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YESSS  This gives me the chance to post this:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120725200304.htmQuote Modern lifestyles are generally quite different from those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, a fact that some claim as the cause of the current rise in global obesity, but new results published July 25 in the open access journal PLoS ONE find that there is no difference between the energy expenditure of modern hunter-gatherers and Westerners, casting doubt on this theory.
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Despite spending their days trekking long distances to forage for wild plants and game, the Hadza burned no more calories each day than adults in the U.S. and Europe. The team ran several analyses accounting for the effects of body weight, body fat percentage, age, and gender. In all analyses, daily energy expenditure among the Hadza hunter-gatherers was indistinguishable from that of Westerners. The study was the first to measure energy expenditure in hunter-gatherers directly; previous studies had relied entirely on estimates.
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This in turn supports the view that the current rise in obesity is due to increased food consumption, not decreased energy expenditure.
The authors emphasize that physical exercise is nonetheless important for maintaining good health. In fact, the Hadza spend a greater percentage of their daily energy budget on physical activity than Westerners do, which may contribute to the health and vitality evident among older Hadza. Still, the similarity in daily energy expenditure between Hadza hunter-gatherers and Westerners suggests that we have more to learn about human physiology and health, particularly in non-Western settings. Okay, so the Hadza spend more of their calories on doing things like walking and stuff, but still. Physical exercise is not the only or most important thing driving obesity. It has to do more with the food we eat and how much we eat of it. So no, it's not because people are lazy asses.
While some people do need to cut back on how much food they eat, that problem in my opinion ties into the quality of the food we now eat. This is described in many sources, but one I'd like to highlight is this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiCRwMMh9k8Corn has been gradually bred to have more and more sugar and carb content and less protein content, and now it's in our food all over the world. We've got so much of it due to subsidies, and on top of that resources are now being diverted from beef to it because it's much cheaper and more lucrative to produce. Considering that its syrup can contribute to diabetes... yeah. Everyone is pretty much poisoning themselves because of this. 
(On a somewhat unrelated note, high fructose corn syrup can also produce hyperactivity. I wonder if that's contributing to a lot of brain dysfunction?  )
Edit: Gosh darnit youtube video isn't embedding.This post was edited by catkaboodle on Jul 31 2012 07:37pm
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