Eating Ourselves into Shorter, Less Healthy Lives

We humans have not evolved for optimal function given a continually high calorie intake. We, and all other species, evolved in an environment characterized by periods of feast and famine: we desire food constantly, but nonetheless need some amount of hunger in order to be healthy. Periods of low calorie intake spur increased activity of tissue maintenance mechanisms throughout the body. A lower overall calorie intake minimizes excess visceral fat tissue that causes chronic inflammation and metabolic disease. In this modern society of comfort and cheap calories, all too many people are eating themselves into shorter, less healthy lives. This will continue until the advent of rejuvenation therapies that can meaningfully target the causes of aging, to a degree sufficient to outweight environmental influences on the pace of aging. The global increase in food security due to modern long-term food storage coupled with the increase in worldwide global food transportation, and international marketing has reduced the cost of food, increasing its availability in the developed world. However, food commercialization and the shift toward production of processed and ultra-processed foods have revealed clear adverse effects, such as the identification of processed food as a major cause for over-eating and the increase in the risk of metabolic syndrome, obesity, and diabetes. As the brain is one of the primary energy-demanding organs in the human body, it comes with no surprise that...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs