ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2016
Fatness and fitness: exposing the logic of evolutionary explanations for obesity.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- Food insecurity as a driver of obesity in humans: The insurance hypothesis.The Behavioral and brain sciences · 2017Pooled it
- Handgrip strength has declined among people from Macao Special Administrative Region: A temporal trend analysis from 2001 to 2020.Journal of sports sciences · 2025Article
- Integrating COM-B and the person-based approach to develop an ACT based therapy programme to raise self-determination in adolescents with obesity.BMC health services research · 2023Article
- Food insecurity as a cause of adiposity: evolutionary and mechanistic hypotheses.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Models of body weight and fatness regulation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Understanding the contemporary high obesity rate from an evolutionary genetic perspective.Hereditas · 2023Review
- Obesity: an evolutionary context.Life metabolism · 2022Review
- A Refined Method for Studying Foraging Behaviour and Body Mass in Group-Housed European Starlings.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Developmental Origins of Metaflammation; A Bridge to the Future Between the DOHaD Theory and Evolutionary Biology.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2022Review
- Exposure to food insecurity increases energy storage and reduces somatic maintenance in European starlings (Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- Article
- Regulation of energy intake and mechanisms of metabolic adaptation or maladaptation after caloric restriction.Reviews in endocrine & metabolic disorders · 2020Review
- Short-term insurance versus long-term bet-hedging strategies as adaptations to variable environments.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2019Article
- Food-Insecure Women Eat a Less Diverse Diet in a More Temporally Variable Way: Evidence from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2013-4.Journal of obesity · 2019Article
- Body proportions for the facilitation of walking, running and flying: the case of partridges.BMC evolutionary biology · 2018Article
- Echoes of Early Life: Recent Insights From Mathematical Modeling.Child development · 2018Review
- Recent advances in understanding body weight homeostasis in humans.F1000Research · 2018Review
- Does Hunger Contribute to Socioeconomic Gradients in Behavior?Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
- THE BENEFITS OF CUSTOMIZED DNA DIRECTED NUTRITION TO BALANCE THE BRAIN REWARD CIRCUITRY AND REDUCE ADDICTIVE BEHAVIORS.Precision medicine · 2016Article
- An adaptive response to uncertainty can lead to weight gain during dieting attempts.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
To explore the logic of evolutionary explanations of obesity we modelled food consumption in an animal that minimizes mortality (starvation plus predation) by switching between activities that differ in energy gain and predation. We show that if switching does not incur extra predation risk, the animal should have a single threshold level of reserves above which it performs the safe activity and below which it performs the dangerous activity. The value of the threshold is determined by the environmental conditions, implying that animals should have variable 'set points'. Selection pressure to prevent energy stores exceeding the optimal level is usually weak, suggesting that immediate rewards might easily overcome the controls against becoming overweight. The risk of starvation can have a strong influence on the strategy even when starvation is extremely uncommon, so the incidence of mortality during famine in human history may be unimportant for explanations for obesity. If there is an extra risk of switching between activities, the animal should have two distinct thresholds: one to initiate weight gain and one to initiate weight loss. Contrary to the dual intervention point model, these thresholds will be inter-dependent, such that altering the predation risk alters the location of both thresholds; a result that undermines the evolutionary basis of the drifty genes hypothesis. Our work implies that understanding the causes of obesity can benefit from a better understanding of how evolution shapes the mechanisms that control body weight.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.