Weight Loss And Longevity
Are we really on the cusp of effort-free rapid weight loss and longer lives?
Depending on your definition of the word human, our species goes back several million years. If you prefer a more restrictive view on the matter and decide only to accept homo sapiens rather than all the other branches of homo that have come and gone over the ages, then our species has been around for approximately 300,000 years. For nearly all of that time we died young: few of our ancestors lived beyond the age of thirty. Death came in a variety of forms: inter-group warfare, disease, accidents, and predators were the most notable causes but death during childbirth, starvation, and exposure also carried off a significant proportion of our hapless forebears.
After the glaciers retreated at the end of the last ice-age around 13,000 years ago, our prospects changed radically. Due to genetic mutations in various forms of grass that accompanied the warming and moistening of the global climate, in a few particularly benevolent places humans slowly (and probably mostly accidentally) developed the first rudiments of agriculture. As the centuries passed and gradual improvements accumulated, calories became less uncertain — albeit also less varied and less nutritious. Our distant hunter-gatherer ancestors ate berries, roots, seeds, and flesh as well as…
