We evolved into obesity; we will engineer our way out of it

It is that time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.  A big number of us will soon head out to enjoy the small number of sunny warm days. While doing so we will be walking around strangers, wearing not much, and showing the shape of our BMI.

“Obesity is one of today’s most blatantly visible – yet most neglected – public health problems (…)  If immediate action is not taken, millions will suffer from an array of serious health disorders.”, World Health Organisation, 2003

Obesity and overweight are a world wide epidemic. How did we get here? How do we get out? 

First, a quick fact check, if your BMI (Body Mass Index) is above 24.9, then you are Overweight, if above 29.9 you are Obese.  You likely love people who are in those segments. And by being so they will just live less/worse than what they otherwise would. 

Traits that most of us have (like walking on two legs, smiling from a very young age, and accumulating body fat) have all been an advantage to our ancestors. If there were some “cave-men” who did not accumulate fat, they just did not make it, we are the children of those who did.  We have been “selected” to have the ability to “accumulate and defend” our fat reserves. And so we do. 

The mechanism is rather simple:

• We get energy from food
• We need a rather fix amount of energy per day (ca. 2000 kcal), and we use it as follows:

o  70% of the energy in just “staying alive” (Basal Metabolic Rate),

o  10% breaking-down-food, and 

o  20% in physical exercise

There is near to nothing we can do to change these percentages and not much to increase sustainably our energy “needs” either. More exercise won’t do enough, whole-grain won’t do enough, and pumping some iron to increase Basal Metabolic Rate won’t do enough, neither all of them combined will suffice.

The only way out is to lower the caloric-intake, eat less calories per day, every day. We are, however, hard-wired against that. 

Hard-wired? Have you ever done bungee-jumping? When you do, you have a taste of what it takes to override a hard-wired mechanism. It is mentally challenging. And you need only a tenth of a second of override, and then gravity does the rest. Consuming fewer calories than “available” requires a sustained override, for the rest of your life. 

So, what's our way out?

• Evolution won’t do, we don’t have that kind of time
• Classical public awareness and policy alone will have it really uphill, it is tough to fight against something genetically re-enforced for more than 10’000 generations. 
• We will engineer our way out of obesity: with Genetics, Biotechnology, and a good dose of Digital Health.

Obesity is a technical problem. We solve those.