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By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #87: Human evolution and overeating

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This week's "food for thought" excerpt comes from Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal (2021), by Mark Bittman.

"Gradually, early humans evolved to track faster prey, run them down over long distances, and kill them by stampeding them over cliffs or chasing them to exhaustion and clubbing them. With little ability to preserve the bounty of a big kill, our ancestors stuffed themselves on the spot, took what they could carry, and ate that until it was finished. This is an important factor in explaining contemporary overeating: We're hardwired to eat what we can, when we can; we have little or no built-in counterweight to overindulgence. Overeating wasn't much of a problem when lifestyles were active and there was no such thing as junk food, and we might yet evolve to sense when enough is enough. But to our collective and often individual misfortune, that hasn't happened yet."