Waistland

Waistland: The R/evolutionary Science Behind Our Weight and Fitness Crisis is a book by Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2007. The book examines the obesity and fitness crisis from an evolutionary standpoint. Barrett argues that our bodies, our metabolisms, and our feeding instincts were designed during human evolution’s hunter-gatherer phase. We’re programmed to forage for sugar and saturated fats because these were once found only in hard-to-come-by fruit and game. Now, these same foods are everywhere—in vending machines, fast food joint, restaurants, grocery stores, and school cafeterias—they’re nearly impossible to avoid. She describes this as related to the focus of another of her books “supernormal stimuli”—the concept of artificial creation

Waistland

Waistland: The R/evolutionary Science Behind Our Weight and Fitness Crisis is a book by Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2007. The book examines the obesity and fitness crisis from an evolutionary standpoint. Barrett argues that our bodies, our metabolisms, and our feeding instincts were designed during human evolution’s hunter-gatherer phase. We’re programmed to forage for sugar and saturated fats because these were once found only in hard-to-come-by fruit and game. Now, these same foods are everywhere—in vending machines, fast food joint, restaurants, grocery stores, and school cafeterias—they’re nearly impossible to avoid. She describes this as related to the focus of another of her books “supernormal stimuli”—the concept of artificial creation