Globesity due to Lifestyle changes

Life has changed

What went wrong was essentially a mismatch between our ancient genes (Nature) and the devastating environmental signals (nurture). We are trapped in the shift from eating natural foods to eating processed and artificial foods; from leading healthy to unhealthy lifestyles.

While our genes remained relatively unchanged in the last 50,000 years, our foods have changed in the last 10,000 years - particularly in the last 100 years. Our way of life has become more stressful and our environment, more toxic. This great mismatch between our stable ancient genes and the rapidly changing modern environment has generated many fundamental biological disturbances in our body.

Our early ancestors ate leaves, fruits, roots, nuts and seeds that they gathered, along with meat (including organ meat), eggs, fish and seafood obtained from hunting. The nutrients derived from these foods were natural, complete and balanced. And so our ancestors were strong, lean and healthy.

This simple food supply catered adequately to small tribal communities. But as the community grew, a more organised system was needed. The food supply changed from hunting and gathering, to grain cultivation and animal husbandry.

Obesity statistics

Lifestyle diseases afflict both the rich and the poor, including those living in First World or Third World countries.

Third World countries overweight percentage of population

• Samoa : 93.5%
• Kiribati : 81.5%
• Egypt : 66%
• Bosnia-Herzegovina : 62.9%
• Croatia : 61.4%

First world countries overweight percentage of population

• USA : 66.7%
• Germany : 66.5%
• New Zealand : 62.7%
• Israel : 61.9%
• United Kingdom : 61%

Obesity affects both first & third world countries

The Americans are the richest and the fattest people on earth, with two-thirds of the population overweight, including one third who are obese. In absolute numbers, there are about 165 million overweight Americans. But in percentage terms, poor countries like Samoa and Kiribati have far higher percentages of people who are overweight.