Why We Eat Too Much

1
Why We Eat Too Much

• by
• Kambria Callantine

2
Why We Eat Too Much

• Marvin Harris argues that obesity is a disease
• Obesity is merely a form of hunger in disguise.
• Our need and appetite for food are the products
  of at least 2 million years of selection for the
  ability not only to eat but to overeat.
• When the stomach is empty it can expand to take
  in 2 to 3 pounds of food at a time.

3
Why We Eat Too Much

• Worldwide, feasts and banquets encourage
  over-eating.
• We all have an irresistible urge to eat, but we
  also have built-in controls that reduce our
  appetite for food and that limit the accumulation
  of excess fat.

4
Why We Eat Too Much

• Between the ages 18 38, Americans usually put
  on no more than ten or twenty pounds while eating
  their way through twenty tons of food.
• Nutritionists estimate that to keep the weight
  gain to such a small percentage of food consumed
  means that the foodstat operates with a tolerance
  of less than 1.

5
Why We Eat Too Much

• The human foodstat cannot be relied on to keep
  people from eating too much.
• 24.2 of adult men and 27.1 of adult women weigh
  20 percent more than is good for them.

6
What is a foodstat?

• A foodstat is a thermostat for the body
• One indication that our bodies are equipped with
  a foodstat is that the average person gains very
  little weight over a lifespan.

7
Conclusion

• In conclusion, foodstats do not work. The reason
  we know this is because over half the population
  is on one diet or another.
• It is not the foodstats that kept humans from
  getting fat, it was the lack of food.