What the Hadza taught us about metabolism – Zoë Harcombe
Executive summary
* I read a book called “Burn: The misunderstood science of metabolism” by Dr Herman Pontzer. Pontzer had lived with and studied the Hadza – a modern hunter-gatherer people living in northern Tanzania.
* Pontzer’s main finding from studying the Hadza and other physically active populations is that our bodies work on a fixed energy budget. “Our metabolic engines are exquisitely tuned to match the energy we burn each day with the energy we eat, and vice versa.”
* “The bottom line is that your daily activity level has almost no bearing on the number of calories you burn each day.”
* This note explores Pontzer’s research and other evidence related to this concept of ‘constrained energy expenditure.’
* The implications are profound: obesity can’t be blamed on sedentary behaviour; exercise won’t solve obesity; and more.
* The fake food industry may want us to think we can eat what we want and burn it off, but we can’t.
