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The Evolution of Obesity
 
 
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The Evolution of Obesity [Hardcover]

Michael L. Power (Author), Jay Schulkin (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
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The Evolution of Obesity + Obesity: The Biography (Biographies of Disease) + The Obesity Epidemic: What Caused It? How Can We Stop It?
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 408 pages
  • Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press; 1 edition (5 May 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0801892627
  • ISBN-13: 978-0801892622
  • Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.5 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 300,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Michael L. Power
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Product Description

Review

Michael L. Power and Jay Schulkin take a frankly Darwinian approach... The evolutionary account of obesity is a powerful one—indeed, almost too powerful.

(Elizabeth Colbert New Yorker 2009)

Elbowing the weight-loss guides on 'health' bookshelves, is a spate of new, more diet-neutral books that track the sociology of obesity, including... The Evolution of Obesity.

(Mandy Katz New York Times 2009)

Goes far beyond anything else that is available on obesity... Power and Schulkin deserve much credit for their bold attempt to combine evolutionary and reductionist explanations, and for their unflinching acknowledgment of complexity.

(Nature 2009)

An excellent and comprehensive explanation for the increased incidence of obesity... In summary, this informative and easily read book is an important companion for students, fellows, and clinicians who wish to understand the causes of the obesity epidemic and how obesity might lead to metabolic disease.

(New England Journal of Medicine 2009)

This will be an extremely useful introduction for graduate and undergraduate students and for mainstream researchers to set the wealth of endocrine and metabolic data connected with obesity into a wider framework of understanding.

(John Speakman Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism 2010)

Compelling, well written, and brimming with fascinating facts and observations. With its broadly comparative perspective and holistic focus, this is an important and unique contribution to the obesity literature that challenges conventional assumptions about the disease and its origins.

(Chris Kuzawa, Northwestern University )

Product Description

In this sweeping exploration of the relatively recent obesity epidemic, Michael L. Power and Jay Schulkin probe evolutionary biology, history, physiology, and medical science to uncover the causes of our growing girth. The unexpected answer? Our own evolutionary success.

For most of the past few million years, our evolutionary ancestors' survival depended on being able to consume as much as possible when food was available and to store the excess energy for periods when it was scarce. In the developed world today, high-calorie foods are readily obtainable, yet the propensity to store fat is part of our species' heritage, leaving an increasing number of the world's people vulnerable to obesity. In an environment of abundant food, we are anatomically, physiologically, metabolically, and behaviorally programmed in a way that makes it difficult for us to avoid gaining weight.

Power and Schulkin’s engagingly argued book draws on popular examples and sound science to explain our expanding waistlines and to discuss the consequences of being overweight for different demographic groups. They review the various studies of human and animal fat use and storage, including those that examine fat deposition and metabolism in men and women; chronicle cultural differences in food procurement, preparation, and consumption; and consider the influence of sedentary occupations and lifestyles.

A compelling and comprehensive examination of the causes and consequences of the obesity epidemic, The Evolution of Obesity offers fascinating insights into the question, Why are we getting fatter?

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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Why is it that some people get fat, yet others stay slim? Over the past 50 years there has been a phenomenal expansion in the numbers of obese and overweight people in the Western world. However, despite the so-called `obesogenic' environment that has fuelled this epidemic, we do not all get fat. Surveys of the population in the USA show that about 20% of the population appear to be completely resistant to weight gain. These differences appear to have a biological basis and to be mostly due to genetic differences between individuals. This much has become apparent from the enormous expansion of research work on obesity over the past 15 years. In 2009 there were five times more scientific publications on obesity than there were 20 years previously. Why some of us have a biological constitution that is resistant to weight gain, while others are susceptible, is rooted deep in our evolutionary history. In their book `The Evolution of Obesity' Michael Power and Jay Shulkin address this complex problem providing a comprehensive summary of the exploding literature and placing it into an evolutionary context. Given the sheer volume of information this is a virtually impossible task within 330 pages, and inevitably the coverage is selective. Details of the complex networks that play a critical role in the regulation of, or failure to regulate intake, are quite rudimentary. Genetics and epigenetics are given only brief sections and there is no discussion at all of the recent genetic discoveries - such as the Fatness and Obesity related gene (FTO). In spite of these omissions the book is able to develop an interesting story by following the evolution of humans over the past 2 million years picking up the challenges they have likely faced and how evolution has equipped us to cope with these environmental challenges. The fundamental thesis is that fat storage and obesity was once adaptive in a world where energy was scare, but in the modern world where energy isn't scarce our system is primed to deposit fat. This is an idea that has often been repeated but there is in fact little evidence to support it. Indeed, the fact that despite such supposed strong positive selection there is still this enormous heritable variability in susceptibility to obesity points directly to this idea being wrong. Despite this shortcoming the book does have some interesting new ideas. First, it is suggested that a critical development in our behaviour was the evolution of feeding in discreet meals. The social context of eating meals then divorces feeding from a strictly nutritional function. The second feature is the very large difference between males and females in body fatness and the different roles that this has played in the evolution of fertility and reproduction. Overall this is an interesting attempt to set the massive expansion of information about obesity into an evolutionary context. If you want to know the evolutionary background to why some people get fat but others stay slim this is probably the only place to get some insight in a single volume. It is an extremely useful introduction for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as mainstream researchers hoping to set the enormous and often confusing literature about obesity into some sort of wider framework.
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Amazon.com:  2 reviews
Good as first reading on the subject 21 May 2012
By Mauricio Luz - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
The book is well written and covers the subject quite extensively. It is sometimes repetitive but reading is never boring. If you never read anything on the subject of Evolution of Obesity, it will bring you close to the current knowledge on this fast changing subject. However, if you have a more academic interest on the theme and already read review papers, it is unlikely that it will add much to your current knowledge. It may call your attention to different approaches to the subject that you were not aware of and that is good anyway.
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful
A Needed Reality Check on Obesity 12 Feb 2012
By WAL - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is a sobering, but much needed, overview of the complexity of the obesity issue, a public health issue that has recently acquired prominence. Although it does not appear to have been written for a general audience, it contains numerous insights on appetite, appetite, meals, and their genetic, biochemical, and social components and origins. It you are interested in a deeper understanding of obesity, the reward is worth the effort.

As examples of the insights in "The Evolution of Obesity", I would cite two that I found particularly informative. First, the biochemical signals involved in appetite and fat storage (e.g., insulin and leptin) are active and play important roles in systems other than metabolism. Recognition of this is very important, because it implies that it is extremely unlikely that a "magic bullet" will be found to treat obesity. Second, even a relatively lean person has sufficient energy stored as fat to satisfy basic requirements for about a month! From this point of view, excess fat is clearly maladaptive, and is associated with a state of chronic internal inflammation. The human body does not appear to have a way to recognize and dispose of excess fat (adipose tissue). Carbohydrate and fat calories consumed are either used directly or stored. There is apparently no way to directly shrink adipose tissue other than through the usual metabolic pathways. It seems to me that this supports the author's concept that humanity evolved in a calorically-limited environment, but now that there is virtually unlimited access to high energy density foods, the metabolic system is unable to effectively cope with it.

One aspect of obesity and metabolism that the authors do not address but I wish they would have is the question of mass and energy with respect to food and adipose tissue. Basically, the issue is that adipose tissue and obesity are characterized by weight (i.e., in terms of mass), but foods are characterized by calories (i.e., in terms of energy). The basis for the interchangeability of these terms is assumed, but the discourse on obesity would benefit from a clear explanation for it. I think I can guess why this is done, namely, a mass balance for metabolism (mass of food in = change in body mass + mass of metabolites out) would be very difficult to measure.

The book makes it clear that human metabolism is exceedingly complex, and that we are a very long way from a detailed understanding of it. This situation will undoubtedly disappoint and frustrate the food police, since it will be impossible to find a single villain on which obesity can be conveniently blamed.
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