is easy to get and inexpensive and high salt and fat (so tastes good) so high calorie low nutrition food is widely available for cheap.
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.
All animals take as much as possible when available. Humans, dogs, cats etc. And if they aren’t just consuming as much as possible, they are storing as much as possible (squirrels etc). Because there was a time when food wasn’t available all the time
I agree with all of these scientific answers, but I’ll also add a personal anecdote.
I’ve been overweight my entire life. I never knew what “normal” people must feel like until I took Ozempic. With it, I eat a little, feel satisfied, and go about my life. Without it there is a part of my brain that always craves food. Even when I’m full!
It’s not like real hunger. It’s just an underlying feeling of dissatisfaction and unease. And it’s always there. I don’t know why I’m wired that way. But now that I’ve found something that makes me feel normal, it’s such a relief.
Having struggled with over eating & weight since the 2nd grade, I was placed on Ozempic for diabetes at 77. I never knew it was possible just to not care about food. Fifteen months & 55 lbs later, I’m angry about all the guilt & shaming about discipline & self control overweight people face when it is clearly a chemical problem. I think one Ozempic user said it best: “I look at a bag of Doritos and it might as be a sack of socks!”
Lots of people commenting the ‘humans over eat because they’re surrounded by plenty’.
I don’t agree with this.
Modern day Western humans over eat because their diet is comprised of ultra processed food. Ultra processed food is extensively engineered to hack and bypass our “satiety” systems which should regulate how much we eat. They do this because if you eat more, they get more money.
As other societies have adopted a modern western diet, they have also become obese.
If you want a really great book on the subject read “ultra processed people” by Chris van tulleken. The Audiobook is excellent.
Human finds thing that make them happy
Getting a little more of that thing makes them a little more happy
So naturally the human brain keeps thinking more of this thing equals more happy
And you get stuck in a hellish cycle
And eventually it gets to the point where you are reliant on that thing to make you happy to the point where it’s difficult to stop overindulging because you just want more and more happiness
The human body is designed to take advantage of nutrients when they are available as it evolved to endure periods where food might not be consistently available. This is why fatty, sugary, and salty foods are so appealing to the human palate, because naturally those tend to be the most calorie dense foods found in nature. What isnt immediately used as fuel gets stored as fat for later, which is great when starvation is a constant threat.
In the modern day, with the rise of agriculture and global shipping routes humans made it so there are virtually no points in time where food is scarce in developed civilization, however the human body is still adapted to consume as much food as it can whenever available, so the cravings to eat more than necessary are still around even if the risk of starving is practically eradicated in developed civilization.
TLDR: the human body is designed to assume food is inconsistently available so in a time where human civilization has made food practically unlimited all the time the adaptions to avoid starvation are still present resulting in unhealthy weight gain.
Our bodies have systems in place to ensure that when we encounter fat or sugar we eat as much as is available. That’s because we evolved in situations where fat and sugar were scarce and hard to get. Even after the Agricultural Revolution and the through much of the Industrial Revolution, fat and sugar were still ‘a treat’. Then our civilization got really good at farming for fat and sugar. It’s cheap and available everywhere – look at your local 7-11 convenience store – it’s like a temple to fat and sugar. But your body is still adapted for scarcity. Physical evolution is a lot slower than cultural, social or technological evolution.
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